‘I honestly don’t know how I survived’ … Jane Ouartsi. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘I honestly don’t know how I survived’ … Jane Ouartsi. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian Ebikes ‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation The collision was catastrophic. Jane Ouartsi suffered a fractured collarbone, two spinal fractures, a broken femur that took three operations to fix, and she had to learn to walk again like a baby. Why has no one taken responsibility for her life-changing injuries?
Amelia Gentleman Tue 7 Jul 2026 06.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google A s 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.
CCTV footage of Jane Ouartsi’s Lime bike accident 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.