A crackdown on e-scooter top speeds has cut the number of kids ending up in Queensland’s hospitals, the state government says, but some riders are struggling to work out how to make their devices legal.
E-scooter owners have until the end of February to “lock” their device to a limit of 25km/h, while riders of already legal e-bikes will have to fork out up to $70 for a special check and sticker.
Brendan Hemmings, from spare parts company eScootNow, said he took several calls a day from people confused about how to limit the top speed, while some people had difficulty getting help from retailers or manufacturers.
Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Tim Partridge said new devices would have to be sold locked to 25km/h, and people who already owned an e-scooter could return them to “participating outlets”.
But Hemmings said tens of thousands of e-scooters were sold in south-east Queensland by retailers that had since closed or been liquidated.
“There is no [mobility device] industry-wide approach, unlike the [Department of Transport and Main Roads] assurance scheme for e-bikes,” he said.
Hemmings said speed limiting was specific to makes and models, but there were several methods.
Some advanced models or devices sold into European markets were factory-limited to a top speed, or locked via GPS or upon registration.
A speed-limiter wire could be installed under the deck to limit an e-scooter to 25km/h.
Another method was changing the “P-settings”. For example, if the unlimited top speed was 60km/h, users could set this to 41 per cent.
Or people could set the mode or gear somewhere between one and five, or change between eco to turbo, to get a top speed close to 25km/h.
“For the average e-scooter rider, this is all too complex. It is all too hard, and they talk to different people and get different answers,” Hemmings said.
“If you are not the original buyer of a Ninebot, impacting ability to register and log in and make speed changes, you are going to struggle. Often there is no pathway.”
Hemmings argued most higher-class e-scooters could not be set to 25km/h accurately, and speeds would be 22-27km/h due to a simplistic controller.
And many e-scooters limited to 25km/h would realise 50 per cent torque, he said, meaning they would struggle to climb hills.
Meanwhile, e-bike owners will have to pay up to $70 to get their already compliant ride verified as legal if they do not have an EN15194 sticker, under a statewide assurance scheme starting on November 2.
The assurance scheme states higher-powered or higher-speed bikes modified to meet the 25km/h and 250-watt rules will not qualify for the sticker because that would create an “ongoing compliance and enforcement risk, as the modifications may be reversed after verification”.
Transport Minister Brent Mickelberg said there was no equivalent compliance labelling for e-scooters “due to the absence of a consistent national or international standard”.
“The Crisafulli government’s nation-leading laws get the balance right between cracking down on those who do the wrong thing while backing those Queenslanders who do the right thing, and delivering sensible exemptions,” he said.
On Tuesday, the government said seven children were admitted to the Queensland Children’s Hospital between July and September for more than 24 hours for serious e-scooter or e-bike incidents, compared with 18 between January and March, and 16 from April to June.
“We’ve only had three months since the legislation came out, on July 1,” said Professor Roy Kimble, the director of paediatric surgery, burns and trauma at the Queensland Children’s Hospital.
“But I’m very pleased to say that there has been a rapid decline in the number of children into this hospital after riding e-scooters and e-bikes.”
This masthead has seen high-powered e-scooters still for sale in Brisbane, including one with peak power of 3600 watts and a maximum speed of up to 60km/h.
Police seized 595 non-compliant devices from July 1 to October 9. They would not provide a breakdown between e-scooters and bikes.
Road Policing Group Acting Superintendent Gareth Bosley said people who rode illegal or modified e-mobility devices in public, combined with unsafe and reckless behaviour, posed a significant risk to others.
“[Queensland police] utilise conventional speed detection equipment to identify devices that may reasonably be suspected to be non-compliant and/or modified, due to the fact they are able to exceed device-specific speed limits,” he said.
Three people have died in Queensland while riding “personal mobility devices”, which includes e-scooters, this year.
From 2022 to 2025, 6089 people went to 36 Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit emergency departments at Queensland hospitals as a result of an e-scooter crash.
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