(BRAIN) — According to a health data and analytics company report, e-bike injury rates increased 760.2% between 2023 and August 2026 while traditional bike injuries remained fairly stable, rising 7.9%. However, the study didn't separate e-bikes from e-motos.
Truveta published its study from U.S. health systems' emergency room visits on its website Oct. 12. Low-speed e-bikes have pedal-assist up to 20 mph; e-motos are designed for off-road use and can reach speeds greater than 28 mph.
"Our research uses de-identified electronic health records from major U.S. health systems, and the distinction between e-bikes and e-motos typically isn't captured in emergency department records," a Truveta spokesperson told BRAIN in an email. "... If that level of detail becomes available in the underlying data, it's something we'd be interested in exploring."
The study did separate all electric bikes from e-scooters.
Among children and adolescents, the e-mobility emergency room visit rate increased 19.1-fold, compared with a 1.5-fold increase for traditional bikes. A traumatic brain injury was diagnosed in 7.8% of e-mobility-related visits among patients younger than 18, compared with 6% of traditional bike visits.
A subset of Truveta Data was used to identify emergency room visits with diagnosis codes representing an e-bike or traditional bike from January 2023 through August 2026. Emergency room visits were required to be at least 30 days apart to ensure the visits were for different bike injuries.
There were 63,811 traditional bike-related emergency room visits during the study period compared with 4,769 e-bike visits. Nearly one in three e-bike (31.1%) and traditional bike (29.3%) injuries occurred in patients under 18. Adults ages 18-24 represented a larger share of e-bike visits than traditional bike visits (15% vs. 9.8%); adults ages 65 years and older represented a smaller share (7% vs. 11.3%). Also, 75.9% of e-bike patients and 76.3% of traditional bike patients were male.
The rate of e-bike-related emergency room visits increased from 1.2 per 100,000 people with a visit in January-August 2023 to 10.1 per 100,000 in January-August 2026, a 760.2% increase. The traditional bike rate remained stable, increasing 7.9%, from 59.4 to 64.1 per 100,000 over the same period.
