Ottawa families who've watched e-scooters zip along the Rideau Canal pathways, the Ottawa River shoreline, or downtown bike lanes this summer might want to pay closer attention to who's riding them — and how. Doctors at Toronto's SickKids hospital say serious e-scooter injuries involving children have become a near-daily occurrence at the hospital, with many cases requiring surgery, intensive care, and lengthy rehabilitation.
What Doctors Are Seeing
Physicians at SickKids describe an "exponential" rise in the number of young patients arriving with serious injuries linked to e-scooters. These aren't minor scrapes — doctors say the injuries often involve broken bones, head trauma, and internal injuries severe enough to require operating rooms and ICU stays, followed by extended rehab. The trend has doctors sounding the alarm publicly, warning that the popularity of e-scooters among kids and teens has outpaced safety awareness, helmet use, and, in some cases, local regulation.
Why This Matters in Ottawa
Ottawa has its own thriving e-scooter culture, with shared scooter programs and privately owned models a familiar sight every spring through fall along the Rideau Canal, in the Glebe, on the pathways through Westboro, and around the ByWard Market. The city has previously grappled with questions about where scooters can legally ride, how fast they can go, and who's responsible when something goes wrong — debates that mirror what's now playing out at the hospital level in Toronto.
While the SickKids data comes from Ontario's largest pediatric hospital rather than a local Ottawa source, the warning applies just as directly here. Ottawa kids and teens have easy access to scooters, whether through the city's shared-scooter operators or family-owned devices, and the same risk factors — high speeds, no helmets, uneven pathways, and inexperienced riders — exist on Ottawa streets as they do anywhere else in the province.
What Parents Can Do
Doctors are urging parents to treat e-scooters with the same seriousness as bikes when it comes to safety gear, particularly helmets, which significantly reduce the risk of the head injuries doctors say they're seeing more often. Supervision matters too — many of the injuries described involve children riding without adult oversight, at higher speeds than they can safely control, or on scooters not designed for their age or size.
For Ottawa parents letting kids loose on the canal pathways or neighbourhood streets this season, the message from Toronto's top pediatric hospital is clear: e-scooters may feel like toys, but the injuries showing up in emergency rooms say otherwise.
Source: Global News Ottawa
