JAMA Study: Child E-Bike Injuries Rose 33% Per Quarter at Six Pediatric Hospitals

Kids are getting hurt on electric bikes and scooters at a pace that is outrunning every other wheeled sport in the data.

A study published Monday, Nov. 2, in JAMA, led by Stanford Medicine, reviewed records for more than 13,000 young people treated for bike, scooter and skateboard injuries at six large U.S. pediatric hospitals. The window ran from Jan. 1, 2023, to March 31, 2026.

What the study found

"Over that period, e-bike injuries increased by 33% per quarter, and e-scooter injuries increased by 15% per quarter," said lead author Dr. Alan Schroeder, a clinical professor of pediatrics who treats children in the intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. He said those increases were "substantially higher" than the growth in injuries from non-motorized bikes and scooters.

In cumulative terms, the study described a roughly 400% relative increase in e-bike injuries over the period and almost 200% for e-scooters.

The injuries are also worse. Severe cases, the kind requiring surgery or intensive care, were about twice as likely when a powered vehicle was involved. Brain injuries were about twice as common among kids hurt on e-bikes and e-scooters as on non-motorized rides. Hospitalization rates were higher for e-bike riders than for any other group studied.

Age matters here. About one-quarter of e-bike injuries and almost half of e-scooter injuries hit children under 12.

"We've uncovered a serious public health emergency that needs a public health solution," Schroeder said.

Bone, knee and a throttle

David Zapien, 15, is one of the patients. On Sept. 15, a friend let him try an e-bike. He had never owned one.

"I pressed the throttle too much, and the bike popped up," he said. The acceleration threw him off. He landed on his feet, but his left femur snapped and his left knee dislocated. He was moved by ambulance from a hospital near his home in Merced, California, to Packard Children's, where a surgeon repaired the femur the next day with a rod and four screws.

Dr. Stephanie Chao, the hospital's trauma medical director and a study coauthor, said kids are arriving "with increasingly severe injuries." Dr. Preeti Panda, a pediatric emergency physician at Packard who was not part of the study, said she sees at least one e-device injury every shift.

The e-moto problem

Panda argues that many machines people call e-bikes are really e-motos, also known as electric dirt bikes or motorcycles. Those can exceed 60 mph. Regulation is patchy.

The legal baseline is thin. Federal-style classes of e-bikes top out at 28 mph for the fastest category. Some states restrict that class to riders 16 and older. No license or training is required, and helmet rules vary by state.

What the authors want

Schroeder and Chao suggest a cutoff age for riding electric vehicles and e-bikes that cannot exceed certain speeds. Chao also said the researchers hope the work supports policies that would make certain types illegal for kids, with charges filed against both children and parents when kids are caught riding them.

That last idea puts parental responsibility squarely on the table. Whoever buys the machine, and whoever lets a 10-year-old ride it, is part of the chain.

New York is already legislating

Separate data point in the same direction. Health data company Truveta, which analyzed records from over 140 million patients, reported that e-bike emergency room visits rose 760% between January 2023 and August 2026. ER visits for traditional bicycles rose 7.9% in the same period.

In New York City, the City Council has taken up a record 23 pieces of micromobility legislation in a single session. City Council data show 738 injuries and 13 fatalities among e-bike riders in the first six months of 2026. Collisions are up more than 30% over last year.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced a crackdown on online retailers he says are illegally selling high-speed e-bikes in the city.

The proposals are contested. The New York City E-Vehicles Safety Alliance argues that without identifiable license plates and registration, dangerous riders cannot be held accountable. Transportation Alternatives counters that comprehensive registration would cost millions with little evidence it improves safety, and urges the city to focus on protected infrastructure. Food delivery apps and their workers have also pushed back on a pair of the safety bills.

On Queensboro Bridge this week, two men died when an electric scooter and a bicycle collided, according to the NYPD.

What comes next

The JAMA study measures injuries at six pediatric hospitals, not nationwide totals, and it does not say which specific rules would cut the numbers. That is the open question for lawmakers. The New York bills remain under consideration, and no state has been shown to have adopted the age cutoff and speed cap the Stanford authors propose.