“I had one man under my care recently, 18 years old in fact, who sustained a truly life-changing injury following an e-scooter accident,” says Dr Raymond Carson.
A consultant in rehabilitation medicine at the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH), Dr Carson offers a complex, specialist service to patients.
Those who are referred to the NRH have suffered a severe injury.
“He spent three months under our care and he has gone home now,” he says of the man involved in the e-scooter accident.
READ MORE
“Without oversharing, this young man was 18 years old, he was fit and healthy, active in sport – a very accomplished young sportsman.
“Unfortunately now, he’s facing into a new reality where he won’t be able to walk again. He has made a reasonably good recovery, but he has lost a huge amount of function and it’s truly, truly devastating for a young person like that.”
In recent months, five or six men have come through the doors of the NRH having been involved in a serious e-scooter accident.
“What’s common to all,” Dr Carson says, “is that they’re male, they have been travelling at speed, they haven’t been wearing a helmet, and they have all sadly sustained life-changing injuries.”
Earlier this year, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) commissioned an Ipsos B&A survey on e-scooter usage.
The report revealed that e-scooters were now perceived as the most dangerous form of transport in Ireland, overtaking motorcycles.
Of those surveyed, 76 per cent of people who used e-scooters were male, and 75 per cent were under the age of 35.
“There is still this perception that e-scooters are benign, like toys,” Dr Carson says.
“One pictures a toddler on a toy scooter. Even just the name – many people associate that with a harmless device, but don’t realise how utterly dangerous these machines are, how powerful they are, and the risks to life and limb which can ensue.”
By law, an e-scooter must have a maximum power output of 400 watts or less, and adhere to a speed limit of 20km/h. There are concerns, however, that some users are accessing modified vehicles.
“The sophistication of these machines is increasing all the time,” Dr Carson says. “There are e-scooters capable of reaching speeds up to, I believe, 60km/h and faster.
“It’s really a perfect storm. Consider the typical demographic. A young male – they know risk-taking, they know dicing behaviour, a lack of fear and a powerful machine. It’s the perfect recipe for disaster, frankly.”
With Christmas approaching, Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) and the RSA are urging parents not to purchase e-scooters for their children.
Anyone under the age of 16 is legally prohibited from using an e-scooter, but at CHI’s acute national children’s hospital at Temple Street in Dublin, accidents involving the vehicles are the leading cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).
Since May of last year, which is when legislation for e-scooters came into effect, 25 children have been admitted to CHI at Temple Street with an e-scooter-related TBI. On average, these children spend about 19 days in hospital. Many of them require brain surgery and intensive care.
Forty per cent of the child patients experienced new issues with movement, and 80 per cent were found to have new difficulties with cognition. That might manifest itself in problems staying awake at school, bouts of persistent headaches or even changes to personality.
All of this data is taken from a new paper on e-scooter falls and brain injuries in children, published by the Faculty of Paediatrics at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI). Dr Judith Meehan, dean of the faculty of paediatrics, is a co-author of the paper.
“These children shouldn’t be seen by consultants in neurosurgery, orthopaedics or rehabilitation,” Dr Meehan says.
“Dr Irwin Gill [consultant paediatrician and fellow co-author of the paper] is seeing these children first-hand. He shouldn’t see any of them, because none of them should be riding an e-scooter, because they’re all under 16 and that’s the age limit that he would be seeing in CHI.”
Legislation also stipulates that e-scooters cannot carry passengers, and drivers must have lights, a bell or audible warning device, reflectors and brakes on their vehicle.
However, riders do not have to wear a helmet, and there are no training, licensing, registration or insurance requirements to owning an e-scooter.
Dr Meehan says there is “a lot of variability in terms of the different regulations internationally”. Australia, for instance, enforces a helmet mandate. In the UK, it remains illegal to use e-scooters on public roads.
“There’s variable experiences internationally but there isn’t a lot of long-term data because these are relatively new,” she says. “There isn’t really what you’d call a global consensus regarding e-scooters, although some countries have more stringent regulations.”
Some may advocate for stronger regulations around e-scooters in Ireland, but research suggests the more pressing issue is that existing legislation is not being obeyed. Dr Meehan says there “seems to be poor awareness and poor enforcement” around the current rules.
Parents can be unaware of the legal age limit for e-scooters, or they may not realise their child is accessing the vehicle through a friend. Usage of e-scooters has naturally increased since they were made legal on public roads in Ireland, but there has been a disproportionate impact on children.
Across CHI emergency departments at Temple Street, Crumlin and Tallaght, it is projected that more than 400 children will have presented with an injury related to e-scooters in 2025. That figure includes things such as limb injuries and fractures, as well as TBIs.
David Martin, a spokesperson for the RSA, says CHI’s research confirmed existing concerns around e-scooters. The two bodies recently launched a public awareness campaign around the dangers e-scooters pose to children.
“We want adults to stop buying these things for kids, because we’re seeing this huge increase in kids with serious injuries,” Martin says. “Talking to Dr Irwin Gill, and also looking at our own research, they’re becoming increasingly popular.
“And look, that’s not a bad thing. They’re a very effective way of getting around towns and cities particularly, and we are seeing that. That’s fine. The problem is ... in hospitals across Ireland, they’re seeing people coming in every day [with e-scooter-related injuries].”
Martin says the RSA encourage any e-scooter users to be lit up and visible, and to wear a helmet even though it is not required by law. From the RCPI’s paper, 95 per cent of the children admitted to CHI at Temple Street with a TBI had not been wearing a helmet.
“I live in Cork City,” he says. “You don’t have to travel very far to see kids on them. Frequently, you’ll see two kids on an e-scooter, lashing along on a footpath and neither of them will have anything approaching hi-vis. They’re not legally obliged to have a helmet or hi-vis, but just purely out of common sense [they should].”
Occasionally, people mistakenly use the term e-scooter interchangeably with e-bike. There is a third, less common term too: the e-moped. While e-bikes travel at a relatively safe pace, and can have an electric motor up to 250 Watts, e-mopeds are more powerful. They can have a maximum speed of 45km/h and a maximum power of 4,000 watts.
Like e-scooters, some e-bikes and e-mopeds are being privately modified to exceed the regulations that govern them.
“E-bikes themselves have been around a bit longer,” Mr Martin says. “We’re not seeing the same surge in usage as we have in e-scooters over the last couple of years. Regular e-bikes are great. The engine cuts out at 25km/h and they’re very useful.
“There is a problem with the more powerful ones that really are no longer classified as e-bikes. You see a lot of the delivery drivers are using these – Deliveroo and others. They go very fast. They’re not really bikes as such. We have a concern about those, and we have actually written to a lot of the delivery folk – Uber, Deliveroo – to alert them to it.”
