From The Summary Podcast - E-Bikes, ER Visits, and Public Safety

[dramatic music] Hospitals around the country are seeing more and more people presenting with injuries caused by e-bikes.

Dr Edward Lewis is from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital.

Dr Lewis, at your hospital alone, you've seen hundreds of patients with these injuries in just the last six months.

Yep, that's right.

The statistics show that we've had a 22% increase, um, in the number of e-bike accidents sort of year on year over the past few years, and, uh, in that seven months alone, we've seen over, uh, almost 350 people present to emergency.

That's just one hospital.

What sort of injuries are we talking about? How severe are some of these injuries that we're seeing?

Yeah, so there's a really broad spectrum of injuries, uh, related to the, the traumatic nature of e-bike accidents.

So we see about 42% of those people present to emergency coming in with a, what we call a trauma response, whi- which a team of doctors and, and nurses need to basically all come together to really urgently review these people.

We see really severe major head injuries, including skull fractures and bleeds on the brain.

We can see really nasty lung bone injuries and breaks, and we can also see injury to the internal organs as well, such as the bowels or, uh, the lungs and the chest, uh, which can really be quite life-threatening.

And on the other side of the spectrum, we see people coming with concussions from a fall off an e-bike or scrapes and grazes.

So quite a, a broad array of injuries that people can come in with.

And you mentioned some of those head injuries, concussions, traumatic brain injuries.

Are people a bit too cavalier about just jumping on, particularly the share bikes and those sorts of things, and not putting on the helmet?

Yeah, I mean, you see it all the time, people not wearing helmets when they're on these things.

The, the fact of the e-bikes are is that they do go a lot faster than what you would be going on a pushbike, and the velocity of that alone, if you come off that thing, th-th-the brain doesn't care if, if you're on an electric motor.

Just the, the nature of that increased speed and that force can have really devastating impacts, particularly on the brain, which is basically a very delicate structure that's in a very confined space.

Some of these people can have lasting effect from these injuries, whether that they need prolonged inpatient specialist rehabilitation at, at specialist traumatic brain injury hospitals and th-they can have life-changing effects on a lot of people.

And when we're talking about e-bike related injuries, are that purely riders who are getting involved in crashes, hit by a car, hitting something else, or are some of these injuries also from pedestrians that are struck by these e-bikes that, as you said, go faster than a, a normal bike?

Yeah, sadly, it's not just the people on the e-bikes that are getting injured now.

We've seen a lot of people who are pedestrians that have unfortunately been knocked over by e-bikes.

So I think what we want to do as a, as a hospital and, and myself as a rehabilitation physician or doctor, is just try and get the personal awareness out there that it's not just about you, it's about other people on the road.

It's about other people on the pathways.

If you're going at speed, if you're not taking care, if you're under the influence of drugs and alcohol, it can have a life-changing effect on someone else.