{"id":557634,"date":"2026-03-22T20:01:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557634\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T20:01:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:01:21","slug":"high-powered-e-bike-use-among-children-prompts-call-for-more-action-to-stop-preventable-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557634\/","title":{"rendered":"High-powered e-bike use among children prompts call for more action to stop ‘preventable injuries’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Falling off a bike and suffering a scrape is part of growing up, but the surge in popularity of high-powered e-bikes across Australia is leading to children sustaining potentially deadly “hidden” injuries instead, a doctor has warned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As bans on children riding e-mobility devices are being considered by several states, a frontline surgeon says more must be done to stop “preventable injuries”.<\/p>\n

Paediatric surgeon Bhavesh Patel said the emergency department of the Queensland Children’s Hospital was busiest on afternoons, when children leaving school get into accidents on their e-bikes and e-scooters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dr Bhavesh Patel says the most common time for children to present to the emergency department with injuries from e-bikes is after school. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

“The average age of all of the children presenting to hospitals with injuries is 10,” he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Patel said the intensity of e-bike crashes could lead to hidden internal injuries that weren’t immediately apparent and took time and effort to diagnose.<\/p>\n

“These aren’t the minor injuries that we can just do a quick x-ray and give some pain relief and go home \u2026 they take time to diagnose.<\/p>\n

“These are hidden injuries, so they do take a lot of time and resource, and they’re terrible injuries.”<\/p>\n

A study using data from admissions at the QCH <\/a>found e-scooter injury-related admissions at hospitals more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, with young boys accounting for three-quarters of admissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Zeke Hondow was killed after an alleged head-on crash e-bike collision last year. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

‘It’s still a nightmare’<\/p>\n

Eight-year-old Zeke Hondow was killed after an alleged head-on e-bike collision on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast last year.<\/p>\n

“He used to fall off his bike all the time, lots of cuts and bruises,” said his mother, Kloe Weedon.<\/p>\n

“So it still feels like it’s not real, it’s still a nightmare in my eyes.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Zeke Hondow’s mother Kloe Weedon says he sustained internal injuries. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

When Ms Weedon got a call from her teenage daughter in October saying Zeke had come off his e-bike, she was worried \u2014 but she never assumed the worst.<\/p>\n

“He spoke at first \u2026 because he didn’t have any outside injuries, unfortunately it was all internal, she didn’t think it was that bad,” Ms Weedon recalled.<\/p>\n

She was told there was “some blood coming out of his mouth \u2026 but even hearing that, you never think you’re going to lose your little boy.”<\/p>\n

An ambulance took Zeke to hospital in a critical condition, but his mother said his internal injuries were “immense” and he died later that afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Zeke was riding home from school on the Sunshine Coast when the crash happened. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

“He was just an innocent boy going home from school,” Ms Weedon said.<\/p>\n

“You don’t think that’s going to happen. He was on a footpath.”<\/p>\n

Police charged the 15-year-old boy accused of riding the high-powered bike that collided with Zeke’s with several offences, including dangerous driving causing death and driving an unregistered vehicle.<\/p>\n

‘A flawed concept’<\/p>\n

Since Zeke’s death five months ago, three other teenagers have died in e-bike crashes in Queensland alone \u2014 including two teenagers who were killed in a single incident earlier this month.<\/a><\/p>\n

The state government is considering banning children under the age of 16 from riding e-mobility devices and mandating that all other users carry a driver’s licence.<\/p>\n

‘About to have them taken away’: Qld weighs up u16 e-bike, scooter ban<\/a><\/p>\n

The Queensland government says it will quickly consider a raft of recommendations aimed at tightening laws around the use of e-bikes and e-scooters, including banning the devices for under-16s.<\/p>\n

Children under the age of 16 are already banned from riding an e-bike in Western Australia, while New South Wales is also considering introducing an age restriction.<\/p>\n

All other states and territories have no age limits for e-bikes.<\/p>\n

Most states and territories have a minimum age requirement of 16 for e-scooters, except for the Northern Territory where it is 18, and in Queensland and the ACT which require riders be supervised from the age of 12.<\/p>\n

“When you put an electronic or artificial motor onto a device and give it to a child who doesn’t have the necessary cognitive skills and ability to manage risk, I think that’s a flawed concept,” Dr Patel said.<\/p>\n

“I accept that there’s an element of children needing [to] have some sort of freedom, and yes, they need to have their easy falls, but an easy fall shouldn’t give them lifelong permanent injury.”<\/p>\n

Dr Patel said most children presenting to doctors after an e-bike crash were suffering from head, neck, and shoulder injuries.<\/p>\n

“That age has that mentality that they don’t think it can happen to them, and that continues well into adulthood,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have an easy answer for it. So, if we don’t have an easy answer for people to manage themselves, then that’s what the legal system is for.”<\/p>\n

Calls for importation crack down<\/p>\n

E-bikes and scooters are a convenient, accessible, and increasingly cost-effective way of commuting.<\/p>\n

That is why Peter Bourke from Bicycle Industries Australia believes they have a place on footpaths.<\/p>\n

But he said non-compliant devices, like high-powered e-bikes, were endangering the public.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got this overpowered product, high speed, operating in the wrong locations, by people that don’t have training or skills,” Mr Bourke said.<\/p>\n

“Therefore, the likelihood of the incidents and the accidents we’re seeing are increasing dramatically, and that’s leading to injuries and unfortunately deaths.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Peter Bourke says e-bikes should be allowed on footpaths, but high-powered devices are endangering the public. (ABC Education: Tim Purdie)<\/p>\n

In late 2025, the federal government introduced the EN15194 standard, which stipules that all e-bikes in Australia should max out at 25 kilometres an hour and have a maximum motor of 250W.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Federal Transport Minister Catherine King said the change provided “a clear standard for the sort of bikes we want purchased and ridden across Australia”.<\/p>\n

But with states like Western Australia halting legislative changes to e-rideable rules<\/a> until the Commonwealth takes further action on the importation of illegal devices, there is mounting pressure for more to be done to stop them at the border.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A group of young people riding e-bikes in Brisbane. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Mr Bourke said introducing a mandatory advisory process, that would require anyone ordering an e-bike into Australia to give evidence to the federal government that it is compliant, would help.<\/p>\n

“It’s mandatory to meet the standard, but the paperwork is a process that has become voluntary, and that makes it harder for customs to actually enforce the regulations,” Mr Bourke said.<\/p>\n

In response to these calls, the spokesperson for Ms King said each state and territory is responsible for road rules and compliance.<\/p>\n

“We’re playing a coordinating role to ensure the rules around e-bikes are the same across state borders, so there is consistency across the country,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Falling off a bike and suffering a scrape is part of growing up, but the surge in popularity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,13729,275244,13738,44,94,701,22380],"class_list":["post-557634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-e-bikes","tag-e-mobility-devices","tag-electric-bikes","tag-news","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-queensland-childrens-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}