A new study out of the University of California San Francisco shows that electric scooter and e-bikes, which were pitched as a green alternative to cars, have led to a major nationwide surge in accidents and injuries.
The report, which was published in JAMA Network Open, noted that e-bike injuries skyrocketed from 2017 to 2022, while electric scooter injuries have jumped by 45% in that time.
The study showed e-bicycle injuries increased from 751 in 2017 to 23,493 in 2022; e-scooter injuries rose from 8,566 to 56,847 in that span.
The researchers found bikes and scooters are particularly dangerous in the crowded urban areas where they’ve flourished: In total there were nearly 2.5 million bicycle injuries in the U.S. — and 45,586 of those involved e-bikes.
Scooters accounted for a total of 304,000 injuries in the U.S., with 189,517 of those being the speedy e-scooters.
Dr. Adrian Fernandez, the chief resident with the UCSF Department of Urology and the co-lead of the first-of-its-kind study, called the increase “remarkable.”
Fernandez noted, “This increase in accidents not only introduced a demographic shift, but also underscores an urgent need for added safety measures. There are undeniable health and environmental benefits to micromobility vehicle use, but structural changes must be taken to promote safe riding.”
The study found injured e-bike riders tend to be older than their e-scootering counterparts, and those injured by e-scooter accidents were more likely to sustain internal injuries than people riding foot-powered ones.