E-scooter child injuries rise tenfold: widespread disregard for rules prompts calls for reform
The vast majority of young children injured are riding privately owned e-scooters, which are illegal to use on UK public roads
Hospitals are experiencing a growing influx of young people injured using privately owned e-scooters. A new review of three major hospitals has seen the number of cases of children under 16 injured by e-scooters rise tenfold in the past five years.
Analysts from the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ) looked at 477 patients below the age of 16 who were treated in Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield hospitals between 2019 and 2024. In this period, cases of e-scooter injury rose from just 10 per year to 150 in 2024.
The median age of those injured was 12 years old, however the youngest was just nine. EMJ found the vast majority of these young people were riders of privately owned e-scooters, rather than rented ones; despite an estimated 1.2 million people owning one, it is illegal to use a privately owned e-scooter on public roads in the UK. People can rent an e-scooter via one of the many approved schemes and this will include insurance within the price, but you must be over the age of 16 to do so and hold at least a provisional driving licence.
The most common injuries were to limbs, the head and the face – unsurprising given that just 1.8 per cent of the injured riders were wearing a helmet at the time of the accident. In total, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety has identified 59 e-scooter-related deaths between 2019 and 2025, with 17 per cent of these being people under the age of 18. Given that the vast majority of fatalities involve privately owned e-scooters and that most injured children studied by the EMJ came from deprived areas, the peer-reviewed journal says that this suggests “there is a route for injury prevention strategies and education”.
The EMJ says that retailers should be made responsible for informing customers of the legal restrictions surrounding the use of privately owned e-scooters, while public health campaigns should be employed to outline the risks.
Data from the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) suggests that payouts from uninsured e-bikes and e-scooters have surpassed £110 million since 2015, as private riders continue to flout restrictions en masse.
The MIB’s CEO, Angus Eaton, suggested there’s “a worrying gap between how commonly people use micromobility vehicles and how well they understand the law around them. Many people simply don’t realise that riding a privately owned e-scooter on public roads is illegal, and that means they’re riding uninsured.”
Yet conversely, the way to reduce private e-scooter injuries could be to make them road legal. Transport Secretary Hedi Alexander told the BBC’s Politics Midlands programme in February that “The genie’s out of the bottle when it comes to e-scooters.
“If you buy one yourself in somewhere like Halfords, you can only use that scooter by law on private land. But we do know that’s not happening, and that’s why we need to legislate.”
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