"You don't understand the power of an ebike until you get on one, Dr Tony Grabs warns. Grabs, the director of trauma at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, cites a patient who jumped on a rental ebike after a night of drinking with friends the first time she'd ever been on one. The woman, who presented to hospital with her injuries, was treated and recovered."
"Grabs says these injuries are often more severe than those which occur on traditional bikes because people riding at higher speeds who hit something stationary like a car or a wall undergo a de-acceleration. That's where the handlebars can go into the stomach or chest, he explains. Or they get thrown off a bike and then hit something else almost airborne and this is sometimes when you can get a bad head injury, Grabs says."
"The new data, released by St Vincent's Hospital Sydney on Wednesday, shows the presentations in 2025 had doubled compared to the 103 in 2024 and jumped 350% from the 45 in 2023. The hospital in Sydney's CBD saw 200 ebike related presentations last year that were serious enough to trigger a response from the hospital's trauma team. Grabs says about half required operations."
Emergency and trauma teams are seeing a rapid rise in ebike-related injuries, with 200 serious presentations recorded in 2025 at one major Sydney hospital. Presentations doubled from 103 in 2024 and increased 350% from 45 in 2023. About half of the serious cases required operations, including chest and abdominal surgeries for ruptured bowels, broken ribs, and pneumothorax requiring chest tubes. High-speed impacts and sudden de-acceleration into stationary objects drive deeper internal injuries, while airborne ejections raise the risk of catastrophic head trauma. Heavier, faster, and illegally modified ebikes contribute to greater severity and frequency of crashes.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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