Electric bikes (e-bikes) accident and fatality data: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
'Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, I would like to request the following information:
1. The number of reported accidents and fatalities involving electric bicycles (e-bikes) in Scotland, broken down by year, for as many years as records are available.
2. Of these, how many involved modified or non-standard e-bikes (speed-modified bikes, or ebikes altered to exceed legal speed/power limits)?
3. For each recorded accident or fatality, please provide as much detail as is reasonably available on the location of the incident (for example, by local authority area, town, road, or grid reference, depending on the level of precision held).'
Response
Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.
Within STATS19, there is not currently a vehicle category of ‘electric bicycle’ or similar. Instead, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as either ‘bicycle’, ‘electric motorcycle’, or ‘other’.
From mid-2019 onwards, we have fields in our records where Police Scotland can record descriptions of the vehicles involved. For the three vehicle categories above, we have searched these fields for variations of the descriptions ‘e-bike’, ‘e-bicycle’, and ‘electric’ and reviewed the results to assess whether these are likely to be considered an electric bicycle.
The table below provides the number of collisions broken down by severity, where we believe that an electric bicycle was involved.
The attached file provides the Eastings and Northings for these collisions. This is the greatest level of precision that we hold with regards collision location.
There is currently no systematic way of determining how many of these collisions involved modified or non-standard e-bikes, as this information is not recorded within STATS19.
|
|
Collision severity |
|||
|
Fatal |
Serious |
Slight |
Total |
|
|
2020 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
|
2021 |
0 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
|
2022 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
4 |
|
2023 |
0 |
4 |
3 |
7 |
|
2024 |
0 |
4 |
4 |
8 |
|
2025 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
8 |
Please note that this is likely to represent an incomplete record of electric bicycle collisions, as reporting officers may not always complete the additional fields that enabled us to identify electric bicycles.
In addition, please note that the records we hold relate to collisions where someone is injured or killed, and which become known to Police Scotland. Therefore, we do not hold records relating to damage- only collisions. Any figures for 2024 and 2025 are provisional as they are based on monthly returns received thus far from Police Scotland, with the most recent returns being received on 10th September 2025. This may be an incomplete picture of casualties up to that date due to a slight lag between collisions occurring and records being processed and shared by Police Scotland. These figures are also subject to change due to subsequent corrections and late records.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG