{"id":590547,"date":"2026-09-05T01:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T01:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/590547\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T01:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T01:50:11","slug":"he-was-really-lucky-mum-calls-for-changes-after-sons-e-scooter-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/590547\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He was really lucky’: Mum calls for changes after son’s e-scooter crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

A collision with a ute while on his e-scooter left her son with a fractured pelvis, internal bleeding and a large bump to the head, but Riana Grobbelaar fears it would have been much worse had he not been wearing a helmet.<\/p>\n

By Melanie Earley for RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

Her son, 15, has spent more than a week in hospital following the incident, which occurred while he was out delivering newspapers in Greymouth on August 29.<\/p>\n

“My son delivers papers on the main road, State Highway 6, in the Paroa area. He crosses that main road a few times and the speed goes from 100km\/h to 80 so vehicles coming in to Paroa area go quite fast.<\/p>\n

“He said he was waiting to cross and looked and didn’t see anything, but after that he woke up with a lot of people around him.<\/p>\n

“He can’t remember what exactly happened.”<\/p>\n

Despite the injuries her son did receive, Grobbelaar believed if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet he would’ve ended up with a serious head injury – or worse.<\/p>\n

Doctors had been looking at whether he had a concussion, which could account for his memory loss.<\/p>\n

“His helmet took a big hit. That was a rule in our house: no helmet, no scooter. He was really lucky, but he has a slow and long road to recovery.<\/p>\n

“The helmet is full of bumps and scratches through the side.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The damaged helmet following the crash. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n

Grobbelaar decided to speak out after seeing RNZ’s earlier coverage of a psychologist calling for helmets to be made compulsory for e-scooter riders<\/a> in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

The e-scooter was wrecked, along with a puffer jacket he had been wearing which had helped prevent more extensive bruising and cuts on his upper body.<\/p>\n

Her son was using crutches and a wheelchair, and the family had spent Thursday having a ramp installed at the house for him.<\/p>\n

Grobbelaar said she didn’t want any other families to go through what hers had been through.<\/p>\n

Seeing other young people riding around Greymouth without helmets since the accident worried her, especially given the speed they were able to go at.<\/p>\n

“A lot of the kids are driving on pathways and the speed they are driving at… a vehicle could just back out of their driveway and imagine what accident that could cause.”<\/p>\n

ACC figures released earlier this year have shown claims for e-scooter injuries are on the rise, with children and young people among the most affected.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week psychologist Chris Parsons told Morning Report he was one of many people in the industry who believed attitudes towards e-scooter safety were generally too relaxed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said the country’s legislation was lagging behind other countries.<\/p>\n

“In Australia, it’s mandatory to wear a helmet on an e-scooter.<\/p>\n

“Queensland is looking at bringing in a range of measures, including the possibility that you have to have a learner’s licence and have to be over 16 before you ride an e-scooter. We’re in a situation where the law has to catch up with technology.”<\/p>\n

He said there needed to be nationwide social education, particularly for young people, to prevent more “catastrophic” e-scooter accidents.<\/p>\n

“For anyone with a serious brain injury, we’re looking at long-term rehabilitation and sometimes lifelong effects. The consequences are very serious.<\/p>\n

“The brain is a very soft organ, the consistency of tofu, inside a bony structure of the skull, and people are moving at speed on an e-scooter and if it suddenly stops the brain keeps moving with catastrophic results.”<\/p>\n

ACC paid out almost $16 million for scooter-related injuries in 2025, an increase of about 10%on the year prior. Just over $1.2 million had been paid out in January 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A collision with a ute while on his e-scooter left her son with a fractured pelvis, internal bleeding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,42,43,40,38,41,39,112],"class_list":["post-590547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}