Bike and scooter accidents surge, overwhelming NYC hospitals with severe injuries
A growing number of people are showing up at the busy Bellevue Hospital emergency room with serious injuries from bicycle and scooter accidents - and the share of accidents involving electric vehicles has skyrocketed in recent years, a new study finds.
More than two-thirds of the nearly 1,000 patients who showed up at the Manhattan medical center with these injuries between 2018 and 2023 were admitted to the hospital, and half required surgery, according to the study published in the journal Neurosurgery. About half of the patients were hit by cars, while others had fallen off their bikes or scooters or were pedestrians who had been hit by these vehicles.
The study's lead author Hannah Weiss is a resident physician in NYU Langone's neurosurgery department who has trained at Bellevue and said she was alarmed by how many people were coming in with these injuries.
Weiss said she would hear over and over during her shifts: "Another patient fell off an e-bike, another patient fell off a scooter. Pedestrian hit by e-bike, pedestrian hit by scooter."
"It became so much more frequent during my first couple of years of residency," she said.
In recent years, e-bikes and other electric vehicles have become ubiquitous in New York City as delivery workers and commuters have adopted them. But an accompanying dramatic rise in deadly fires from lithium charging batteries as well as a handful of fatal crashes have raised concerns among local lawmakers. The city has also started rolling out safe e-bike charging stations for delivery workers.
The study points out, though, that while e-bikes and scooters are on the rise, common-sense safety measures are not: People are riding without helmets or while intoxicated, and that leads to more severe injuries.
Spring and summer - when New Yorkers tend to trade subway rides for bike rides to take advantage of the weather - are the busiest seasons for these types of injuries, according to the study.
Nearly 150 people injured in bicycle or scooter accidents showed up at Bellevue in the spring and summer of 2022, about three times the number of patients the department treated during those seasons in 2018, the study found. The figure dipped somewhat during the spring and summer of 2023, the most recent year included in the report, although data for that year was incomplete.
The share of injuries that involved e-bikes or electric scooters rose dramatically during the study period, from fewer than 10% in 2018 to more than 50% in 2023.
But it's unclear whether the rise of electronic vehicles is the main driver behind the overall increase in bike and scooter injuries or if they are simply becoming more popular while other factors are at play, Weiss said. The study finds that the seriousness of injuries is similar in accidents involving traditional mechanical bicycles, she noted.
Other factors are clearly associated with more serious injuries, however, including not wearing a helmet and drinking alcohol, the study finds.
"It tells us that most of the brain injuries that we see are likely preventable," Weiss said.
Only about a third of the patients involved in the study were wearing helmets and those who did not were at higher risk for traumatic brain injury and facial injuries. Patients who were intoxicated were also less likely to be wearing a helmet, the study found.
