A Newlane Helmet Could Have Saved Her £10,000
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We just read a sobering article in The Times called "I was in a Lime Bike accident. At A&E no one was surprised" by Flora Henry. She tells how a quick ride home on a Lime bike ended with a hospital trip - a broken wrist, fractured jaw, and chipped teeth.
What really stuck with us wasn’t just her injuries. It was what the radiographer told her: “No one wears a helmet, it’s (riding a limebike) just not worth the risk my love.” As a company who's worked on helmet design for years, we weren’t surprised but it’s still hard to hear.
That’s exactly the problem we’ve been working to solve at Newlane. Keeping people safe and stopping unnecessary hospital trips.
The Spontaneous Riding Problem
E-bikes are all about convenience and spontaneity. According to the article, Lime says “nearly half of Londoners aged 18–34 now use our rental ebikes weekly.”
That’s a huge number of trips, many totally unplanned. Flora’s story captures it perfectly: she was walking home from netball, spotted a Lime bike, and thought, “perfect!”
The problem, obviously, is when a ride is spontaneous, you almost never have a helmet with you.
Solutions That Don’t Work
Lime’s tried to encourage helmet use with a discount if riders prove they're wearing one. But as Flora notes, when she counted 12 riders near her local Tesco, only one had a helmet.
Other common ideas fail too:
- No one wants to carry a bulky helmet all day.
- Bike-share helmets get gross fast (would you share one?).
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Reminders alone don’t work when convenience is the main draw.
A Solution That Makes Sense
This is exactly why we created our folding helmet. We looked at how people actually behave and designed for it.
Our helmet folds to half its size, small enough to carry in a regular bag. It solves the problem that surgeon in The Times article described: now you can have a helmet with you when you spontaneously hop on a Lime bike.
The Impact on Safety
Reading Flora’s story is tough. A helmet wouldn’t have prevented her wrist injury, but it could have protected her face and teeth. She mentions £10,000 in future dental work, pain and expense that might have been avoided.
What’s striking is that medical staff weren’t even surprised. They see these injuries all the time.
Making Helmet Use Easy
We designed our helmet for:
- Anyone who might grab an e-bike on a whim.
- Commuters mixing bikes with buses or trains.
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People who don’t want to carry a bulky helmet all day.
Our customers tell us they wear helmets much more often now that they have one they can keep in their bag.
The Bottom Line
E-bikes are fantastic for cities, they reduce traffic, cut pollution, and make getting around easier. The Times article doesn’t suggest we should stop using them.
But as Flora writes: “Riders need to understand that while we might feel free and protected, that sense of safety is an illusion. We’re not in cars, we’re on bikes. And our bodies are vulnerable.”
We can have the convenience of e-bikes and the safety of helmets but only if protection is as convenient as the ride.
