Product safety lawyers welcome council threat to remove Lime e-bikes

The threat from Brent Council comes after increasing instances of the dockless e-bikes being inconsiderately parked and abandoned, causing issues for disabled people and pedestrians. 

The council has told Lime that it needs to install dedicated parking bays for the e-bikes as well as improve in-borough resources to remove them if they are inconsiderately parked or abandoned.  

Lime, which has operated in the borough since 2019, has been given a deadline of 31 October 2024 to implement these measures or it will be forced to remove its e-bikes from the borough.  

Lawyers from Leigh Day’s product safety team have previously raised concerns over the safety of e-bikes following reports of batteries catching fire in the US and a product recall for e-bike conversion kits. 

Leigh Day product safety partner Thomas Jervis said: 

“It is disappointing to note that Lime have required an ultimatum from Brent Council in order to deal with this issue which can end up being positively dangerous for other people, particularly vulnerable or disabled people. The company should quite rightly be responsible for dealing with the clean-up of the foreseeable misuse of these products”.