E-bike, e-scooter injuries jump 675% in just 5 years at Children’s Hospital LA, research finds

A new study from one of California’s premier children’s hospitals found the rate of e-bicycle and e-scooter injuries skyrocketed in recent years, jumping by orders of magnitude between 2019 and 2025, and mostly affecting children and young adults.

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What’s more, researchers from the Jackie and Gene Autry Orthopedic Center at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, or CHLA, found that the severityof those injuries, and not just the rate at which they occurred, had also jumped. 

“Children injured on e-bikes were more likely to sustain concussions and fractures, require surgery or hospitalization, and were more likely to experience potentially life-threatening injuries,” researchers wrote in a report released Saturday.

Jack Wyatt, a clinical research coordinator at CHLA, presented the research at this year’s national conference for the American Academy of Pediatrics, held in San Diego. 

Pulling data from 379 cases across six years, Wyatt and company found that e-bike and e-scooter crashes resulting in injury and hospitalization at CHLA jumped from a low of 16 cases in 2020 to 124 cases in 2025, a 675% increase in just five years. And while e-scooter crashes were the most prevalent, the relative pace of e-bikes crashes has grown steadily from 2022 to 2025, representing an increasingly large share of total crashes. Researchers found 70% of patients were male, with a median age of 14 years old, and many riders were “violating age or helmet laws” at the time of their injuries.

The CHLA researchers called on parents, young riders and government officials to all rethink the world of e-bikes and e-scooters, which represent both a dramatic reframing of local mobility and sustainability and an increasingly dangerous practice resulting in serious injury and death.

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“An intentional and nuanced approach to education, community awareness, and public safety measures around e-bike and e-scooter use is imperative,” attending Children’s Hospital physician Dr. Bianca Edison says in a news release regarding the research abstract.

Nearby Orange County has taken a dual approach to e-bike, e-scooter and e-motorcycle crashes: education and enforcement. District Attorney Todd Spitzer has called the rise in countywide crashes an “epidemic” and has vowed to prosecute the parents of young riders who injure others while negligently riding. In September, the county held its first buyback program for e-bikes and other assisted vehicles, resulting in the return of thousands of e-bikes and pocket bikes.