E-bike injuries coming through Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital’s emergency department have surpassed traditional bicycle injuries for most of 2026, according to hospital leaders.

“Not to sound so dramatic, but it’s an epidemic here that’s happening,” said Mayra Henson, a registered nurse and injury prevention coordinator.

Hospital staff are calling attention to the rising number of injuries and hope it’s a serious wake-up call to the local community and policymakers.

“Our goal, I think, of the team at Cottage, is to get some kind of safety legislation in place that would kind of nip this in the bud before somebody dies,” said Denise McDonald, director of Emergency Medicine & Trauma Services.

E-bike safety has been a persistent concern, leaving local leaders and community members seeking solutions to dangerous riding behavior, sometimes seen on illegally modified bikes. 

There are three types of e-bike classifications. The first two classes have no age restrictions and can reach a maximum of 20 mph. The third type, Class 3, requires riders to be at least 16 years old.

Models that go faster than that, or that do not include pedals, are not considered e-bikes in California and are commonly called e-motos. 

At Cottage Health’s Santa Barbara emergency department, staff see up to five e-bike injuries coming in daily, with injuries ranging from abrasions and lacerations to fractures and brain injuries.

“(Abrasions, lacerations and soft tissue injuries) sound kind of minor until you realize how much skin a person can lose that’s not properly clothed because of the speed of the e-bike,” McDonald said. 

While there are significant concerns about the safety of young e-bike riders, Cottage Health reports that 60% of the injured people coming to the emergency department are adults, according to McDonald.

She attributes that statistic to the fact that adults can shoulder the hefty price tag of an e-bike and younger people are “more agile.”

“(The) data that we get is just a piece of the pie,” Henson said. “We are just getting whatever comes (through) our doors and not (people) who decided not to come in.”

Cottage Health staff are currently collecting injury data from the other two emergency departments, in Goleta and Santa Ynez, according to McDonald.

If patients in the other two ERs meet trauma criteria, they go directly to Santa Barbara, she added.

Other reported injuries include fractured femurs, the biggest bone in the human body, which can prompt a large amount of blood loss.

“Those injuries are all potentially extremely tragic; they could be, and they’re serious, and they are avoidable,” McDonald said.

Additionally, half of the people with e-bike injuries coming to the Santa Barbara emergency department were not wearing a helmet, to the dismay of staff. 

“It kind of baffles me that if you are going to invest that much money on an e-bicycle, then investing $35 on a helmet should be chump change for them,” Henson said.

When e-bikes started rising in popularity, there weren’t e-bike helmets, she added.

However, Henson said a Dutch standard helmet — NTA 8776 — can protect riders up to 28 mph, according to Henson.

The human brain is soft, comparable to Jell-O, and doesn’t “have a lot protecting” it, she said. The skull is primarily protecting it, but it is pretty thin, only about ⅛-inch thick. 

Sometimes, however, even when riders have helmets on, the straps dangle loosely by their face, instead of buckled under their chin.

“How cool do you want to look (only) to not be able to function one day?” Henson posed. 

McDonald added that there are “as many adults without helmets, too.”

“There’s no excuse for an adult,” Henson said. 

Cottage Health Trauma Services, through its helmet safety program, offers community members helmets for $12 and sometimes for free. Soon it will incorporate the Dutch helmet, Henson said. 

Henson and McDonald stressed the importance of safety and prevention education for both parents and anyone considering buying an e-bike, for which Cottage Health Trauma Services offers programming.

Such injuries do not extend just to e-bikes; regular bicyclists can sustain similar trauma. However, e-bike speeds can add to the severity.

“I think the extent of the injuries, it’s pretty scary stuff to fly off of a bike that’s going that fast,” Henson said.

McDonald and Henson also noted that weekends and warmer days see more injuries. 

When e-bikes first started coming out, Cottage Health staff did not know what they had in front of them, McDonald recalled. 

“It was very clear very soon that this was a different type of injury, a different type of mechanism, and it was only trending up,” she said.

In 2023, she and other Cottage Health trauma staff began collecting and analyzing injury data.

McDonald and Henson also recently participated in an e-bike roundtable that brought together more than 25 local leaders and e-bike experts to share what Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte later called “grim statistics,” during a Goleta City Council meeting.

Also in attendance were representatives from Assemblyman Gregg Hart’s office, who shared updates to legislation regarding e-bike classifications and definitions and standardized e-bike safety programs for students. The Santa Barbara Unified School District rolled out new rules for e-bike riders this year. 

“Paramount among (the different priorities in the legislature is) focus on education, youth safety, as well as general kind of safety regulations,” said Gunnar Langenhuizen, field representative for Hart. 

McDonald also stressed the importance of creating legislation that is feasible to enforce.

“Otherwise, it’s useless,” she said. 

Community members interested in learning more about Cottage’s helmet safety program can call 805.220.5349.