After begging his parents for an e-scooter, Gavin wanted to make the most of it after school.
The 11-year-old asked his mum if he could ride around the neighbourhood while his older brother watched.
Gavin was given the thumbs-up, as long as he wore a helmet.
His mum, Angela Boldt, left to pick up groceries, thinking her son would be fine. Then she received the call every parent dreads.
“My 17-year-old son rang and said ‘Gavin’s come off his scooter’,” she recalls.
“I asked if he was all right and he said ‘he’s not moving, he’s bleeding’.”
Her son sent her a photo of Gavin unconscious and prone, a river of blood streaming from his head.
Boldt dropped everything and ran home as Gavin was rushed to Queensland’s Sunshine Coast University Hospital. The registered nurse met him as he was wheeled in off the ambulance and dozens of staff rushed to help.
“Seeing your 11-year-old get intubated and not be able to support their own breathing functions is a sobering thing,” she said.
Gavin had suffered a skull fracture and brain haematoma. With the possibility a major artery had also been cut, an urgent decision was made to fly him to Brisbane.
Boldt and her husband sped to the city’s children’s hospital, where they were met outside by a neurosurgeon. It was a bad sign.
Doctors found Gavin had almost severed the artery in the back of his head, which was pumping blood into his skull. The impact of the fall had also forced his brain into a “corner” of his bone framework.
The family was warned that Gavin had just the barest chance of survival, in the realm of 1 per cent.
“I just dropped to the floor,” Boldt said.
They were encouraged to deliver their boy last messages of hope, which Boldt whispered in his ear.
“I’ll always be with him and I love him, and he’s the centre point of my life,” she recalls saying.
Gavin miraculously survived. A year later, though, he is still recovering after learning to walk, talk, use his hands and feed himself again.
“It’s been a really long, painful journey but full of gratitude,” Boldt says.
Gavin’s remembers only riding down a hill and the scooter’s handlebars starting to wobble, before he was catapulted over them.
He wasn’t wearing the helmet. It was slung over his handlebars.
He was found 30 metres from where his scooter lay.
Gavin has no desire to ride an e-scooter again. His mother destroyed the one he fell from with her car, determined that it would never again operate.
He’s one of almost 180 kids who suffered e-scooter injuries and were taken to Sunshine Coast University Hospital in 2023 and 2024.
Research has found the scenario for one in 10 of them was life-threatening.
Most alarming was that nearly half the youngsters were not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, despite helmets being mandatory.
More than a third of the accidents involved speeds greater than the limit of 25km/h and the practice of two kids riding a scooter at the same time, or doubling, was a feature in 12 per cent.
Collisions with cars involved in 13 per cent of the cases, while 8 per cent involved other e-scooters or mobility devices.
Dr Matthew Clanfield was working in the hospital’s paediatric department during the survey period and witnessed kids arriving with injuries every couple of days.
“I was thinking ‘this can’t be right’,” he said.
“The injuries ranged from a simple fall and scraping a knee … to some kids needing to be flown down to Brisbane to receive urgent neurosurgery to save their lives.
“That’s a pretty serious level of injury.”
Clanfield said some kids were lucky to be alive.
“There are that many near misses that I can’t even count,” he said.
“We had one child who hit a car at approximately 70km/h and they survived, luckily. But there are so many kids who aren’t as lucky.”
Queensland’s most recent fatality was when an 18-year-old crashed on Flinders Highway near Townsville in the state’s north, on May 31.
The Sunshine State, South Australia and the ACT allow kids aged 12-15 to ride e-scooters if they have adult supervision.
In NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania users must be over 16, in the Northern Territory it’s 18.
Queensland Police are cracking down on illegal use amid a skyrocketing injury rate.
During a recent Gold Coast sting, a 10-year-old boy was spotted on a scooter doing wheelies. His mum told police it was hers and was issued a fine.
The incidents underline the alarming risk kids are taking and are reflected in data showing one in three e-scooter deaths in Australia involves children.
In the past five years, there have been 36 fatalities, 12 of them children.
“It’s a gross overrepresentation … and it’s indicative of a very clear overexposure to risk,” University of Melbourne’s Milad Haghani said.
“Sometimes the data is fuzzy and not very clear but in this particular case, it is actually quite clear.”
More than half the child fatalities were in Queensland.
Haghani suspected the state’s early uptake of e-scooters and the laws allowing under-16-year-olds to ride them were contributing to the deaths.
Researchers say age of use should, as it is elsewhere, be raised to 16 to try to slow the injury rate.
Queensland has set up a parliamentary inquiry into e-scooter benefits, safety risks, rules and their enforcement, and stakeholder views.
But, as Clanfield said, no inquiry is needed to raise the age limit.
“Our government really needs to take action now,” he said.
“It doesn’t need to wait for a statewide inquiry to be published to see what other states are doing and do the right thing and make our kids safe.”
Perth has suspended e-scooter hire after a 51-year-old pedestrian was killed in a May 31 collision in the CBD, amid calls for a legislation overhaul.
Boldt wants e-scooter speeds to be capped, saying no device should be able to travel at 50km/h.
She also wants more support for victim families trying to cope with the physical and emotional trauma.
-AAP
Live News
