Electric scooters and electric bikes are now a fixed part of the Victorian transport mix, and so is the trauma toll that comes with them. Mei Calloway has been pulling together the latest hospital, transport and policing data for our 2026 update, and the picture is a mix of normalisation, regulation and stubbornly rising injury numbers.
Monash University Accident Research Centre data shows e-scooter injury rates rising from roughly 0.3 per 100,000 population in the late 2010s to around 14.9 per 100,000 in the most recent reporting period — with Victoria recording over 1,680 e-scooter injury presentations to emergency departments between 2017–18 and 2022–23. The trend has not reversed in 2025–26.
What the law actually says in 2026
Victoria’s e-scooter framework has two distinct parts and it is worth getting them straight. Share-scheme e-scooters — the hire devices operated by commercial providers — became permanently legal under state law in October 2024, after an extended trial. Privately owned e-scooters remain subject to the rules that capped them at low speeds and effectively excluded them from public roads, footpaths and shared paths in most circumstances.
The result is the slightly counterintuitive position that a hire scooter on a CBD footpath is operating in a regulated environment with speed governance and geofencing, while a private e-scooter ridden in the same place is, in many cases, not legally allowed there at all. That gap continues to drive enforcement activity. Victoria Police has issued thousands of infringement notices over the last two years for unregistered e-scooters and for riders flouting helmet, speed and footpath rules.
E-bikes are a separate problem
E-bikes legal for road use in Victoria fall into two categories. The first is the European-standard pedal-assist e-bike (a “pedalec”) with a 250-watt motor that cuts out at 25 km/h. The second is a small “throttle-assist” category limited to 200 watts. Anything more powerful, or anything that goes faster, is not a legal e-bike on Victorian roads — it is a motor vehicle that requires registration, a licence and compulsory third-party insurance.
The mismatch between what is legal and what is being sold has been a focus of consumer-affairs and road-safety attention through 2025. High-powered “fat-tyre” e-bikes, often imported and frequently configured well above the legal output limits, have featured in a growing share of reported crashes. Some of those bikes are capable of speeds well above 50 km/h. Riders, including teenagers, are not always aware that their machine is, in legal terms, an unregistered motorcycle.
The hospital-side picture
Trauma services across metropolitan Melbourne report e-scooter and e-bike presentations as a normal part of their daily workload. Published data from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Alfred trauma service over recent years has documented a sharp rise in orthopaedic injuries since the introduction of share schemes, including limb fractures, head injuries, dental trauma and abdominal injuries from handlebar impacts.
Two patterns stand out in the published trauma literature. First, alcohol involvement is significant — share-scheme injury cases have repeatedly featured intoxicated riders, often without helmets, on weekend evenings. Second, helmet compliance falls dramatically when riders are intoxicated, when the trip is short, and when riders are using a privately owned device they have customised. In other words, the riders most likely to crash badly are the riders least likely to be wearing the equipment that would protect them.
Pedestrian impacts and shared-path conflict
Pedestrian-vs-rider impacts are a smaller share of total presentations but they generate disproportionate public concern, particularly when older Victorians or children are involved. Coronial findings in the past three years have included cases where pedestrians have died after collisions with e-scooters and e-bikes. Each of those cases sits at the intersection of speed, alcohol, footpath use and the mismatch between the device’s mass and a pedestrian’s vulnerability.
Victoria Walks and other pedestrian-advocacy groups have been pushing for clearer separation of e-rideables from footpaths and for stricter speed governance in pedestrian-heavy zones. Local councils in inner Melbourne have responded with geofenced “walk zones” inside the share-scheme platforms, slowing rental devices to walking pace in defined areas. Enforcement on private devices remains harder.
What changed through 2025–26
Three policy threads have been running in parallel:
- Permanent share-scheme legislation. The October 2024 framework brought operator licensing, helmet provision, geofencing and incident-reporting obligations under permanent law rather than trial conditions. Operators now have ongoing obligations to share crash data with the Department of Transport and Planning.
- Minimum age proposals. Successive incidents involving young teenagers riding high-powered devices have driven public pressure for a clear minimum age for both private e-scooter use and high-powered e-bike use. The Government has signalled it is considering changes; legislation has not been finalised at the time of writing.
- Customs and consumer-affairs intervention. Imports of devices that exceed legal power outputs have drawn attention from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, with product-safety alerts issued for some categories of imported e-bike. State-level consumer-affairs activity is following.
Why insurance is the quiet issue
For everyday Victorians, the most practical risk is not regulatory — it is insurance. A privately owned e-scooter or non-compliant high-powered e-bike is generally not covered by Victorian compulsory third-party insurance, because those devices are not “motor vehicles” registered for use on public roads. That means if a rider seriously injures a pedestrian, the pedestrian may not have access to the Transport Accident Commission scheme that would normally apply in a motor vehicle crash. The legal exposure for the rider, in those circumstances, is personal.
The Transport Accident Commission has begun publishing guidance distinguishing between scenarios that trigger TAC coverage and scenarios that do not. The lines are subtle and our newsroom recommends checking the current published criteria rather than relying on word of mouth.
Where the next year is heading
Three signals to watch through the rest of 2026:
- Whether Victoria legislates a minimum age for private e-scooter and high-powered e-bike use.
- Whether share-scheme operators face tighter geofencing obligations in the CBD and inner suburbs after another summer of incident data.
- Whether the Department of Transport and Planning publishes a consolidated crash database for e-rideables, which would give researchers and public-health agencies a clearer picture than the current patchwork of trauma-service reports.
If you have been hurt
If you have been seriously injured in an e-scooter or e-bike incident, your first call after immediate medical care should be to the Transport Accident Commission (1300 654 329) to clarify whether your circumstances are covered. Victoria Legal Aid (1300 792 387) can help with rights and obligations after a crash. If you witness an incident in progress, dial triple zero. For non-urgent reports, Crime Stoppers is on 1800 333 000.
