Incidence, type and age demographics of ebike related injury

[EMGX]

Short research letter. The large year over increases in injury attributed to ebike use are notable and may or may not catch the attention of the public and authorities thus prompting increased regulatory action.

Electric Bicycle Injuries and Hospitalizations

This cross-sectional study investigates injury trends associated with electric bicycles in the US from 2017 to 2022.

jamanetwork.com

 

[harryS]

Hits home. Wife and I both fell in separate single bike crashes on an out of town trip. Both bad enough to cut short the bike riding. Reflecting on it later, could have been much worse. When you get old and brittle like us, something like a broken hip is the end.

We rode 21 miles today at home. 75F here is 35 degrees above normal.

 

[Aushiker]

That is an interesting read, and thank you for sharing. That said I believe it should be treated with caution.

I would like to see the full paper to be sure. Still, on the face of it, despite the "statistical analysis", it appears to be just survey data with no moderation against such variables as the change in e-transport usage in the survey data point and post; no analysis with non-e-transport users in the same period, no analysis on helmet v non-helmet usage and it is statistical relevance in this data sample.

No demographic data and analysis.

Those are my quick thoughts on what appears to be lacking in this paper/letter. My other concern is that JAMA Surgery is a lower-ranked publication, which may explain the acceptance of this letter.

 

[EMGX]

FWIW the JAMA family of medical journals are mainstream, widely read and respected. Statistical information obtained in studies such as this are only as good and comprehensive as the data base itself but I don't see a reason to doubt the overall trend and significance. Medical research doesn't often provide definitive right/wrong answers but rather adds to a body of knowledge the significance of which is to be evaluated and confirmed or refuted by further study. I doubt that legislative authorities would question the veracity of this simple study when presented with its findings. Far weaker associations are used to promote regulations. The Oregon state house recently passed an ebike bill that will effectively ban most anyone (without a driver license or permit) <16 years of age from operating any class ebike. The bill is named after a child involved in a fatal accident in Bend which, on the face of it, really doesn't appear to be ebike specific.

 

[Aushiker]

FWIW the JAMA family of medical journals are mainstream, widely read and respected.

I appreciate your view; however, (1) I did not refer to the JAMA family of medical journals, and I would not as that is not a credible means of assessment of their value, and (2) I referred to the actual evidence-based statistics for the journal in question. Scopus provides a similar ranking. Journals are ranked on citations, not opinions. See https://www.scimagojr.com/help.php for further details on the ranking calculations at SJR. Citations reflect the value placed on the research by their peers. No matter how you spin it, JAMA Surgery is not a highly ranked journal from a research perspective at least.

The balance of my comments stands. I appreciate your views may differ, but for me, actual empirical evidence matters. This 'letter' is not empirical evidence. As I stated, I would like to see the underlying paper or research with a more detailed analysis and in for that matter a more credible journal.

 

[gromike]

Ebikes hit all the right buttons for a sharp rise in injuries. They're faster, heavier, more often ridden, and ridden by more older people than non electric bikes.
I know a fifty some-year-old man who hadn't ridden a bike in years. He had a 1000w hubmotor installed on a super cheap twenty year old Huffy. I couldn't convince him that he should have it installed on a better bike. He didn't even make it the day before a crash due to mechanical failure of his cheap bike threw him to the ground, injuring his shoulder and back. He didn't go to the doctor, though he probably should have

 

[FiremarshallDave]

Ebikes hit all the right buttons for a sharp rise in injuries. They're faster, heavier, more often ridden, and ridden by more older people than non electric bikes.
I know a fifty some-year-old man who hadn't ridden a bike in years. He had a 1000w hubmotor installed on a super cheap twenty year old Huffy. I couldn't convince him that he should have it installed on a better bike. He didn't even make it the day before a crash due to mechanical failure of his cheap bike threw him to the ground, injuring his shoulder and back. He didn't go to the doctor, though he probably should have

Clearly one of the most important aspects of the above story is the braking power of the e bike conversion. People who lack knowledge of physics have no business doing a bike build. The advent of the disc brake is extremely important for an e bike.. I have an issue with some of the focus stats used. In 2020 we had supply chain problems so the import rise from 437K in 2020 to 1.1 million in 22 is no surprise. Remember all those stimulus checks? I wonder if sales are holding the same growth factor as inflation has out paced wages for most of America. Ridership would also have increased during this period due to fuel costs doubling from $2 per gallon to well over $4 in my area. As parents struggled to fill the tank, ridership was sure to increase. One of the above comments cited an increase in adult usage and I agree. People who may not have ridden in 20, 30 even 40 years suddenly got back on bikes for exercise and pedaled with the motor. Overall this is a good thing but accidents were sure to increase as skills, reaction time and balance can dim with age. The idea of letting a 12 year old have an e bike that goes 30mph makes my head want to explode. What are parents thinking . It's no wonder Brighton Beach now has a total e bike ban. Can we please have a little common sense on both sides of that issue! We test 16 year olds before letting them drive a car and we need to move in that direction before letting them loose with an e bike. I knew my son was not ready for an e bike till he was 18 and he got his DL at 20 but all children develop at different rates. Should personal liability and health insurance be required ...perhaps for an e bike. If you haven't seen the picture of the line of Super 73 e bikes (A 30 MPH mini bike look alike) at the Brighton beach Academy it is worth investigating. There must be a ton of status peer pressure there. It looks like 100 of these are against the school fence. With millions of e bikes on the road, and many contributing poor decisions, 1000 hospital stays per year does not surprise me. I wonder what the rate for actual motorcycles would be if we used like numbers. We make those riders demonstrate a level of proficiency with turns and braking. I remember my father failed his first motorcycle retest after not riding for 30 years. On the flip side at the age of 13 I was riding a pedal bike at 25mph but was also riding 64 mile events on weekends. The riders skills should be in line with the speed of the machine. Even then accidents will happen. My biggest fear is car doors and people not seeing my bike. A front and rear light should be mandatory. I passed a road biker today on a very grey day wearing an all black suit with neon green on his back with no lights. I wonder who would be to blame if a car pulled in front of him at a 90 degree angle. He was all but invisible at dusk. An accident for sure but preventable. He was wearing a helmet

 

[PDoz]

So a urologist wrote a letter about US emergency department data on ebikes and didn't declare the potential conflict of interest related to seat choices by ebike vs mebike riders ?

 

[kevinmccune]

of course the "free" money bought a lot of bikes,helped the price jump as well( anybody wonder why the prices have slashed on so many now?) there was a similar phenomenon on the ford maverick pickup it was sort of affordable and did the job,anybody with means bought one or two to grace the driveway along with the "less used "brodozers never giving the intended market a chance to even buy one,now the market is flooded with ebikes without any thought of the consequences of the careless using so many,i see so many ebike advertisements with young people zooming to and fro without turning a pedal. the things are still not popular in my area( except on trails were they are not permitted) with the default being 4 wheel atvs and side by side noisy stinky vehicles. some regulation will have to be in place and enforced,the trouble most of the tickets will be garnered by folks who are actually behaving themselves,this area is steadily turning into a 4 season retirement area without much room for the natives,projections are there will less then 4000 inhabitants in 545 sq mile county within a decade. we are actually close to an hours travel from any area(town) with any resources and that has gotten old, the old "mom and pops"? swept away to be replaced by overpriced beer and cigarette stations( fuel aint cheap either)

 

[Chargeride]

living non sedatory life leads to different risks, I'll take the one I can control directly.

 

[Kayakguy]

Hits home. Wife and I both fell in separate single bike crashes on an out of town trip. Both bad enough to cut short the bike riding. Reflecting on it later, could have been much worse. When you get old and brittle like us, something like a broken hip is the end.

We rode 21 miles today at home. 75F here is 35 degrees above normal.

Depends on how bad the hip break was, I guess. Two or so years ago I T-boned a passing car at an intersection. Out of it I got a concussion and a cracked hip socket. Took me about 6 weeks to heal enough to resume riding. Since then I have been super cautious at intersections. Note that I ran into the car, not vice-versa.

 

[AvalancheRun]

between 2017 and 2022, excluding injuries from traditional bicycles, mopeds, motor bikes, electric scooters, and minibikes.

Don't have access to the full text. Presumably this study made an effort to only consider Class 1/2/3 e-bikes and not higher power vehicles?

Most of the moped-style "e-bikes" have an "off-road" mode that the user can select for 30, 40+ mph. Wonder also if this was considered since that is not an e-bike any longer.

 

[FiremarshallDave]

Are these the 72v or higher battery units with a 3000w hub or higher? I've never encountered anything like that other than reading one time about a 3000w wheel. I know Harley Davidson is working on an E motorcycle but it wont have pedals

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Anecdotally, I'm 75 and have been riding an ebike for ~18 months. So far, knock on wood, the only thing I've injured on my ebike is my wallet. If I fall at speed or get hit, I doubt that it will end well for me.

But the bike infrastructure around here is generally quite good, and local drivers seem pretty used to cyclists. So the reward/risk ratio still works for me.

On the flip side, not much of a threat to others. I ride responsibly and defensively and obey traffic laws. I respect others' right of way. I have more to fear from pedestrians than they have to fear from me and give them a very wide berth whenever possible.

 

[harryS]

The results are taken from an ER database, Ebike injuries that requires an ER visit have doubled each year, starting in 2019, By that measure, there would have been almost 50K visits last year, Of course, it will hit a limit. Can't double forever. Meanwhile, let's say there were 2 million ebikes in the USA in 2022. Then 25K ER visits is 1% of the ebike size. Fuzzy stats, but definitely a real chance for injury when we get on an ebike,

From there, the data is less interesting to me. Seems to cover the age group equally. More men get hurt. Not much correlation with helmets, which appears to have been the intent of the study,

Ride safe,

 

[EMGX]

Regarding JAMA Surgery journal not being "highly ranked" consider the following copied from Wikipedia. JAMA journals are widely highly regarded in the medical community for publishing high quality research. I doubt that legislators, if presented with the data from this short research letter, would be as fastidious as some on this forum present themselves to be.

World ranking[edit]A​

The editorial board of JAMA Surgery celebrates its 2018 ranking as the top surgery journal in the world; Melina R. Kibbe, MD, editor-in-chief, seated at center.
According to the annual Journal Citation Reports, the 2021 impact factor for JAMA Surgery is 16.681, making it the highest-ranking surgery journal in the world. This continues a precedent that the journal set in 2018 as the first surgery publication to break double digits in that scientometric index.[7][8][9]

 

[m@Robertson]

Are these the 72v or higher battery units with a 3000w hub or higher? I've never encountered anything like that other than reading one time about a 3000w wheel. I know Harley Davidson is working on an E motorcycle but it wont have pedals

Bikes like that figure highly in internet forum rants, but when it comes to the actual ebike population they may as well not exist, their numbers are so small. I think I've seen one Sur Ron on the main path here in the last year. Not a single QS203 monster hub.

Hell, if I owned a big power hub bike, I'd be riding on the street. The path has too many dumbass pedestrians to give me any chance of being able to open one of those up and get any speed out of it. As a matter of fact, on the street adjacent to where our path has a 12 mph limit, I do shift to the street specifically because I don't want to deal with that speed limit or the pedestrians. I'll take my chances mixing with the cars who are traveling at about my speed (speed limit is 25 with traffic taking it oftentimes lower so not much of a stretch to do that).

 

[Aushiker]

Regarding JAMA Surgery journal not being "highly ranked" consider the following copied from Wikipedia. JAMA journals are widely highly regarded in the medical community for publishing high quality research. I doubt that legislators, if presented with the data from this short research letter, would be as fastidious as some on this forum present themselves to be.

World ranking[edit]A​

The editorial board of JAMA Surgery celebrates its 2018 ranking as the top surgery journal in the world; Melina R. Kibbe, MD, editor-in-chief, seated at center.
According to the annual Journal Citation Reports, the 2021 impact factor for JAMA Surgery is 16.681, making it the highest-ranking surgery journal in the world. This continues a precedent that the journal set in 2018 as the first surgery publication to break double digits in that scientometric index.[7][8][9]

Congratulations to Wikipedia; you have won the day.

Have a nice one.