Hi, On Wednesday Oct 7th about 12:55 pm I had a Lime Bike’s back wheel brake lock up, skid and throw me off next to The Pantry on Perry Vale and I landed outside Glorious Food & Wine!
I wasn’t even going quickly, I’d just set off and was braking well in anticipation of car doing a cack handed three point turn further down the road.
Several people came to help me, retrieve my glasses from the road, move the bike and generally take time out of their day to make sure I was ok.
If this was you then I really appreciate it, thank you. Especially the woman who asked the guy in Glorious to phone 999 (they refused!) and then took my phone to call 999 and ask for an ambulance (that also got refused despite my gurgling rib…I got an uber to Lewisham) and stay with me till the uber was coming.
Even though I was delirious and likely in shock (and denial) I realised at the time it was really lovely.
Anyway after a fractured radius, fractured rib, punctured and slightly collapsed lung and 3 nights in hospital I got home and have now got well enough and regained the ability to type to get annoyed about it… it seems mine is not an isolated incident.
Debating about getting a bit legal… I’ve contacted a well respected firm and they’re considering my case.
I’ve already been to every shop the week after asking for CCTV (and even dropped off notes with my details) but either they weren’t pointing in the right direction, were off or said they’d get me it and then didn’t.
So if you happen to be one of those that helped me or just saw me totally stack it that wet Wednesday afternoon then please say hi. I’d love to have a third party confirm it happened!
Very sorry that this happened to you. Glad to see the community rallied around, and thank you so much for sharing - despite the horrible situation, it is good to know there are people out there looking out for each other.
That sounds a horrendous experience. I assume the app records the number of the bike it rented you at the very least. Maybe there is something on it that can tell them why it locked up. Was it the locking mechanism of the bike itself that activated? Sorry for the silly question, I imagine your mind was elsewhere in the moment.
Knowing Lime their only response will be to charge you for an all day rental if you had not ended it before going to hospital.
Re LAS, very hit and miss this time of year. It’s all about the on call triage and what information they gather and input. If computer says no… It’s no unfortunately. Definitely would have been worthy of an ambulance on this occasion, but if I were to guess it would have been Cat 2 or 3 with waiting times of over an hour, so Uber was probably much quicker in this case.
Good luck with Lime and well done to all who assisted. There are some good eggs out there still.
Thanks! I attempted to keep my initial post as brief as possible so didn’t go into tooooo much detail but what happened was I set off from the Lime bike parking spot next to the underpass (where the crossing will be in future yeah?!) and headed towards the S circular/Catford.. as I approached the Waldram place junction I slowed a bit as it’s always a bit of a mess, then I saw further on a car turning in the road near Clapton craft/the patty shop. It backed towards the barbers/vape shop and as I didn’t know if it would then move forward again I applied the brake in anticipation, I was at least 10/15 metres away as this point. The back wheel instantly locked up, I hadn’t even braked hard. The disc brake may have ben wet or something I don’t know but it fully stopped the back wheel and it started to skid, losing all grip and control, it then slid a bit to the left as if I was drifting until the wheel was sideways enough to dig in, regain grip and catapult me sideways… this is all within a second. I landed full weight on my arm and I’m not small so that’s were the injuries happened… it’s quite good I didn’t have time to “protect myself” as it may have been worse (broken wrist etc)
Anyway yeah I reported it to Lime.. the bike just carried on charging me to 19 mins or so. Hilariously they replied saying they were giving me 10 or 15 minutes free to use within a week… I replied with some very choice words and liberal use of caps lock.
They then refunded the £7.99 Lime pass and asked me to go into more details which I wasnt going t do at the time on my phone and in pain but which I will do once I can be bothered and I’ve had a response from the lawyer people.
BTW I have had this issue with the back wheel locking up twice before and the drift sideways thing.. once I styled it out, the other I skidded for longer but was going faster which may have helped weirdly but then I lost it and went over but I tucked and rolled quite brilliantly and popped up like nothing happened!
Point is… I think it’s a design flaw. They say to test the brakes before riding but that is for if the are weak.. all my issues have been from them working arguably too well!
So to all Lime riders def give the brakes a good test and see if they stick.. maybe the testing will unstick them and you’ll avoid my situation!
Oh and as for the ambulance wait thing… yeah uber was probably quicker but those speedbumps round the back of Ladywell fields to Lewisham were no fun whatsoever…
They are dreadful bikes, just can’t bring myself to use them after my first and only use. I love the idea of them and the other bikes, but the maintenance and apparent lack of care from the companies just rules it out for me.
Glad you are on the mend and at least able to start conversations with them about the matter. Seems they have done the usual charm offensive opener. Empty offers of very little.
Good luck with getting some proof of what happened and some worth while compensation of some sort from them. Do you have legal assistance on any policies or accounts that you could use?
Speedy recovery, sounds a dreadful combination of injuries. Coming off a bike is never nice.
Thanks a lot! It’s a shame because they’ve been incredibly useful to me, makes getting to my allotment MUCH easier and the journey to Herne Hill (which is a three busser) a doddle. I’ve been quite the advocate and I get unreasonably annoyed about crap parking as well and have got off mid ride to move them out of the way on occasion. But they’ve obviously got some major issues and their CS is awful. So will see how it goes… I’ve not been on one since but then it’s only been 5 weeks and I’m not 100% yet.
Will see how it goes… I’ve definitely got bit of the fear!
You might consider getting in touch with Jim Waterson, former media editor of the Guardian, who has a really good Substack called londoncentric, which has done quite a bit of work looking at dangerous Lime Bikes. I think he can claim some credit for a redesign of the bikes to make them less likely to leave you with a broken leg if one falls on you. There are some contact details here: Contact London Centric - by Jim Waterson - London Centric
