Stony Brook Children's Reports 900% Surge in E-Bike Trauma Cases

Trauma surgeons at Stony Brook Children's Hospital raised the alarm Friday after the hospital's own data showed a more than 900% increase in severe e-bike and e-scooter injuries among children between 2023 and 2025, a two-year surge that clinicians say is outpacing every safety measure Suffolk County currently has in place.

The cases are not scraped-knee accidents. Doctors at the Stony Brook Children's Trauma Program described a pattern of traumatic brain injuries, internal injuries, and multi-system trauma, the kind of high-energy collisions once associated with motor vehicle crashes, now arriving in children who rode into traffic on devices many families still treat as overgrown bicycles.

The distinction matters because modern throttle-assist e-bikes bear little resemblance to the pedal cycles they replace. Hospital clinicians noted that high-motor-power devices accelerate faster than many young riders anticipate, and that pediatric physiology makes children significantly more vulnerable when a crash occurs at those speeds.

That combination has played out on Sunrise Highway near Washington Avenue in Seaford, where groups of children have been spotted riding e-bikes in traffic without protective gear. Sunrise Highway, a divided multi-lane road where posted speeds reach 45 to 55 miles per hour, is among the worst possible environments for a novice rider on a device that can hit 20 miles per hour or faster before the rider has learned the brakes.

Trauma leaders said they "love what we do here at Stony Brook Children's Trauma Program" but made clear the goal is to treat fewer severe cases, not more.

The hospital has published micromobility safety resources recommending age-appropriate device selection, helmets and full protective gear, and routing that keeps young riders away from high-speed vehicle lanes. But clinicians and advocates argue that voluntary guidance falls short when devices are sold with few restrictions and local ordinances have not caught up to the market.

Local police and school officials are working through how to respond. Enforcement can address unsafe riding where existing statutes apply, but no Suffolk County-wide age limits or speed restrictions currently govern high-powered e-bikes on public roads. Calls are growing for a coordinated effort combining hospital injury-prevention teams, school districts, and municipal safety departments before the spring and summer riding season pushes case counts higher still.

School-based safety curricula, retailer accountability, and parental engagement have all been identified as necessary components, alongside infrastructure investment in dedicated bike lanes and low-speed pathways that give young riders somewhere to go other than the shoulder of Sunrise Highway.

The 900% figure from a single children's hospital in Stony Brook reflects a broader national failure: micromobility device sales grew faster than any safety framework built to govern them, and children absorbed the consequences. In Suffolk County, those consequences are no longer a projection. They are an emergency department intake form.