Riders of electric scooters are far more likely to end up with a traumatic brain injury than motorcyclists, according to a large analysis of hospital trauma records that has renewed calls in New Zealand for compulsory helmets.
The study was published in Scientific Reports on 6 August and drew on the National Major Trauma Registry covering 18 cities in England and Wales. Researchers examined 15,247 patients treated for moderate to severe traumatic injuries between 2020 and 2022, including 580 e-scooter riders, 7,027 motorcyclists and 7,640 pedal cyclists.
Adult e-scooter riders were 3.5 times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury than motorcyclists, and 1.7 times more likely than pedal cyclists. Brain injuries accounted for more than a third of all adult e-scooter injuries in the data.
The pattern held for other serious harm. E-scooter riders were 1.5 times more likely than motorcyclists to injure internal organs and 3.2 times more likely to damage an artery or vein. They were, however, about 20 percent less likely to break a bone, which the authors put down to the different way a rider comes off a standing scooter compared with a seated motorbike.
Helmet use separated the three groups sharply. Just 5.9 percent of the e-scooter riders in the registry were wearing a helmet when they were hurt, compared with 75.7 percent of motorcyclists and 45 percent of cyclists.
The research also found female e-scooter riders reported severe injuries at 2.1 times the rate of men, despite recording 36 percent fewer collisions overall.
The team, led by consultant hand, trauma and orthopaedic surgeon David Bodansky at Morriston Hospital in Wales, recommended “mandatory helmet legislation, stricter speed limits and e-scooter design improvements such as deformable handlebar grips and enhanced braking”.
New Zealand surgeons say the findings match what they see in emergency departments. General and trauma surgeon Chris Wakeman told RNZ’s Morning Report the results were no surprise, and that head injuries had been the dominant pattern across the roughly 15 years since e-scooters arrived here.
“Lack of helmet use is very common,” Wakeman said. He wants mandatory helmets and speed limits, and pointed out that helmets were made compulsory for cyclists years ago.
Wakeman said people were being hurt every week, with some injuries serious enough to need hospital treatment and some ending in death. Alcohol was a recurring factor, often when people rode at night to avoid driving after drinking.
“Any multi-trauma is always frustrating because multi-trauma is lack of judgement quite often,” he said.
He also raised the risk of moving between different surfaces and of riders doubling or tripling up on a single scooter, which unbalances a device built for one person. “Transitioning from roads to pavements to cycleways is also an issue,” Wakeman said.
The cost in New Zealand is already substantial. ACC recorded 2,761 new scooter injury claims in the first six months of 2026 and 3,295 active claims, at a cost of more than $9.2 million. Across the whole of 2025 there were 3,992 new claims and active costs of close to $16 million. About half the new claims lodged early this year involved people aged under 25.
Under current rules an e-scooter with a footboard, wheels smaller than 355mm and a motor of no more than 300 watts counts as a low-powered vehicle. It does not have to be registered, and riders do not need a driver licence. NZTA’s guidance on head protection is explicit. “A helmet is not legally required to be worn when using an e-scooter but is recommended,” the agency says.
Riders may use either the footpath or the road, and must ride carefully and at a safe speed near other people. NZTA says it is illegal to ride at a speed that is dangerous to people.
Those settings are about to shift. In July the Government confirmed a package of transport rule changes that will let people ride e-scooters in cycle lanes, which they are currently barred from. The same package allows children aged 12 and under to ride bikes on footpaths with an older rider alongside them, and requires drivers to leave a gap of at least 1.5 metres when passing cyclists and horse riders. The changes are expected to take effect before the end of the year through Orders in Council.
Helmets were not part of that package. Transport Minister Chris Bishop declined to commit to making them compulsory for e-scooter riders, saying decisions of that kind could be considered through the Government’s Land Transport Rules Reform Programme.
Brain Injury New Zealand vice-president Dr Kelly Jones said a helmet is not a guarantee against harm, but it changes the odds. “A helmet will not completely prevent a traumatic brain injury, but what it might do is minimise the extent of the injury and the impact,” she told 1News.
Retailers see a cultural gap as much as a legal one. Electric Scooter Company owner Jonno Leonard told 1News that caution had never been built into the way the devices are talked about. “There’s definitely no social narrative that you should be taking care on these devices,” he said.
Some caution is warranted in reading the British numbers straight across to New Zealand conditions. The study covers England and Wales, where the rules governing where and how e-scooters may be ridden differ from ours, and the e-scooter group of 580 riders was far smaller than the motorcycle and cycling groups it was measured against. The registry also captures only moderate to severe injuries treated at major trauma centres, so it says nothing about the far larger number of minor falls that never reach a hospital.
Even with those limits, the direction of the findings is consistent with what ACC data and hospital staff here have been showing for years. It also lands at a point when the Government is actively deciding which land transport rules to change next, which makes the helmet question harder to leave sitting in the too-hard basket for much longer.
Do you wear a helmet on an e-scooter, and should they be compulsory? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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