SerpApi.Org
It’s a sight that every Londoner recognises. You turn a corner and there they are: a swarm of Lime bikes sprawled across the pavement.
Some lie abandoned on their sides. Others blink their warning lights silently into the evening gloom. A few have been stripped of their saddles or have baskets overflowing with rubbish. All are lined up haphazardly, forcing pedestrians and parents with buggies to pick their way through a slalom course of fluorescent green aluminium.
The scene has driven councillors in Wimbledon to their wits’ end; hundreds of Lime and Forest bikes were ridden to the All-England Club on the opening day of the Championships and promptly discarded. Riders were instructed to park in assigned areas, but that hasn’t stopped punters from strewing the motorised vehicles across the road and pavements outside the club.
I’m increasingly convinced that these bikes have something of the One Ring about them. They seem to function as a corrupting force for anyone who mounts them.
No cyclist would deem it acceptable to barrel down the pavement at 15 miles per hour and then dismount directly in front of the Tube station, blocking the stairs with their supine velocipede. But this is what many e-bikers do every day. The familiar click-click-click signalling that a rider has boarded without paying has been dubbed a modern birdsong for city dwellers.
We talk a lot about Lime bike leg – the informal term used by trauma surgeons to describe severe lower leg injuries caused by a 35kg bike frame falling on top of its user in the event of a crash. But we don’t talk nearly enough about the increasing number of injuries to pedestrians from dangerous use of the bikes.
Just this week a woman called on a crackdown on lime bikes after she was hospitalised a couple of years ago with a broken femur, fractured collarbone and two spinal fractures when she was mowed down walking through a pedestrianised square in London.
The rider was apparently 10 years old. He shouldn’t have been able to open an account according to Lime’s policies, but somehow he circumvented the rules and gained access to what is essentially an underpowered motorbike.
In March last year, the actor Steve Stamp was hospitalised after falling off a Lime bike drunk. Technically it’s illegal to drive a bicycle while under the influence of alcohol under the Road Traffic Act 1988. If you wish to rent a Lime during the early hours, the company has introduced a drunk test which asks the user to hit the screen on the app when a “stop” sign appears.
I cannot emphasise enough how easy this test is. One could probably pass it while having their stomach pumped. If you can see your phone, you can probably borrow a bike.
Worse still, rentable e-bikes are often linked to phone snatching. They offer an easy getaway and the perpetrator can simply dump the bike after the crime has been committed, making the activity much harder to trace.
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The company has thrived thanks to a complete vacuum of regulation. Instead, Lime took over the capital by signing agreements with individual boroughs.
Cyclists who follow the rules, who put their bicycles safely away, who don’t speed on pavements, are ultimately let down by these machines and the reckless behaviour they encourage.
Lara Brown is The Spectator’s Commissioning Editor
