Broken ribs, ruptured bowels: ebike injuries double at major Sydney hospital in one year | Sydney

“You don’t understand the power of an e-bike until you ride it,” warns Dr Tony Grabs.

Grabs, trauma director at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, tells of a patient who hopped on a rented e-bike after a night of drinking with friends; This was his first time riding an e-bike before.

The woman, who was injured and taken to the hospital, was treated and regained her health.

This is just one example of the increasing number of injuries the hospital is seeing amid the growing popularity of e-bikes on Australia’s streets.

New data released by St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney on Wednesday shows presentations in 2025 have doubled from 103 in 2024 and are up 350% from 45 presentations in 2023.

The hospital in Sydney’s CBD saw 200 e-bike-related presentations last year, and they were serious enough to trigger a response from the hospital’s trauma team.

Grabs says about half the transactions required.

“You could break your ribs. Air could leak from your lungs. Your intestines could rupture because something hit your intestines. You might need major surgery on your stomach or you might need a tube placed in your chest.”

Surgeries it can help with are chest and stomach surgeries; “The only thing we really can’t control is head trauma,” he says.

“We’ll just have to wait and see if they’re recovering from a serious head injury.”

Grabs says these injuries are often more severe than those that occur on traditional bikes because people who ride at higher speeds and crash into something stationary, such as a car or wall, suffer “deceleration.”

“This is where the handlebar can enter the stomach or chest,” he explains.

“Or they get thrown off the bike and then they hit something else (almost in the air) and that’s sometimes where you can get a serious head injury,” Grabs says.

The injuries at St Vincent’s are part of a surge in hospitals across the country that the health secretary last week described as “absolutely devastating”.

“E-bikes are heavier and faster than regular bikes, and many have been illegally modified to go even faster, which only increases the severity of injuries,” he says.

In 2025, more than half of patients required hospitalization, and almost 10% of them required admission to intensive care.

All e-bike related presentations at St Vincent’s are for those aged 15 and over only.

Younger ones also go to the Sydney Children’s Hospital network, which reports a similar situation Increase in presentations regarding mode of transportation.

Grabs said the patients in his data were predominantly people in their 30s, but anecdotally, patients are getting younger.

Speeds of more than 25 km per hour were reported in more than half of the cases admitted to St Vincent’s emergency department.

The data also showed that more than half of the injuries occurred at night, and alcohol and other drugs were often factors.

Grabs said the hospital is trying to collect more precise data in the future, including what types of e-bikes are included in hospital rollouts, but a larger share of crashes occur on rental bikes or illegally modified bikes.

Grabs said because they don’t know how many people are using e-bikes, they can’t know whether the increased number of submissions is a steady percentage of people injured or whether the rate at which accidents are occurring is higher.

He also noted that St Vincent’s being a hospital in the CBD could lead to higher than normal admissions compared to other hospitals.

In the state of New South Wales, 226 e-bike-related injuries were recorded in 2024. In just the first seven months of 2025, that number had already reached 233 injuries and four deaths.

The rest of Australia faced a similar problem; According to preliminary police data, legal e-bikes will be involved in 239 crashes in Queensland in 2025, four of which will be fatal.

The federal government relaxed import standards in 2021, but those standards were tightened again in late 2025; This means that e-bikes suitable for road use will need to have motors that are only activated when the rider is pedaling and are limited to a speed of 25 km/h and 250 watts of power.

NSW, which allows up to 500 watts of power, has reduced this to 250 watts.