Eight years after he was hit by a person riding an e-scooter, Mark Smith still suffers daily pain that limits his ability to work.

The Christchurch-based healthcare worker said he was walking on the City Promenade in 2018 when he was "hit from behind by a group of teens being boisterous".

"The young lady just got back on her scooter and went off and left me."

Smith said the incident left him requiring minor surgery to his shoulder followed by a few rounds of steroid injections.

"It's ruined my shoulder and drastically changed my life," he said. "I've lost income, I'm not able to look after the same amount of people I used to."

He said when he rotated his shoulder on his dominant arm, it caused him "agony".

"It was just a niggly, horrible injury that never got much better. For a while I was in tears going to bed because I couldn't lie down on it without being in pain."

"I think this is going to be as good as it gets, so I do more management and clerical work now instead of patient-fronted care and it's really heartbreaking."

Smith said he now works in a clinical setting just one day a week.

"I should be working in the frontline but it's been taken away from me because someone was a bit exuberant and daft."

He has joined calls for a revamp to scooter rules and said seeing e-scooters being driven recklessly on the streets sent him back to the incident which he found traumatic.

"Here in the city you see children on [e-scooters] - sometimes three people on one - and have to jump out of the way for them.

"You could go out tomorrow and buy a 700 watt e-bike or 2000 watt scooter that will do 100kph and you see children on these things doing crazy reckless things on machines more powerful than they can handle."

Riana Grobbelaar, whose teenage son spent more than a week in hospital with a fractured pelvis, internal bleeding and memory loss after an e-scooter crash, earlier told RNZ she wanted to see helmets made mandatory.

"His helmet took a big hit," she said of the incident.

"That was a rule in our house: no helmet, no scooter. He was really lucky, but he has a slow and long road to recovery."

Smith too wanted to see helmets made mandatory, along with well-enforced age limits and speed restrictions for e-scooters.

Of those he sees out and about each day, he estimated just one in 10 riders wore helmets.

"I'm very much against overregulation, but we've got the other extreme where it's just a free-for-all."

Smith said he'd like to see New Zealand adopt similar rules to Queensland, where you had to be at least 16-years-old to ride an e-scooter and have at least a valid learner's licence to ride solo.

"I think [e-scooters] are a fantastic idea and they were sold as an option when you got off public transport and it was the perfect little solution for getting people out of cars, but now they're being used as a recreational toy and anything goes really - you can be reckless and hoon around on them as much as you want.

"There needs to be some accountability and rules around it."

ACC figures released earlier this year have shown claims for e-scooter injuries are on the rise, with children and young people among the most affected.

ACC paid out almost $16 million for scooter-related injuries in 2025, an increase of about 10 percent on the year prior. Just over $1.2 million had been paid out in January 2026.