For more and more kids the commute to and from school is being made with an electric bike or scooter. They’re growing in popularity and affordability, but parents need to make sure training and safety equipment are also along for the ride. Across our region and country, these two similar vehicles are a growing cause of emergency room and urgent care visits, especially among kids.
“I see quite a bit of falls and injuries from e-scooters and e-bikes, whether it's extremity injuries, road rash, even fractures sometimes, and our biggest concern is always with head injuries," said Benjamin Christians, DO, Avera emergency physician.
Importance of Helmet Safety While Riding
An avid cyclist himself, Dr. Christians has had a few nasty falls, but always makes sure to have the proper equipment.
"Our biggest thing, even with bicycles, is going to be wearing a helmet. That can make such a big difference on if you crash and if you hit your head. It really protects you from a significant injury. There are a few other things with traffic, like wearing bright colored clothing, having lights on your bicycle or on your scooter to make you as visible as possible. Other things that you can do is if you're on the bike trail, make sure that you're communicating and announcing yourself as you're passing people, because you can go at pretty high speeds. Then lastly, the other thing that you can do to protect yourself is making sure that you're riding on the correct side of the sidewalk, and trying not to ride on the sidewalk into traffic. Any little loss of control and you can be going into head-on traffic, which can cause really bad injuries as well," said Dr. Christians.
Know the Rules of the Road
The message is not that e-bikes and e-scooters are bad. It's that proper training and proper equipment is a must to ensure that riders and commuters can safely share the road.
"We're going to see more and more of these out on the streets, and hopefully as they become more popular, we can have safer places to ride them. Whether it's bike lanes or figuring out a safe way to use these around town, but in the meantime, we really need to focus on injury prevention and safety. Kids and adults are going to ride these things and we just need to look at them more as a vehicle than as a toy. Some can go up to 30 miles an hour and the force that you can fall with and hit yourself is probably worse than getting hit by a football player. Just hitting the ground can cause some really significant injuries. So wear a helmet, do everything that you can to protect yourself, and take these seriously. Accidents are still going to happen. We're still going to see injuries from these. Hopefully we don't see the real serious, life threatening injuries that we really don't want anyone to have," said Dr. Christians.
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