Despite being fully up to date with the latest city driving rules, the Serco/Barclays hire bike relocaters are worrying the Evening Standard today:
Cyclist David Ellis, who was knocked over by a trailer used to transport the Mayor’s hire bikes between docking stations, today branded the vehicles “ludicrous”.
The photographer from Stoke Newington suffered cuts and bruising as well as injuries to his neck and hip after he was thrown from his bike and dragged under the trailer’s wheels while cycling with a friend in Theobald’s Road in Holborn on November 4.
(I wonder whether it was the same one that cheerfully honked along all the while that the october Critical Mass passed along Theobalds?)
Mr Ellis, 37, said the trailers were “a danger to cyclists” because they are wider than the electric vehicle towing them.
He called on the Mayor to improve safety among cycle hire scheme users by removing them and encouraging users to wear helmets.
I couldn’t agree more: it is simply common sense that users of electric vehicles should wear helmets, and the Standard are to be congratulated for the journalistic brilliance that produced this expert insight.
At War With The Motorist 
Great post – I’ve been following the rise and falls of the bike scheme, and am particularly interested in the logistics of transportation. I’ve submitted an FOI resquest to TFL about this so will keep you updated
As the Australians have shown us when they apparently wanted to discourage cycling in the nineties, mandatory helmets for motorists could be a great way to discourage motoring and encourage people to use more civilised modes of transport.
Thanks. I’m not sure about “fall” of the scheme though — despite all the TfL and Serco cockups along the way, it would certainly appear to be a popular and overall success story.
Aye, there is nothing like helmet law to kill off cycling schemes. Why is it that the right wing press is so keen to see cycling schemes fail?
One of the biggest cockups of the London hire scheme is having fixed racks, they were told before they started that best practice was to have racks you could move. That way when you need move the racks against the tidal flow, you pick up the whole rack of bikes and swop them for an empty rack, instead of all the extra handling they are doing now.