2 weeks ago
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February 11, 2026 — 5:00pm
Emergency doctors are welcoming a crackdown on illegal e-bikes after three Sydney hospitals reported a doubling in serious injuries including fractures, deep tissue wounds and severe head trauma.
The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick have already treated 35 children injured by e-bikes and e-scooters this year, ranging from scrapes and fractures to suspected spinal and severe head injuries.
These cases add to the 159 e-bike and e-scooter injuries treated at both hospitals last year – more than double the 78 children who were treated in 2024.
New figures released on Wednesday by St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst show their trauma doctors last year treated 200 patients for injuries sustained while riding e-bikes.
Half these patients needed to be admitted to a hospital bed, and 11 required intensive care. Lesser injuries, such as scrapes and minor soft tissue damage, were not included in the data.
“This is an epidemic,” said the hospital’s director of trauma, Dr Tony Grabs.
“We’re seeing people getting on bikes at nighttime. We’re seeing people getting on bikes [when they] are drunk – and these are the preventable injuries.”
Injuries range from minor contusions, bruising and fractures to serious injuries to multiple parts of the body, Grabs said.
“These are the people that end up in our intensive care unit, and they can be there for days and weeks, and sometimes six to eight weeks in hospital,” he said.
In 2023, the year St Vincent’s began collecting data on e-bike injuries, there were 45 serious injuries. By 2024, this had doubled to 103. In 2025, it doubled again, to 200 incidents triggering a trauma team response.
The data relates only to e-bike riders and does not capture pedestrians struck by one. Grabs said regular cyclists and delivery riders tended to be more experienced than casual users of rental bikes provided by companies such as Lime.
Fifty per cent of people injured on e-bikes were not wearing helmets, Grabs said.
More than half of the St Vincent’s cases had reported speeds of above 25km/h.
A spokesperson for Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network said children not wearing a helmet were 78 per cent more likely to suffer a head injury during a road accident and 43 per cent more
likely to have an injury classified as severe or critical.
“Parents are urged to know the rules for these devices and to ensure children and young people are taking safety measures, including wearing a helmet,” they said. “Illegally modified models can increase the risk of serious injury.”
There were at least five e-bike related deaths in NSW last year. In July, a 14-year-old boy was killed coming off his bike, which his parents purchased online and believed was an e-bike but was actually closer to a motorbike in its construction. A 65-year-old male pedestrian was killed after being hit by an e-bike in Toongabbie in October.
“The legislations which are being discussed are a really positive move forward to try and reduce the epidemic,” he said.
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