A serious crash between an electric dirt bike and a vehicle in St. Albert is a prime example of the increase in injuries doctors are seeing, says an Edmonton emergency physician.
“The technology is rapidly evolving and these vehicles are getting faster and faster,” said Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti.
“The problem becomes not when they’re driving — it’s when they crash.”
The University of Alberta public health professor and emergency physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital said in the past week alone, he’s treated three injuries from electric scooters.
While e-scooters and e-bikes that can be rented from companies like Lime and Bird have their speed governed to around 20 km/h, more and more people are buying their own private ones that can reach higher speeds.
“These things can go up to 50 km/h. What ends up happening is the energy transfer quadruples. So a helmet is good, but a helmet doesn’t prevent a crash, right? A helmet may help prevent a brain injury.”
The human brain’s capacity for assessing risk does not finish developing until the age of 25, Francescutti said — noting that’s why car rental companies have an age limit — so kids and teenagers who hop onto electric scooters, bikes and motorcycles don’t fully understand the danger.
“It’s not that these kids are stupid. It’s just that they can’t access risk. That part the brain has not been formed properly,” Francescutti said.
“So what ends up happening is they take risk — because risk is fun.”
Just north of Edmonton in St. Albert, a teenager was injured on Thursday while having that kind of fun.
The collision between an electric dirt bike and a Ford Bronco SUV occurred on Akins Drive, between Alpine Boulevard and Amherst Crescent.
RCMP arrived just before 2 p.m. to find a 16-year-old boy bleeding with injuries on his face, sitting next to a damaged electric dirt bike.
St. Albert RCMP Cpl. Curtis Harsulla said the Bronco also had significant damage.
“Judging by the damage done to the Bronco — which caved in both passenger doors, deployed the airbags and smashed out a window — it had to be going at a substantial speed,” Harsulla said.
RCMP said the Bronco was going south on Akins Drive when the driver observed a sudden flash, then heard and felt an impact.
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The SUV driver stopped and found the injured dirt bike rider lying on the ground nearby.
The crash was loud enough to be heard inside nearby homes. Matt McCotter lives on the corner where the collision happened and rushed outside after hearing the bang.
“I came outside and the kid was, like, mangled in his bike,” McCotter said, adding it appeared the dirt bikes didn’t yield for the stop sign before hitting the SUV.
“Smoked into the side of it so bloody hard… I’m surprised his helmet didn’t split in two.”
McCotter said the teenager had an instant black eye and the wind knocked out of him from the impact.
“He’s probably hurting pretty good, but he’s lucky to alive.”
RCMP said a second youth was with the injured rider on another electric dirt bike, but fled before police arrived.
McCotter said he sees kids and teens ripping around on e-scooters and bikes regularly and worries not just about them getting hurt, but also the legal implications of vehicles that aren’t street-legal being driven in the city.
“If you’re going to be on the street, you have to follow street rules, right? And if things like this happen… where does the insurance come from?”
It’s illegal to drive dirt bikes — electric or gas-powered — on public roads, RCMP reminded, adding the majority of the riders its officers are encountering are youths.
Underage riders and their parents both risk substantial fines, the seizure of the bike and could face criminal charges, Harsulla said.
“Typically it’s the parents that have bought them that think, ‘Oh, it’s just an e-bike. They can ride around the city,’ when that’s not the case, as we can see here with what happened.”
“These are dangerous, high-speed, off-highway vehicles that need to be ridden out in the back 40 and not in the cities.”
Doctors agree.
“They’re not toys and you have to have a certain maturity to be able to use them,” Francescutti said.
Hospitalizations among children and adults riding e-scooters have risen by almost 40 per cent in the last year, according to data released this week by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
Head and brain injuries and fractures were among the most common reasons. The data doesn’t surprise Francescutti.
“Kids are actually dying across the country, being seriously injured, ending up in the intensive care unit and getting injuries that are going to be permanently disabling.”
The teenager, who was wearing a helmet, was taken to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in an ambulance. RCMP said he was treated for “concerning injuries” and has since been released to go home.
Francescutti is frustrated with the rise in such incidents.
“These are not accidents. These are totally predictable and totally preventable events. Our emergency departments are busy enough without wasting our time treating these stupid injuries.”
The rise in injuries showing up in emergency rooms also appears to coincide with more complaints.
Since the spring, St. Albert RCMP say they’ve has an increase in complaints not just about electric dirt bikes, but also e-bikes and scooters.
“People are driving them at increased speeds. The technology is advanced to make them faster and quieter,” Harsulla said.
RCMP also noted just because the technology powering dirt bikes has changed — the law has not.
“An electric dirt bike is considered an off-highway vehicle in Alberta and it needs to abide by everything that an ATV would, or a side-by-side and those kind of things: so licence plates, insurance and cannot be operated on any public roadway in Alberta,” Harsulla said.
RCMP also said changes are expected to Alberta legislation to catch up with technology.
The teenager, who can’t be named due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, faces violation tickets totalling nearly $1,400 in fines.
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