Pediatric E-Bike and E-Scooter Injuries versus Skateboard and Non-Motorized Bicycle and Scooter Injuries: A PEDSnet Multicenter Analysis
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Project Description
Electric micromobility devices—e-bikes and e-scooters—have proliferated rapidly among children and adolescents, raising new safety concerns. Consumer Product Safety Commission surveillance attributes approximately 36% of pediatric micromobility injuries to children aged ≤14 years (1). Single-center series report that e-bike and e-scooter injuries are more severe than injuries from conventional bicycles or non-electric scooters, with disproportionate rates of intracranial and intra-abdominal involvement (2,3). However, multicenter, population-level comparisons across device categories are lacking. Structured ICD-10-CM external-cause coding now enables EHR-based identification of these exposures. E-scooter codes (V00.84-series, standing electric scooter operator) were added in October 2020; electric-assisted bicycle codes (within the V20–V29 motorcycle-rider chapter) were added in October 2022.4 Conventional bicycle (V10–V19) and skateboard (V00.13-series) codes have been stable throughout. The study period begins January 1, 2023 to ensure at least one full year of concurrent availability of all five device code sets. The objective of this study is to understand the rates and severity of ebikes and escooters in pediatric population.
Study Aims
- Describe quarterly trends in pediatric urgent care/ED visits and inpatient hospitalizations for e-bike, e-scooter, skateboard, non-motorized bicycle, and non-motorized scooter injuries from January 1, 2023 to March 31, 2026, reported as device-specific encounter rates per 10,000 children aged 0 to <18 years in the PEDSnet population each quarter.
- Compare injury severity across the five device categories using (a) an ordinal acute-care composite and (b) the International Classification of Injury Severity Score (ICISS) based on the single worst injury code, both reported as co-primary measures.