‘Frightening Time’ as Five-Year-Old Boy Left With Serious Head and Leg Injuries After Being Struck by E-Bike Ridden by Teenager Outside Sydney Primary School Gates
- A five-year-old boy was rushed to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead with serious head and leg injuries after being hit by an e-bike outside Tahmoor Public School at home time.
- The 16-year-old rider walked away unharmed and is helping police, who have launched a formal investigation and are appealing for footage.
- Children’s hospital presentations linked to e-bikes and e-scooters have quadrupled in a year, and injuries among under-eights have more than doubled.
- Crossbench MPs say more children will be hurt unless the NSW Government acts, and they plan to push for tougher rules in parliament within weeks.
The school bell rings at the end of the day. Parents wait at the gate and children spill out towards waiting cars.
For one family in Sydney’s south-west, that routine ended at a hospital bedside.
A five-year-old boy is fighting serious injuries after an e-bike slammed into him just metres from his school on Tuesday afternoon.
The crash has sharpened fears that the battery-powered machines now crowding Australian footpaths have become a danger to the youngest and most vulnerable people who use them.
The collision happened on Remembrance Driveway in Tahmoor, in the semi-rural Wollondilly Shire, at about 3.30pm, the busiest moment of the school day.
NSW Ambulance paramedics were called to reports of a crash outside Tahmoor Public School. They found the young boy with serious injuries to his head and legs.
He was taken to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where he remains in a serious condition.
The rider, a 16-year-old boy, was not hurt. NSW Police Force confirmed the teenager is assisting officers with their inquiries, and a formal investigation into the circumstances of the crash is under way.
Detectives have appealed to anyone who may have filmed the moment, whether on a dash cam, a mobile phone or a CCTV system, to come forward to Narellan Police or Crime Stoppers.
The NSW Department of Education said the whole school community was thinking of the injured boy and his family.
It also praised staff who stepped in to care for the child in the chaotic minutes after the crash, and thanked the emergency crews who responded.
Independent Wollondilly MP Judy Hannan said she drove past the scene as it unfolded. She said she was hoping for a swift recovery for the boy, and that her sympathies were with him, his parents and the school community.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park described the incident as deeply concerning.
He said his thoughts were with a family facing an extremely frightening time, and stressed that people must use these devices safely so children and other members of the public are not hurt.
The Tahmoor crash is not an isolated tragedy. It is the latest in a run of incidents involving children and e-bikes across NSW.
In September, another five-year-old boy was struck by an e-bike in Engadine, in Sydney’s south. A month later, a 16-year-old girl was hit at Barrack Heights in Shellharbour, on the Illawarra coast.
Hospital figures show the scale of the problem. In the 12 months to September 29, the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network treated 183 children for injuries linked to e-bikes and e-scooters.
That is four times the number recorded in 2023.
Children under eight make up a smaller share of those cases. Even so, the trend is alarming.
Twenty-one young children were injured during this year’s reporting period, compared with just eight in 2023.
The surge has tracked the rapid rise in e-bike ownership.
Cheap, fast and easy to ride, the bikes have become a favourite with teenagers, delivery riders and commuters trying to dodge cost of living pressures and traffic congestion.
The NSW Government brought in new standards for e-bikes this year. NSW Police and Transport for NSW have also run compliance blitzes targeting riders.
Critics say those measures have not kept pace with how many bikes are on the road and how they are being used.
Analysis: What This Means for Australia
The crash outside Tahmoor Public School goes to the heart of a growing public safety problem across the country. Rules and enforcement have fallen behind a technology that has spread far faster than anyone planned for.
School zones are designed as some of the safest places in any community. Strict speed limits apply to cars, and crossing supervisors and signs are there to protect children.
E-bikes sit in a grey zone. They are fast enough to cause catastrophic injuries but are often ridden on footpaths and shared spaces among pedestrians, many of them small children.
For law enforcement, the challenge is significant. Police must judge whether a bike complies with the standards, whether it has been illegally modified and whether it was being ridden lawfully.
Each e-bike crackdown uses up resources, and blitzes can only cover a small part of the network at any one time.
The human toll is also a cost to the health system. Every child taken to an emergency department, scanned, operated on and rehabilitated puts more pressure on already stretched hospital waiting times and paediatric services.
For families in regional and outer-suburban areas like Wollondilly, the stakes are especially high. Footpaths are often patchy, roads double as walking routes, and teenagers depend on e-bikes because public transport is limited.
Ms Hannan has made clear that the crossbench will bring proposals for new e-bike rules and regulations to parliament in the coming weeks. She warned that further accidents are inevitable unless the government takes a firm position.
That push is likely to put pressure on the Minns Government. It will have to decide whether its existing standards are enough, or whether tougher measures are needed.
These could include age limits, registration, speed restrictions near schools or harsher penalties for illegal modifications.
Road safety analysts say the steep rise in child presentations is a warning that cannot be ignored. They argue that once a transport trend becomes this widespread, voluntary safety campaigns rarely work without enforceable rules behind them.
Law enforcement insiders warn that many e-bikes being ridden by young people may not meet legal standards. Modified motors can push speeds well beyond what is permitted, which leaves pedestrians little time to react.
Child health advocates believe school zones should be a clear starting point for reform. They point out that a young child’s head and body are particularly vulnerable to impact, even at speeds riders might consider modest.
Urban planning observers argue that the solution cannot rest on policing alone. Dedicated cycling infrastructure, separating bikes from footpaths, would reduce conflict between riders and pedestrians, but it requires long-term investment.
Others caution against demonising young riders.
They note that many teenagers have never been taught how to handle powerful machines safely, and say that education must go hand in hand with enforcement.
For now, a five-year-old boy remains in hospital and a teenager is helping police. A community is left asking how a walk out of the school gate became an ambulance ride.
Anyone with information or footage is urged to contact Narellan Police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.