Doctors at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma have treated 30 children so far in 2026 for e-bike and e-scooter trauma, compared with 20 during all of 2025, and the injuries are getting worse: skull fractures, spinal fractures and facial fractures among kids whose average age is just 12.
The hospital has treated 30 children so far this year, up from 20 during all of 2025, according to MyNorthwest. Erin Summa, Mary Bridge's health promotion program manager, put it plainly: “So the numbers definitely are up.” She described the kinds of trauma the hospital has been seeing lately, saying, “We've seen skull and spinal fractures, facial fractures.” Patients have ranged in age from 6 to 16, with the average injured rider landing around 12 years old.
About half of those injured kids were wearing helmets, though the hospital said it does not know whether those helmets were actually designed for the speeds e-bikes can reach. Summa explained why that distinction matters so much, noting that these machines handle nothing like a standard bicycle. “They are heavier, they are faster, they are more difficult to manage, and they are leading to motorcycle-like injuries,” she said, per the same report.
Doctors Describe Motorcycle-Style Trauma in Kids
Mary Bridge isn't alone in sounding the alarm. At Seattle Children's Hospital, pediatric emergency providers treat at least one injury tied to an e-scooter, e-bike or e-moto every single shift, according to MLTnews. Dr. William Benjamin Prince, a pediatric emergency physician there, said the severity of what doctors are seeing has shifted dramatically. “The types of injuries we're seeing are far more similar to motorcycle accidents with multi-organ trauma,” he said. That outlet also reported a particularly high incidence of these injuries among kids ages 10 to 14, though children as young as 6 have ended up in the pediatric emergency room.
FOX 13 Seattle has reported increases in emergency room visits tied to youth e-bike and e-scooter injuries. The MyNorthwest report recommends that parents supervise young riders, choose safe riding areas and ensure they wear appropriate helmets.
National Study Finds Brain Injuries Twice as Common
The Tacoma numbers track with a broader pattern researchers have been documenting nationally. A Stanford Medicine-led study examined records for 13,307 patients younger than 18 treated for injuries involving bikes, scooters or skateboards between January 2023 and March 2026, finding that high-severity injuries affected 8% of patients hurt on e-bikes, compared with just 4% of those hurt on nonmotorized bikes, according to Stanford Medicine. Brain injuries, the study found, were about twice as common among kids hurt on e-bikes and e-scooters as among those hurt on nonmotorized vehicles.
The same study tracked a steep climb over time: e-bike injuries rose 33% per quarter during the study period, while e-scooter injuries rose 15% per quarter. NPR has reported separately that a health data company found a 7.5-fold increase in recent years in the rate of children showing up in emergency rooms with these injuries, though NPR noted that no complete national count of youth e-bike and e-scooter injuries currently exists.
Other Children's Hospitals Report Similar Surges
The pattern isn't confined to the Pacific Northwest. At Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, e-bikes accounted for nearly 40% of pediatric incidents requiring a trauma team response in 2023, and by 2025, e-bike injuries had become the leading cause of pediatric emergency trauma visits at Rady Children's Health Orange County, surpassing both falls and motor vehicle collisions, per NPR's reporting.
Cook Children's in Texas reported an even steeper jump: e-bike-related trauma cases rose 500%, from eight in all of 2025 to 48 in just the first half of 2026, according to the hospital's Checkup Newsroom. E-scooter injuries there climbed 97%, from 29 to 57 cases. In 2026, injured patients ranged from 4 to 17; the previous year's 10-to-16 range applied to e-bike injuries, while e-scooter patients ranged from 4 to 17. Penn State Health's pediatric trauma director has described a similarly sharp rise, saying the hospital “has seen an alarming increase in the number of kids who experienced serious trauma while riding e-bikes and e-scooters,” according to Penn State Health News, which noted the hospital treated more e-scooter and e-bike injuries in 2025 than in the prior three years combined.
Some jurisdictions have already moved to restrict youth access to the fastest e-bikes; Stanford Medicine's report noted that San Diego and Marin counties require riders of faster e-bikes to be at least 16 years old. For now, Mary Bridge's message to Tacoma-area parents centers less on policy than on timing, with the hospital's experts urging families to hold off on buying these devices for children until they are old enough to drive.
