When a student returns to my middle school after an e-bike or e-scooter crash, the emergency may be over, but the injury is not. I see the cast and crutches, the concussion plan, the missed classes, the headaches that linger, and parents still trying to understand how an ordinary ride changed so much. That is why “Are you ready to ride?” must mean more than having permission to leave the driveway.

I have been a nurse for more than 30 years, the last 11 of them as a school nurse. I am not usually the nurse at the crash scene. I am the nurse who sees what comes next. I see the student navigating hallways on crutches. I see the child who insists the headache is gone because they are tired of missing gym or practice. I see the parent coordinating appointments, transportation, schoolwork, and recovery while wondering when life will feel normal again.

Outside our schools, the change arrived silently. Dismissal once meant the rumble of buses, parents calling through open car windows, and the rattle of bicycle chains. Now students glide away with a quiet electric hum, heading to practice, work, friends’ homes, and the growing independence every generation of teenagers has wanted.

That freedom is worth protecting.

The national numbers make it clear that injuries involving electric bikes and electric scooters are not confined to a single school or community. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reported 533 known micromobility-product related deaths from 2017 through 2024. During the same period, it estimated 155,200 emergency department visits involving e-bikes and 380,000 involving e-scooters. The death count is likely incomplete because reporting can lag.

New Jersey has taken meaningful steps. Under a law enacted in January, e-bike riders must be at least 15, hold an electric bike or driver’s license, register their electric bikes, and wear helmets. Applicants without a driver’s license must pass knowledge, vision, and road tests.

Not simply a bicycle.

Those requirements establish a floor. They recognize that an electric bike is not simply the bicycle many adults remember from childhood. But a license cannot stand beside a young person at an intersection. It cannot make a rider put away a phone, refuse a passenger, recognize that a driver does not see them, or brake suddenly without losing control.

E-bikes and e-scooters behave differently from traditional bicycles. Electric assistance can deliver speed quickly with less effort, while heavier frames affect balance and stopping. Small scooter wheels are less forgiving of potholes, gravel, and uneven pavement. A backpack, phone, passenger, or one hand removed from the handlebars can reduce control further.

The CPSC found that only 40% of injured electric bike riders and 18% of injured electric scooter riders in its 2024 follow-up studies reported wearing helmets. Helmets matter, but no helmet can compensate for every failure around a rider.

Safety is multifactorial.

Safety depends on overlapping protections. The device must be appropriate and maintained. The helmet must fit and be worn on every ride. The rider must practice starting, stopping, turning, scanning, signaling, and emergency braking. The route must account for traffic, lighting, visibility, and road conditions. Families need clear expectations about speed, phones, headphones, passengers, and peer pressure.

One layer is often forgotten: what happens after the ride. Families should use only the charger supplied or recommended by the manufacturer, remain present while charging, and never charge while sleeping. A battery that becomes unusually hot, swells, leaks, smells strange, makes unusual sounds, or smokes should be taken out of use. Each layer has weaknesses. The goal is to make sure the gaps do not line up.

Ready to ride is not a yes or no permission slip. It is demonstrated preparation.

Too much safety messaging places the entire burden on children: wear a helmet, slow down, pay attention, follow the rules.

Those actions matter. But students cannot regulate battery quality, prevent speed modifications, redesign dangerous intersections, control drivers, or create school policies for parking and charging.

The responsibility must be shared.

Families should supervise early practice, know the device’s actual speed and weight, inspect it regularly, plan routes, and make helmet use nonnegotiable.

Schools should establish arrival, dismissal, parking, storage, and charging procedures. They should teach practical skills rather than relying only on handouts or a yearly assembly, and they should track injury patterns connected to student travel.

Manufacturers and retailers should clearly disclose speed, weight, age recommendations, battery certification, approved chargers, and whether modifications can defeat safety limits.

Policymakers and transportation agencies should pair licensing and registration with accessible skills training, safer routes, better crash data, and enforceable battery standards. Otherwise, a license risks becoming a bureaucratic hurdle rather than one part of a genuine safety system.

Almost every parent has said some version of the same six words as a child rides away: “Let me know when you get there.”

The sentence is not really about a destination. It is the hope that independence and safety can exist together. Preparation is one of the ways we make that hope more likely.

Before the next birthday, holiday, or first independent ride, do not stop at, “Remember the rules!”

Ask, “Are you ready to ride?”

One question measures permission. The other asks about skill, judgment, equipment, environment, and preparation.

Permission is not preparation, and ready to ride should mean ready to come home.

 

Holly Giovi, RN, is a middle school nurse in Long Island, New York.