E-scooter crashes leave six children on life support in just two weeks
04/07/2026
Six children have been placed on life support in just the past two weeks as a result of e-scooter crashes, doctors have revealed.
Staff at Temple Street children’s hospital in Dublin said the rate of serious brain injuries among young children is an unprecedented ‘epidemic’ that requires a total ban on e-scooters.
Four children are still on life support, some in critical condition, at CHI Temple Street after incidents in the last fortnight alone, with one surgeon telling RTÉ that many will have lifelong injuries.
Consultant neurosurgeon Professor Darach Crimmins said e-scooter crashes are the ‘single biggest cause of head trauma in children’ and that over 400 children attended emergency departments across Children’s Health Ireland hospitals in Dublin for e-scooter injuries in 2025.
‘I’ve been in operating with my colleagues most nights on children. Skull fractures, intracranial haemorrhage, surgery to relieve pressure on the brain, surgery to put in pressure monitors,’ he said.
‘Some of them will be on life support for some weeks and some of them may not make it. None of these children that I’ve treated this week will be the same children ever again. Severe brain injuries will affect them physically, will affect them socially, will affect them intellectually.’
Prof Crimmins described the injuries as completely preventable if ‘a strong Government were to turn around and say enough is enough
While under-16s were banned from using e-scooters two years ago, many doctors at Temple Street have called for an outright ban on the vehicles.
The call goes one step further than a recent demand – highlighted in the yesterday’s Irish Daily Mail – from the Garda union for new laws requiring a licence to operate e-scooters and e-bikes after a young recruit was injured in an incident involving a suspected teen drug dealer.
The incident happened in the Cappagh area of Finglas in northwest Dublin on Wednesday afternoon, in the same area where tragic Grace Lynch, 16, was knocked down and killed by a scrambler bike in January this year.
Just this week, the second electrically powered vehicle death of the year took place after teen Janis Ozols fell from an e-scooter in Carlow town on Monday.
The 17-year-old was pronounced dead in Beaumont Hospital.
The mayor of Carlow, Councillor Ken Murnane stated that the town was devastated after the young man’s death in the e-scooter incident, adding: ‘It just shows that e-scooters are actually very dangerous.’
Almost half of the ICU beds in Temple Street are occupied by children who have sustained head injuries from e-scooter accidents.
Research from the hospital found that the average age of patients injured by e-scooters was 12 years old, while the youngest victim was just three, and was being carried as a passenger on an e-scooter.
Prof Crimmins said: ‘I’m quite angry. I’m doing these awful operations in the middle of the night, knowing this is completely preventable.’
Dr Emer Ryan, paediatrician at CHI Temple Street said that ‘children are coming off e-scooters like little catapults’ and that parents are blind to the dangers of the vehicles’.
Consultant paediatrician in neurodisability Dr Irwin Gill called on the Government to act urgently to deal with e-scooters and said parents need to have serious conversations with their children about the dangers involved.
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