Doctors across Long Island are sounding the alarm over a summer of severe e-bike and e-scooter crashes involving children, some as young as 8 years old, describing what they call daily injuries serious enough to qualify as a public health crisis. Northwell Health hospitals admit around 40 patients a year with severe injuries from these crashes, and physicians say hospitalizations climbed sharply through the summer months.
The warnings, first reported by CBS News New York, come from Northwell Health doctors who say the pattern has become impossible to ignore. Dr. Richard Scriven told the outlet that patients as young as 8 or younger sometimes ride e-bikes belonging to friends or older siblings, well below the legal riding age. Under New York law, children must be at least 16 to operate an e-bike, but enforcement of who is actually behind the handlebars remains difficult, and kids riding at high speed without helmets is common, according to the report.
Doctors Compare Risk to Handing Over a Loaded Gun
Kevin Catalina, quoted in the same CBS News New York report, compared letting a 14-year-old ride an e-bike without a helmet to handing that child a loaded handgun. Parents who provide an e-bike to a child under 16 may also face fines, police told the outlet. The comparison underscores how differently trauma physicians now view these devices compared to traditional bicycles.
That framing echoes a warning from Harvard researcher Cornelia Griggs, who told CBS News New York that e-bikes are not bicycles and that children often do not know the rules of the road. Griggs advised parents against buying a child an e-bike if they would not buy that same child a motorcycle or moped, adding that the trauma patterns she sees in e-bike crashes resemble vehicle injuries rather than typical bicycle falls. E-bike and e-scooter incidents nationwide have included fatal cases, and injuries are spiking across the country, per the report.
Suffolk Police Have Seized More Than 200 Illegal E-Bikes
Suffolk County Police have confiscated more than 200 e-bikes in the county that were not street legal, with some of the seized devices capable of reaching 50 mph, according to CBS News New York. David Regina, also cited in the report, said many parents do not fully understand what they are purchasing for their children when they buy these machines. County Executive Ed Romaine noted that the confiscated bikes represent only the ones police managed to catch.
Suffolk County's crackdown traces back to Local Law No. 6-2026 and Local Law No. 7-2026, enacted in December 2025 and signed by Romaine after unanimous legislature approval, according to Greater Long Island. The laws set a countywide minimum riding age of 16, require helmets for all riders regardless of age, and allow penalties including impoundment and fines up to $7,300 for reckless operation. After a two-month educational period, Suffolk police began full enforcement on March 1, 2026, and by late April had issued 96 summonses through the highway patrol unit, including 53 tickets for sidewalk riding and 37 for riding on roads with speed limits above 30 mph, the outlet reported.
State Law Leaves Gaps That Local Rules Try to Fill
New York State law only requires riders to be at least 16 to operate Class 1 or Class 2 e-bikes, capped at 20 mph, and does not require a license, registration, or insurance, according to the New York Bicycling Coalition. Statewide mandatory helmet rules apply only to riders aged 16 and 17 and to Class 3 riders, leaving a gap that Suffolk County's stricter local ordinance was designed to close. Neighboring Nassau County has taken the opposite approach: legislators there introduced proposals in April 2026 to align local ordinances with state law, legalizing most state-permitted e-bikes and scooters while keeping standard restrictions on sidewalks and high-speed highways, per Long Island Life & Politics.
The divergence between the two counties illustrates a broader national tension between expanding access to micromobility and reining in the injuries that come with it. An American College of Surgeons analysis published in June 2026 found that many U.S. e-bikes are permitted motors up to 750 watts, three times the 250-to-400 watt limit common in Europe, which the group says causes many American e-bikes to function more like mopeds and produces pediatric trauma patterns that resemble high-speed motor vehicle collisions, as detailed by the American College of Surgeons.
National Data Shows the Injuries Piling Up
The Long Island reports fit into a wider pattern documented by researchers nationwide. A study presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' 2026 Annual Meeting found that pediatric e-bike crashes at a Level 1 pediatric trauma center surged more than 300% between 2019 and 2023, driving a sharp rise in severe extremity fractures that frequently required surgery and hospital stays, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
A separate Johns Hopkins Children's Center study published in the journal Injury examined national emergency department data from 2020 through 2024 and identified 2,117 pediatric e-scooter injuries, with 42.2% occurring in 2024 alone and children aged 11 to 14 accounting for 38.3% of all cases, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report released in April 2026 documented annual micromobility deaths climbing from 5 in 2017 to 135 in 2024.
