Emergency room visits tied to e-bike injuries skyrocketed an eye-watering 1,810% for children and a whopping 760% overall, a troubling new analysis found.
The visits soared between January 2023 through August 2026, according to Truveta, a health data company with medical records from more than 140 million patients.
“Our hypothesis is that e-bikes are likely becoming more commonly used, traditional bicycles may not be,” said Dr. Karen Gilbert Farrar, who worked on the analysis. “We see that there are increasing numbers of e-bikes in cities or increasing numbers of users of the rental e-bikes, and then anecdotally, there’s also more ability to purchase personal e-bike devices.”
Researchers did not have data on how many people ride e-bikes or how often they use them.
Truveta’s data showed 4,769 e-bike-related emergency room visits from January 2023 through August 2026. Traditional bicycles accounted for far more visits — 63,811 — but their rate of emergency room visits only increased 7.9%.
Head and neck injuries were the most common type of injury for both groups, appearing in about one-third of visits.
Traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, were diagnosed at similar rates — in 5.8% of e-bike cases and 5.6% of traditional bicycle cases.
Among children, injuries on e-bikes had worse outcomes with 7.8% of e-bike visits for kids resulting in a traumatic brain injury, compared with 6% of traditional bicycle visits.
Farrar said differences in helmet use, riding locations or behavior could play a role.
“We were talking with one of the doctors and he was saying that he works in a college town, and he was emphasizing you should only have one person on,” Farrar said. “So are kids more likely to have multiple passengers kind of hanging off their e-bike?”
Fractures were also more common in e-bike cases than emergency room visits involving traditional bicycles, which Farrar said might be attributed to the faster speed and heavier weights of e-bikes.
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