![\"E-bike,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/g0pc1cehpi3hd3qh.jpg\")
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ORLANDO, Fla. – Doctors at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children say they are seeing a sharp increase in serious injuries involving children riding electric bikes and scooters, with hospital admissions nearly doubling each year.<\/p>\n
The hospital is urging helmet use, rider education and speed limits to improve safety.<\/p>\n
Small percentage of seriously injured wore helmets <\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
Fifteen-year-old Hunter Ford knows the risks firsthand. He was airlifted to the hospital after a driver struck him while he was riding his e-bike last August.<\/p>\n
“I went about 25 feet across the pavement, and I have a burn injury on my foot, and I used to have a liver injury. It got torn in half,” Ford said.<\/p>\n
Ford was wearing a helmet during the crash and urged other riders to do the same.<\/p>\n
“Basically everyone that rides an e-bike is just to always wear a helmet and be precautious of other drivers because you never know what might happen,” he said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Donald Plumley, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Arnold Palmer Hospital, said the hospital reviewed its data after noticing a growing number of serious e-bike and e-scooter injuries.<\/p>\n
“We had sensed an increase in e-bike and really micro-mobility, e-bikes, e-scooter situations. So we went back and pulled our numbers,” Plumley said.<\/p>\n
The review found the hospital admitted about 50 patients with serious e-bike and e-scooter injuries in 2023. That number climbed to 125 in 2024. Through the first six months of this year alone, the hospital had already admitted 120 patients.<\/p>\n
“We’ve about doubled the incidence every year. So that’s pretty dramatic numbers,” Plumley said.<\/p>\n
Hospital data also showed helmet use remains low among injured riders.<\/p>\n
“Only 15% of the children that were admitted with serious injuries were wearing a helmet,” Plumley said.<\/p>\n
Plumley said many younger riders also lack basic knowledge of traffic laws and safety. He recommends helmet use, rider education and speed limits for e-bikes and other micromobility devices. The hospital has also distributed nearly 1,000 free helmets to students who ride electric bikes and scooters.<\/p>\n
The Source: This story was written based on information shared by doctors at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and patient Hunter Ford.<\/p>\n
Orange County News<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. – Doctors at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children say they are seeing a sharp…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[630,47,115,1335,139,141,140,628],"class_list":["post-390017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-fl","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}