A spike in e-bike and e-scooter injuries has health care workers, like Bill McQuilken sounding the alarm.<\/p>\n
McQuilken is the trauma prevention coordinator at Lehigh Valley Health Network, Part of Jefferson Health.<\/p>\n
“So, when we look at our pediatric trauma data and we add our e-bikes, our e-scooters, some of the ATV things that’s 10 percent of our pediatric population. That’s huge,” said McQuilken.<\/p>\n
Under Pennsylvania law, you have to be at least 16 to ride an e-bike on state roads and highways. You also cannot go faster than 20 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
“Well, we know people are driving more than 20 miles per hour, they’re buying e-bikes, they’re breaking the codes, they’re making them go faster, so they’re like driving little motorcycles on the road,” said McQuilken.<\/p>\n
Pediatric Emergency Medicine Doctor Joshua Rice said some injuries are more severe.<\/p>\n
“So, especially head, neck and facial injuries, more closely mimic motorcycle accidents rather than classic bike accidents for kids,” said Dr. Rice.<\/p>\n
And can have long-lasting effects.<\/p>\n
“Some kids after severe head injuries never fully regain cognitive function which is scary,” said Dr. Rice.<\/p>\n
He said helmets are non-negotiable.<\/p>\n
“It’s concerning to me that only about a third of the kids who come in with injuries, with e-scooters are wearing helmets and about half the kids who come in with e-bike injuries are wearing helmets,” said Dr. Rice.<\/p>\n
He said to also not ride on roads with cars to make for a safer experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spike in e-bike and e-scooter injuries has health care workers, like Bill McQuilken sounding the alarm. McQuilken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[87998,119,121,120,24798,30846,87999,1288,88001,88004,1289,11295,1247,3806,88000,88003,28,88002,88005],"class_list":["post-198258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-alarms","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bill-mcquilken","tag-e-bike","tag-e-bike-injuries","tag-e-bikes","tag-e-scooter","tag-e-scooter-injuries","tag-e-scooters","tag-head","tag-injuries","tag-jefferson-health","tag-joshua-rice","tag-neck-and-facial-injuries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-severe-head-injuries","tag-trauma-prevention-coordinator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}