Many of us passing through London of late will be accustomed to the sight of the capital’s new favourite mode of transport: white frames complete with bright green basket, and battery powered speed.
Lime bikes have taken hold of London, and other British cities including Manchester and Nottingham, since the company’s inception in San Francisco eight years ago – but are we finally falling out of love with Lime bikes?
Everyone has an opinion on them. They’re convenient, affordable (ish), (though competitor Forest offers rides for 14p – 20p per minute to Lime’s 27p, both after paying an initial £1), and you can find them pretty much everywhere around the city. But they are also an ever-increasing nuisance to communities, piling up on pavements, skate parks and even up trees – and the case against their safety is also building.
They met one student who claimed that her Lime bike had jolted forwards whilst she was adjusting her hijab, moving her off balance and sending the bike crashing into her leg. The Telegraph later spoke to a trauma surgeon who saw “at least one patient a week” with lower leg injuries usually associated with motor bike accidents that are increasingly being attributed to Lime bike crashes.
Michael Williams contacted London Centric after reading the article. He had received a payout from Lime after he crashed on a lime bike into another standing lime bike, trapping his torso in the crush. He’d burst his kidney, haemorrhaged, damaged his spleen and broken four ribs.
“It’s odd that there’s this big company from a completely different country, just filling our streets with these devices that we don’t know what to do with, don’t really know how to use, or how to regulate,” Williams said.
This is another big problem when it comes to Lime bikes – it does seem that their regulation (or lack thereof) is pretty murky. E-bike rental companies in the capital city are engaging in a kind of turf war (London mayor Sadiq Khan called it the “wild west”), battling for boroughs as the government announces slow plans to provide councils with the power to manage dockless e-bikes (as dockless cycle hire schemes are not currently covered by legislation, the City of London has no legal power to prevent schemes from operating, or align with wider city standards).
In choosing to award contracts to Lime’s competitors, the green bikes have been piling up on the borough’s boundaries as customers abandon bikes to cross into the borough. Comedian Dara Ó Briain recently took to X to complain about the state of affairs, writing: “Hounslow Council have banned Lime bikes and licensed Forest and Voi; neighbouring Richmond has licensed Lime and banned the others.
“So every bridge is Checkpoint Charlie, with loads of Lime bikes parked on one side and loads of Forest and Voi on the other. Top work everyone!”
But dockless e-bike rentals remain big business, worthy of big investment, with Uber raising its holding in Lime’s UK operating business to over 25% shares. And Lime bikes have become almost inseparable from the image of the city.
They are easy to access, and in some genius stroke of marketing, they’re cool, too – Timothée Chalamet modelled one on the ‘A Complete Unknown’ premier red carpet (though he later claimed that the stunt had cost him £65 after parking it in the wrong zone).
Timothée Chalamet arrives on a Lime bike to the UK Premiere of ‘A Complete Unknown’
(Image credit: Getty Images/Dave Benett)
Lime bikes are useful alternatives to cars, busy buses and (what can often be) the horrendously muggy Tube. But they can be hard to handle, prone to bursts of power, and accessible without a license or a helmet. And many of those involved in such accidents, seem to be more inexperienced cyclists.
The injuries the doctors interviewed by The Telegraph were seeing were typically ‘low energy’ ones. These are injuries sustained to the lower limbs at a slower pace as opposed to ‘high energy’, defensive injuries typically sustained by more proficient cyclists, to the head, shoulders and arms.
Out of the 30,000 plus rental bikes thought to currently be in London, Lime has the vastest percentage (though Lime hasn’t released the official number). With Lime bikes vastly outnumbering their competition in the capital, perhaps ‘Lime bike leg’ has had the company’s name unnecessarily tagged onto it?
“At Lime,” a spokesperson for the company wrote to London Centric, “safety is our highest priority.”
“Our data shows no identifiable trend relating to leg injuries among Lime riders in the UK,” they said in a separate statement.”
But with a slightly heavier frame to competitors (a Lime bike weighs on average 30kg (though this can vary by model), with Forest and Voi bikes a few kilograms lighter), and a new, bottom heavy design floated for continental European markets, does Lime have its own concerns about the safety of their product? They maintain they do not.
Perhaps part of the problem surrounding Lime bikes, is their over-accessibility. It is both its perk and its downfall. They are available to rent throughout the city, but they can be difficult to use if unfamiliar to the way they ride: heavy and occasionally jolt-y.
Plus, anyone above the age of 14 can cycle them – people without helmets, tourists who may not be as familiar with the city’s roads, inexperienced cyclists enjoying the novelty of an electric-assisted bike. There seems to be a combined problem associated with Lime bike injuries, and that is the lack of coherent regulation surrounding their use and docking as well as their possible safety issues.
As more dockless e-bikes enter the market (Bolt has just announced its own fleet of ebikes), will ‘Lime bike leg’ ultimately drop its prefix, becoming shorthand for a new kind of bike injury?
Anyone visiting London has witnessed the fields of Limes which are the norm outside major events, they’re hard to escape. It’s great marketing, but also means that people turn their ire on them first, rather than other active travel issues in the capital. Perhaps e-bike injuries and pavement clutter are issues, but higher up the priority list are poor infrastructure, the number and size of cars, and air quality. ‘Lime bike leg’ is catchy, but not the whole reality of cycling in London.
