On a warm Saturday afternoon in West -London, Theo thought he had found the perfect shortcut to prevent him from waiting for the bus from Paddington station.
Minutes later he was on the pavement of pain – not a victim of a traffic accident but of the electric bicycle he had hired for £ 1.
“I hurled down what I thought was an empty and quiet home road,” he told the mail. “I could hardly see the scooter when he pulled out of the corners of your eyes just in front of your eye and I panicked.”
Theo, 27, grabbed the brakes and tried to wave. He remembers that he hit the road and was then overthrowed to the ground, followed by a burning pain while the neon-green lime bike-alle 86lb landed on his legs.
Residents heard the crash and called for help, after which Theo ‘was pulled into an ambulance and was taken to St Mary’s Hospital. After many painful hours and scans it turned out that I had broken my shin. “
This specific injury-nou is popularly referred to as ‘lime bike bone’-is one of the dozens of serious traumas related to an increase in e-bike use in the capital and then, while the Green Revolution cities and cities sweeps from Cambridge, Manchester and Milones to Nottingham, Slaynes.
What initially started as an initiative for clean, handy transport has become a one -way trip to A&E for a growing number of users.
In orthopedic departments throughout London, surgeons see an increase in other healthy young people who arrive in Noodonenigen with tibia and femurf ractures, mutilated knees and ground wrists.
Olivia, who rode a lime bike when she was turned by a truck
It has become such an epidemic that Jaison Patel, a trauma and orthopedic knee advisor in one of the largest trauma centers in London, the hospital in St. Bartholomew, analyzes the sharp rise of injuries related to e-bikes.
“E-bike injuries are now generally very normal, they see every day,” he says.
‘I see broken bones, wrist fractures, collarbones, thigh and a pair of tibia fractures and open fractions (when the bone has come through the skin). It definitely feels like an upward trend – many of my colleagues have said that they too have seen an increase. ‘
“It is partly because of the weight of the bike and the speed you are going.”
Due to a heavy engine and battery, an e-bike is four times heavier than a standard bike and with a top speed of approximately 15 mph, this can be a deadly combination with a crash. “We have treated young people with bones who should not usually break … It is the stuff that you see with energetic injuries, such as motorcyclists who go at a fast speed,” says Mr. Patel.
It is often the limbs that are the victims of injuries, because instinct prioritizes protection of the spine and head when they experience physical trauma.
Mr Patel added: ‘The thigh is one of the largest and strongest bones in the body, so they take a lot of power to break a young patient.
‘And yet we see things caused by e-bikes … and it takes months to recover. I always tell patients that you can’t say that you are completely normal again. ‘
Between 2019 and 2023, 12 million trips were made on lime bikes in England – but that was made by Londoners on more than 16 million trips in 2024 that was only taken by Londoners by Londoners
Theo’s recovery after the operation on his right leg lasted six weeks of walking with crutches. “I was wearing a knee brace for months,” he said, adding it, “I definitely never go one of those [e-bikes] Once again. ‘
There are an estimated 50,000 of these vehicles in London, belonging to various providers. Between 2019 and 2023, 12 million trips were made on lime bikes in England – but that was only reduced to more than 16 million journeys from Londoners in 2024.
Between April 27 and May 3 this year, the company saw 96 percent more journeys in the capital compared to the same time in 2024.
The first large-scale rollout of ‘Ride-per minute’ Cycli was the ‘Boris Bike’ or Santander scheme that was introduced in the capital in 2010, although these were not electric. E-bikes appeared in London streets in the coming years.
The idea was that users could hire a bicycle from a docking station using an app – and then parking it on another. Since then, other ‘DockLess’ recruitment schedules – which means that you can park on the sidewalk – pop up in the capital. Among them are the Swedish company VOI, the London-based forest and Lime-that is active in 30 countries.
This year a study by news publication London Centric suggested that ‘lime bike bone’ is caused by the construction of the bikes, where the frames curves to a single point.
Alex, who ‘shattered’ his thigh on a lime bike, said to the exhaust valve: ‘The only way I can understand that it happened is that the central strut functioned as a support point over which the bone was broken on the road. I don’t think the injury would have happened on a normal bike. ‘
The investigation mentioned three cases where lime users remained ‘serious leg breaks’ after they were attached to the bike.
Jaison Patel, a trauma and orthopedic knee advisor in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, analyzes the sharp rise of injuries in connection with e-bikes
This month, Normal People star Sebastian de Souza, 32, doctors praised for their treatment of his ‘mutilated knee’ after a similar incident. “I had a tibial plateau fracture (better known as lime bike bone) and needed surgery,” said the actor on Instagram, placing photos of fourteen days in the hospital.
Online forums such as Reddit and Community website Nextdoor are filled with anecdotes of similar injuries. Critics say that the e-bike extension will lead to an even greater decrease in the quality of vehicles and therefore their safety-in all companies.
Mr Patel explains: “There have been patients who have had problems with brakes who don’t work on the bikes – so I think maintenance is a problem.”
Lime employs 250 people to patrol the streets, repair the bikes and pick it up. Forest has a team of 12 ‘guardians’ that are also paid to take care of the fleet. Nevertheless, many e-bikes in London have pedals, broken or stolen seats and defective brakes.
Olivia, 22, rode a lime bike in London when she collided with another lime user after they had trouble stopping because of Dodgy braking. ‘I was thrown over the wheel because of the impact and ended up on the floor with what felt like a truck on top of me. The speed with which I was beaten was so intense and it would not have been possible on a normal bike, “she said. “The inability to respond quickly and easy to brake is a big problem with lime bikes.”
The bike crashed her leg and caused painful bruises, and she also broke a wrist – “Godzijdank was a medic in the neighborhood,” she told the mail.
Grace, 22, described on its way on an e-bike in a busy main street with a stalled chair that was too high, just to look down and realize that there was only one pedal. “The realization started, not only that I could not reach the floor because I was too high and stuck – but I had no means to kick well and had to bow to a nearby curb to stop.”
“It was terrible,” she added. “I ended up in A&E for breaking my wrist while I put it through to scrape myself when I fell.”
It is no wonder that critics of ultrasound mayor Sadiq Khan van Echo in London Echo, when he described the situation as a ‘Wild West’.
With costs based on time (£ 1 to unlock the vehicle and 29p per minute for a lime bike), there is every stimulus to cut corners: it pays to walk red lights, skip traffic by driving on sidewalks and by weaving cars even after a pint or two, because there are minimal restrictions on the use of the use of the use of the use of an e-bike.
For pedestrians, this means navigating through increasingly dangerous streets. The buzz of an e-bike can be drowned out by noisy roads, making it easy to unknowingly step on the path of a driver.
Sidewalks are now littered with abandoned bicycles.
Dame Joan Collins, 92, posted a photo of dozens of lime bikes that block a walkway last week. The actress wrote: “Shocked about the Loutish behavior of lime bike users, sidewalks are for pedestrians.”
In the meantime, e-bike regulations remain fragmented in the city. All 32 districts and the city of London have each set different policy rules around the vehicles.
Some all allow ‘free float’ parking everywhere, while others designate specific bays. Westminster, the home base of the highest number of e-bike recovery worldwide (with 630,000 travel every month), has installed 360 parking zones. TFL started with the fines of Dokless Bicycle Companies for incorrect parking. Kalk en Bos have paid £ 30,000 in fines since January.
For his part, Lime has promised a £ 20 million London action plan to concentrate on safer streets in the capital. A spokesperson said: ‘Our thoughts are those of these incidents and we wish them a complete recovery. Safety is our first priority and informs everything we do at Kalk – from how we design and maintain our vehicles to our rider education and how we work with cities.
‘Lime’s strong safety record in London shows 99.99 percent of the trips that ended last year without a reported incident. Lime has not identified any trend with regard to bone injuries in lime drivers in the UK. ‘
James Bolton, general manager of VOI UK, said: ‘Safety is our first priority. We have invested considerably in vehicle design, which led to only 0.0002 percent of the e-bike rides that end in injury, a speed comparable to pedal bicycles.
“We perform thorough maintenance checks on our e-bikes and implement a wide range of measures to keep our riders safe, including our free ride-safe academy to teach our users.”
Another operator is preparing to launch in the capital this summer, set to add thousands of more bicycles to the London roads.
Bolt known to Londoners for his taxi rental service and who operates the biggest scooter and e-bike fleet in Europe.
So, for all narrow shaves, hospital admissions and warnings, it seems that the e-bike ‘revolution’ is not easily slows down.
What does us leave the disturbing question about: what is needed for e-bike fanatics to wake up with the danger?
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