E-Bike Crashes Are Flooding ERs With Brain and Spine Injuries in Kids, Doctors and County Data Show

An e-bike is not a bicycle with a little help. Some Class 3 models hit 28 miles per hour, according to Dr. Robert Sherwin, an emergency room physician at Detroit Medical Center who spoke with Fox 2 Detroit. "These Class 3 bikes are probably more like motor vehicles," Sherwin said. "A lot of riders aren't expecting that, might not be experienced in that."

Detroit police are seeing more crashes. Detroit-area doctors are seeing more trauma. That's a local snapshot, but the national and state-level data backs it up.

In Riverside County, California, e-bike crash reports climbed from 224 in 2023 to 958 in 2025, with 416 more logged in just the first half of 2026, according to data released this month by Riverside University Health System. Riders aged 10 to 24 account for most of those crashes. Emergency room visits among 10- to 14-year-olds in the county more than doubled in a year, from 155 in 2024 to 339 in 2025. County coroner records reviewed by the health system tied e-bikes to one death in 2024 and two in 2025.

At Rady Children's Health in Orange County, e-bike trauma visits jumped from 125 in 2024 to 201 in 2025, up from a single case in 2021. By 2025, e-bike crashes had overtaken falls and motor vehicle collisions as the leading cause of trauma visits at that hospital, according to Dr. Laura Goodman, a pediatric trauma surgeon there and lead author of a study published in December in the journal Injury.

Goodman's research, which examined pediatric e-bike injuries nationwide from 2019 to 2023, found that the share of cases linked to speed rose from roughly 4% in 2019 to nearly half by 2023. Kids hurt in speed-related crashes were far more likely to suffer head, neck or facial injuries, and nearly a quarter suffered internal organ damage, more than double the rate in non-speed crashes.

Brain Injuries, Not Skinned Knees

This isn't a story about scraped elbows. NYU Langone Health issued an advisory in April on the surge in brain and spine injuries tied to e-bikes and scooters in New York City. A study published in the journal Neurosurgery found that pedal and electric bike and scooter emergencies made up nearly 7% of trauma patients at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. One-third of the 914 patients treated suffered a traumatic brain injury. More than two-thirds needed hospital admission, and about 30% required intensive care, according to that study, as reported by the New York Post.

Physical harm linked to e-bikes and scooters rose from less than 10% of relevant cases in 2018 to more than half by 2023, the Post reported.

A Labeling Loophole Nobody's Fixing Yet

California law caps e-bike motors at 750 watts, a rule meant to keep them slower than motorcycles. But the law doesn't specify whether that cap applies to sustained power or burst power, according to Cohn & Swartzon LLP, a California law firm that tracks e-bike injury cases. That gap lets manufacturers print "750W" on a bike that can surge well past that limit under acceleration. The bike is marketed and sold as compliant. It may not behave that way once a kid twists the throttle.

A bill introduced in the California legislature in 2026 aims to close that gap, according to the firm. As of now, the bikes with that labeling ambiguity are still on the market.

The Pushback Worth Taking Seriously

Not everyone thinks this is a crisis that demands new restrictions. E-bike rider Cam Cason told Fox 2 Detroit his e-bike is "way better than a car," saving him $30 to $40 in gas to get to work and school. That's a legitimate point. E-bikes are cheap, efficient transportation, especially for people who can't afford a car or gas.

Local bike shop owner John Hughes told Fox 2 Detroit the deeper issue is drivers, not bikes. "Cars aren't looking out for bikes," he said. "There's a ton of traffic out there. Everyone is on their cellphones." Distracted driving is a documented, separate problem that compounds the risk to any cyclist, motorized or not.

The data on speed-specific injuries in kids, especially from Rady Children's and Riverside County, suggests something beyond bad drivers. Bikes that reach 28 mph are being ridden by children who, as Goodman put it, are "operating vehicles that behave more like motorcycles than bicycles without having taken any safety instruction or learned the rules of the road."

What States Are Actually Doing About It

New Jersey passed a law this year requiring e-bike registration, a minimum rider age of 15, and either a driver's license or e-bike license to operate one. That law followed the death of a New Jersey teenager in an e-bike crash, according to the New York Post.

California hasn't gone that far yet. The 2026 bill targeting the power-labeling loophole is still pending. Meanwhile, county health data from Riverside and Orange counties will keep accumulating through the rest of the year, and Rady Children's Health has signaled it plans to keep tracking whether speed-related injuries continue climbing as more of these bikes hit driveways and bike paths this summer.