Traffic & Transport
‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation | Ebikes
As Jane Ouartsi walked across a pedestrianised square in central London, on a Friday evening in early August three years ago, she linked arms with her partner, Dave Mathias, and told him how much she had enjoyed the afternoon they had spent together, eating pizza in Soho and visiting an art installation. It was the last time she can remember feeling properly happy and relaxed.
“We were walking quite slowly, talking about the art. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I think I was saying what a lovely lunch, and then all of a sudden there was a horrific impact,” she says. “I felt my spine and body split and I thought my life was over.”
Ouartsi, who is in her late 60s, can’t bear to watch the CCTV recording of the Lime bike accident that left her with such severe injuries that she spent a total of 36 days in hospital and 18 months learning how to walk again. Mathias flinches each time he sees it, tracking the progress from the left of the screen to the right of a young rider, possibly around 10 years old, as he speeds across the empty square and knocks Ouartsi over. He has had to study it repeatedly over the past three years as he has tried, and failed, to persuade staff at the bike rental company Lime to acknowledge the life-changing consequences of the incident.
Last week, the clip of the collision went viral as it emerged that the company has not paid compensation to the couple and has not responded to their calls for more to be done to stop rogue underage cyclists using the electric bikes illegally, flouting all traffic rules, cycling on pavements and jumping red lights.
“It has become like the wild west,” Ouartsi says, sitting on a pile of cushions in her west London flat, arranged for maximum comfort in the face of continuing stiffness and pain caused by the incident. She suffered a fractured collar bone, two spinal fractures and a badly broken femur that required three operations to fix. She says the medical staff at the central London hospital where she was treated had not previously seen such severe injuries, but were becoming used to treating patients with ebike-related damage. “They said it was happening more every week, that it was a drain on their time, fixing people’s arms and legs when they could be doing other work.”
The footage has attracted attention because it chimes with the ambivalence provoked by the rising presence of Lime bikes in the capital. Although there is warmth for the arrival of alternatives to cars, there is also unease that some of the bikes are ridden and parked irresponsibly.
Ouartsi, a retired Marks & Spencer shop worker, says she has become a different person since being hit. When she was discharged from hospital, ambulance staff had to carry her up to her first-floor flat and, for a year, she was unable to walk upstairs to her bedroom or to the bathroom – she had to have a single bed and a commode installed in the sitting room. “I almost forgot what it looked like upstairs,” she says. She spent weeks practising walking up steps, and Mathias, a joiner, had to take an extended period off work to help her recover, installing grab handles around the flat so she was able to manoeuvre herself into a standing position. It took months before she felt confident enough to take a bus, she still relies on a walking stick and the couple, who loved travelling to Scotland, do not envisage making the journey again.
“I’m made up of nuts and bolts and screws. I had to learn to walk again like a baby,” Ouartsi says, as Mathias pulls out an A4 file of X-ray photographs revealing different attempts by doctors to mend the complicated break in her femur. The titanium inserted into her leg buckled and failed, so it needed to be replaced. “I’m very scared of falling. I don’t want to go back to hospital again. It has been a horrendous time.”
Ouartsi wants the company to rethink the weight and the speed of the bicycles and impose stiff penalties on people who cycle irresponsibly. “I honestly don’t know how I survived. I was a broken china doll – it’s amazing how the doctors put me back together.”
In the abstract, Ouartsi and Mathias support the idea that cities should have more bicycles and fewer cars. A few years ago, Ouartsi enjoyed hiring Santander Cycles, which are not electric, and cycling around the perimeter of Hyde Park with her grandson. But their experience has hardened a sense that Lime and the owners of other ebikes need to take more decisive action to promote the safety of pedestrians and riders. They support the principle of making life easier for cyclists, but not at the expense of people who prefer to walk.
“People need to use them sensibly, on the road. I’d also rather they weren’t electric so that people could get more exercise,” says Mathias. “People zoom on the pavements because it’s dangerous on the roads,” Ouartsi adds.
Mathias still doesn’t understand why Lime has not done more to prevent children from riding ebikes. In the seconds after the impact, he shouted at the child, who went to sit by himself on a bench nearby and cried. He tried to take a photograph of the boy, but was prevented by a woman, who he thinks was the boy’s mother, who arrived some time later. When the paramedics were transferring Ouartsi into an ambulance, they disappeared before police were able to speak to them or take down their names.
“Neither of us want to prosecute a 10-year-old or his mother, but we needed a name on the form to claim on Lime’s insurance,” says Mathias. Without a name, securing any payment of damages has proved complex. The police closed the case, and an attempt to work on a no win, no fee basis with solicitors ended because, the lawyer said in an email to Mathias, the rider had not been identified, so it was not possible to make a claim.
In October 2024, Mathias was at a well-attended meeting in Kensington town hall, where representatives from Lime, and other ebike firms such as Forest, were there to listen to residents’ complaints about the rising number of poorly parked hire bikes. Charities representing blind residents and people with limited mobility have detailed how difficult chaotic parking has made navigating parts of London with looser regulations about returning ebikes. Mathias took the opportunity to tell Lime publicly about his partner’s injuries. “Mostly they were elderly people there complaining about the bikes being strewn all over the pavement,” he says. “When I got up and said my piece, people gasped.” Two Lime representatives came to speak to him afterwards and offered to help.
“We were really sorry to hear of your experience and we want to do everything we can to support you,” a senior public affairs manager emailed him the next day. Another email from Lime promises: “We are dedicated to ensuring that your concerns are properly addressed.” But somehow, this help has not materialised. A message sent via the Lime Claims Management System in January of this year offers “deepest regrets regarding what your wife Jane and yourself have been through as a result of this incident” but states that the firm has again reviewed its records and been unable to find details of who rented the bike or the identity of the rider.
“This vehicle was not being used as part of an active ride. As the rider was using the vehicle illegally, we have no record of the trip having occurred and no information on the rider,” the message notes. “Without any further details regarding the user’s identification we are unable to provide any further support on the incident at this time.” At one point, Lime told Mathias that they were willing to make a financial gesture, with no admission of liability, but this offer has not materialised.
Robert Goodsell also experienced difficulties securing compensation for his wife, Helen, 79, after she was struck by an underage rider, also riding on the pavement, as she stepped out from her front garden on to the street in north London in 2024. The video of the collision, filmed from their doorbell camera, gives a sense of the speed of the impact.
Her injuries were minor, but she still feels stressed when she sees Lime bikes on the road. When Robert tried to make an insurance claim on her behalf, he discovered that Lime’s insurers were unable to settle because the rider was underage, which was an exclusion under the terms of the insurance policy. Lime later offered a modest ex-gratia payment, without admission of liability.
He suggested that safety rules should be stencilled on to the bikes, setting out that bicycles must not be ridden on pavements and riders should not go through red lights, but although Lime expressed polite interest in the idea, it was not implemented.
“The challenges I would like to put to Lime are: why do they refuse to put basic safe riding guidance and rules visibly on their bikes? Why do they not visibly number their bikes so that the public can report bad behaviour?” he says. He also believes it would be helpful if the company was able to limit the bicycle’s speed in pedestrian areas.
The solicitor Sam Collard, the head of cycling accident claims at Osbornes law, says that for the past 18 months his firm has been receiving about 10 inquiries a month, with the vast majority involving Lime bikes, although there were also people wishing to claim damages against other ebike providers. Claims are divided between pedestrians hurt by cyclists, riders who have been injured by defective bikes while cycling and riders with fractures caused by the sheer weight of the bicycle falling on them, a phenomenon known as “Lime bike leg”. “It ranges from cuts and scrapes to more serious issues – brain injury, fractured skull. We’re in the process of settling a number of cases, with payments of between £20,000 and £100,000.”
Collard acknowledged it was more complicated to receive an insurance payout when the identity of the rider was unknown. “But certainly, morally, they have questions to answer about how a 10-year-old came to be riding their bike,” he says.
A private briefing prepared for Transport for London’s safety panel, and seen by the Evening Standard, showed that hire bikes, such as the battery-powered cycles provided by Lime, Forest and Voi, accounted for 32% of cyclist v pedestrian crashes attended by police in the capital in 2024, up from 3% in 2017. TfL figures also show that there was an 8% rise in serious injuries to people cycling in 2024 (the last period for which records are available), but notes that this increase is heavily outweighed by the 39% increase in cycling journeys recorded since a 2010-14 baseline, suggesting serious injury per cycle journey has reduced.
A spokesperson for Lime said: “Our thoughts are with Jane and her family, and we are sorry for the distress this incident has caused. We take incidents like this extremely seriously. This situation has been carefully reviewed and handled in line with our policies. We are also sorry to hear about Helen’s incident. Safety informs everything we do – from how we design and maintain our vehicles, to our rider education, and how we work with cities.”
The firm said the bike involved in Ouartsi’s accident was stolen and ridden illegally, not rented, and added that more than 99.99% of Lime trips in London last year ended without a reported incident. Lime launched a redesigned, smaller rental ebike, with batteries repositioned towards the back of the vehicle, earlier this year, rolling out 1,500 new cycles, in addition to the fleet of up to 50,000 dockless ebikes it already operates in the capital.
Lime fines riders who end their journeys in unauthorised places, with fines ranging between £2 and £20 and repeat offenders can be banned. The firm slows bikes down when they enter “go slow” areas, such as Regent’s Park or Hyde Park in London.
Mathias wants to be positive about these improvements, but is frustrated that the significant impact of the accident on their lives has not been recognised.
“The psychological impact of what happened is far reaching,” he says. “Jane and I had hopes and dreams for retirement and our future together which have been blighted.”
Traffic & Transport
Healey backs pro-growth case for Heathrow third runway after Burnham ducks issue | Heathrow third runway
John Healey has said there is a pro-growth case for going ahead with a third runway at Heathrow despite the prime minister declining to back it.
Healey’s predecessor as chancellor, Rachel Reeves, put approval of the long-planned runway at the heart of her “growth speech” last year, saying it would “make Britain the world’s best-connected place to do business”.
However, since arriving in No 10 in July, Andy Burnham has ducked the issue of whether the runway should go ahead, suggesting it should be “a matter for London and Londoners”.
A recent Sunday Times report suggested the prime minister had told the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, that he was “unconvinced” by arguments for the megaproject.
Asked for his views in Bangkok this week, Healey said the government would study responses to a public consultation, which recently closed. He appeared to strike a markedly more positive note than Burnham, however.
“I think in recent decades, and this is true in Heathrow and airports right across the UK, that they have been a big part of jobs and growth. And the case for a third runway at Heathrow has always been a case for growth,” he said.
Healey has insisted economic growth is his and Burnham’s “number one mission” in government.
Heathrow’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, has warned that investors could reassess their backing for the £33bn infrastructure project if it does not receive the prime minister’s support.
“Our shareholders would like to do this,” he said earlier this week. “They do think that things are taking a long time, and so far they have decided to be OK with that … But of course we cannot wait for ever.”
The airport’s owners include Qatar’s investment authority; the French private equity firm Ardian; Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC. They are expected to decide in the coming months whether to apply for formal planning permission.
Healey voted in favour of the third runway when the question was put to the House of Commons in 2018.
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The chancellor was in Bangkok to attend the International Monetary Fund annual meetings but has returned to London to put the finishing touches to his 28 October budget.
The UK was praised by the IMF this week for taking action to cut its deficit, while other large economies have opted not to do so. The IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, urged Healey to “stay the course” in his budget.
On Thursday, official figures showed the UK economy unexpectedly continued to grow in August.
Traffic & Transport
‘We should all be worried’: calls grow to limit London rollout of robotaxis | Transport
For passengers in Britain who want to try the latest ride, robotaxis are eagerly awaited: more than 100,000 are on Uber’s waitlist in London after the first UK services started in September.
Others view them with trepidation. “I think we should all be worried,” said Florentina Ghiuzan, an Uber driver from Essex. “I was shocked TfL approved it so soon. I knew change would come. But I thought it would come with a solution for us.”
London’s rollout is facing mounting opposition, from drivers fearing for their future and the capital’s politicians, with a critical report demanding Transport for London (TfL) is given full powers to permit or suspend operations.
Drivers will this weekend protest outside the headquarters and depot of Wayve, which has partnered with Uber to supply London’s first autonomous cabs for hire.
The direct action marks the latest salvo between unions and the global tech companies, whose driverless cars trials expanded this week to Manchester, with fears that hundreds of thousands of driver jobs could be lost.
Although only a handful of driverless cars now ply the streets, Uber has announced plans to deploy 100,000 Nvidia robotaxis worldwide starting next year, and its senior executives have talked about all new cars being autonomous by 2040. In San Francisco, Waymo’s fully autonomous cars already operate more than a quarter of all rides.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and bosses at TfL have expressed unease, and the London assembly’s transport committee has called for the government to devolve authority over autonomous taxi services.
In a report published this week, the committee said there was “considerable uncertainty around many of the claimed benefits of autonomous passenger vehicles”, and fears over the impact on public transport and congestion, as well as safeguarding and accessibility for disabled passengers.
The chair, Caroline Russell, said they were not convinced that London should welcome robotaxis. “Rather than just accepting the autonomous passenger service model proposed by operators, London should be looking at the transport problems it is trying to solve and then considering what solutions this technology could provide,” she said.
TfL is understood to see little benefit in the addition of robotaxi services to its crowded city streets, even if the numbers turn out to be relatively few in comparison to the wider traffic.
For the robotaxi companies, London is a tempting challenge to crack. Commercially, it is one of the biggest private hire markets in the world and a foothold in Europe; logistically, it is a tricky test bed to prove their vehicles are viable anywhere. Compared with the grid system of US cities in particular, it presents narrower, twisting and unruly streets, without the kind of rules on jaywalking that give cars priority on the road.
Under current rules, TfL licenses passenger services, but the government decides whether autonomous vehicles can operate. TfL has approved the start of Uber and Wayve’s limited robotaxi services, which retain a human safety driver in the front seat.
As it stands, when it comes to fully autonomous passenger services, the Department for Transport would issue permits for robotaxis with TfL only able to grant or refuse consent, rather than regulate their usage on London’s streets.
That has alarmed TfL, which sees parallels with when Uber first started business in London, creating problems few had considered, and was twice rebuffed in licence renewals as not a “fit and proper” operator. Quite how driverless cars will affect the capital’s transport ecosystem is unknown – and TfL wants to retain the power to intervene.
City hall is also concerned about the social implications of more than 100,000 licensed drivers losing income or a living. Those at the frontline in the App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU) are planning protests outside Wayve’s London base from this Saturday.
Their members include Ghiuzan, 42, who started working as a driver four years ago after going back to college. She said: “Our earnings are the same or even lower since I started – and with the robotaxis on the market it could get even worse.”
Ghiuzan said she was notified of the start of autonomous services as an Uber customer – but received no notification as a driver. She thinks people will switch to robotaxis: “Young people like them, it’s new, and you don’t have to pay the driver … I might have other skills, but for lots of drivers who are older and have done it their whole life, it’s going to be quite a challenge.”
Faisal Osman, 51, from east London, has been an Uber driver for 12 years, after switching from a long commute to an IT engineering job to allow him to work nights when he had children. He knows four other engineers who joined Uber: “We all used to talk about AI taking our jobs in IT. We thought, we’re not earning as much driving but we’ll be safe for a while, support the family, pay the bills. But robocabs are a massive concern.
“People might be interested but it will decimate the livelihoods of many people including me – I really wanted some authorities to say no.”
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Abdurzak Hadi, an Uber driver and theLondon chair of the ADCU, said Saturday’s protests would follow a similar action held at Waymo’s base in Park Royal in August. He said: “For me as a driver, I’m thinking about competing with a machine that’s not going to get tired, and could work 24 hours a day.
“But as a Londoner with family, I’m thinking about safety. As licensed drivers we’re taught by TfL about safeguarding, looking out for a vulnerable child, or for abuse. Or looking after passengers who can only read your lips. We’re a safety net. But losing my job – that’s also losing a safety net for my family.”
A recent report from the Centre for British Progress thinktank said more than 400,000 UK drivers (121,000 in London) would soon find “much of this work obsolete”, and urged the government to tax autonomous vehicles to help pay for the social consequences and economic losses.
The GMB union has demanded a “just transition” to help drivers reskill and find new work. Speaking at the Labour conference last month, the GMB’s Mark Betteridge said the union was not against change but added: “The people who do these jobs will know the reality far better of what change will look like … Drivers tell us they want some sort of transition plan to get through this.”
The roads minister, Justin Madders, told the meeting that autonomous vehicles could bring “opportunities for well-paid and unionised jobs” and the government wanted Britain to be a “world leader” in the technology. But, he added: “Sometimes government hasn’t worked on the impact on workers … We’re absolutely committed to making sure that doesn’t happen that time.”
An Uber spokesperson said: “Drivers and AVs [automated vehicles], which we believe will also offer considerable benefits to cities, are both expected to grow side by side for quite some time. That said, we shouldn’t hide that autonomous mobility will impact workers, riders, and the communities they live in.
“We are in conversations with the government and local stakeholders to ensure we can realise the promise of AVs while not leaving drivers and communities behind.”
Uber said it had not significantly increased its share of fares in London but VAT changes meant drivers were keeping less of the fares customers paid, and it said it was the only private hire operator in the UK recognising its drivers as workers with employment protections.
Wayve said that with Uber it was taking a “deliberately phased approach”, and had engaged extensively with political leaders, community organisations and accessibility advocates. A spokesperson said its robotaxis could “make a positive contribution to London’s transport system, helping to improve road safety, expand connectivity and give people more ways to travel.
“There is clear excitement in the potential for this technology to support safer, more accessible journeys, provided it is introduced responsibly and in partnership with the city. We have a positive, constructive relationship with TfL and we’re working pragmatically together to ensure any future services meet its expectations.”
A spokesperson for Khan said the mayor was committed to ensuring that Londoners benefitted from the opportunities new technologies could bring but shared “concerns about potential impacts on safety, congestion and jobs”, as any changes needed to “work for our world-leading transport system – including taxi and private hire services, and those who drive them”.
Traffic & Transport
Number of cloned number plates on UK roads at record high, data shows | Transport
The number of reported “cloned” vehicles involved in offences on UK roads has reached a record high, official data shows.
More than 11,400 drivers contacted the DVLA last year after being issued with fines for offences they said they did not recognise or accept responsibility for – most of which are believed to be down to cloning, where a number plate is copied fraudulently on similar vehicles to avoid enforcement cameras.
The number of complaints about misattribution was 9% higher than in 2024 and almost double the figure recorded in 2018, according to the RAC motoring organisation, which analysed data obtained under freedom of information requests.
The rising figures underscore concerns about the number of illegal number plates in use, allowing criminals to evade detection and dangerous drivers to avoid being caught.
Although drivers should provide number plate suppliers with the V5C vehicle logbook and proof of identity, an investigation last year uncovered more than 130 official suppliers in the UK willing to sell cloned versions, which allow drivers to dodge police and congestion charges.
Cloning vehicles has left many innocent car owners having to struggle to prove they were not responsible when enforcement camera images apparently caught their vehicle committing offences.
A parallel concern is the use of “ghost” plates which are designed to be unreadable by the UK’s 18,000 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, which enforce safety measures such as speed limits or lane closures on smart motorways.
The RAC said the UK needed to overhaul an outdated and poorly regulated number plate system. Its head of policy, Simon Williams, said: “If number plate suppliers were carrying out all the checks they’re supposed to, it would be much harder for dodgy drivers to buy cloned plates in the first place. It’s only when a fine arrives at a vehicle keeper’s home address that they realise someone else is driving around using their vehicle’s number plate illegally.”
He said that more also needed to be done to catch drivers with ghost plates, “whether that’s more police officers being equipped with handheld devices that can detect if plates are unreadable, updating ANPR cameras and introducing higher security standards for number plates and for those who produce them”.
The government last month said there would be a new nationwide crackdown on illegal number plates, with funding from the Department for Transport for a new roads policing team. A new National Roads Policing Coordination Centre would share intelligence as well as trialling new technology such as specialised goggles to detect number plates that have been designed to be unreadable by cameras.
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Drivers using an incorrectly displayed number plate can be fined up to £1,000.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We’re cracking down on illegal number plates with significant investment in a new roads policing team and innovative tech to stamp out the scourge of cloned numberplates.
“Illegal number plates help facilitate crime, and we are supporting the police to work with the DVLA to make it easier to report these crimes and support victims through a new digital tool.”
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