A London-based user of UK-based shared mobility startup Forest is considering legal action against the company, after she says an accident on one of the company’s e-bikes in April 2024 left her requiring surgery. She claims the e-bike was reported for a faulty motor by another user a few days after her accident.
25-year-old Harley (who preferred not to share her surname) first shared her story on TikTok, prompting other people to share their experiences of faulty Forest bikes causing accidents, with some saying they felt dismissed by the company’s customer services when reporting issues.
In response to these accounts, a Forest spokesperson said: “Rider safety is our number one priority. We take user reports incredibly seriously and implement rigorous maintenance and service programmes to upkeep our high safety standards. While we cannot comment on the specifics of this ongoing case, Forest will always support any investigation by providing the bike itself if needed, as well as its service and maintenance history, to the authorities.”
Faulty bikes
Harley says she was thrown off a Forest e-bike in London’s Colliers Wood area after it suddenly sped up unexpectedly, causing her to fall on her face and lose consciousness.
In an interview with Sifted, she adds she has since had several medical procedures as a result of the accident, including dental work for missing teeth, trauma therapy and surgery on one hand.
After a few weeks of hospital treatment, she says she flagged the incident to Forest, which responded with an offer of free minutes to use the bikes again. “That didn’t go down very well, because I’m never getting on a bike again,” says Harley; “it kind of just rubbed salt in the wound.”
She says that the startup then reimbursed her for the ride, and said it had checked the bike and cleared it as fine to ride, and that Forest also said it had serviced the bike two days before the accident. But Harley says that she later learned that four days following her accident, another user had reported the bike’s motor as faulty. Since the incident, she says Forest has denied her request for information on what routine servicing of the bikes involves.
Forest tells Sifted its servicing process includes an inspection every five to seven days for every bike, by the team who are completing battery swaps or rebalancing the fleet. The inspection involves checking the brakes, front and rear lights, wheel bolts and a visual inspection for any obvious damage.
Each e-bike then undergoes a further routine service inspection every three weeks, the company adds, which involves an on-street team checking key safety components and making minor adjustments if needed, and taking bikes that can’t be fixed easily to a warehouse.
Each bike also undergoes an inspection and service every three months where it is checked for damage and overall wear and tear, the company adds.
Forest also says it completed a risk assessment of the design of the bike model before it invested in purchasing its fleet, which involved dismantling the entire bike, riding it long distance and stress testing.
Unhappy customers
The TikTok video has sparked others to share their experiences in the comments, and Harley says she has had several people contact her with “scarily similar” incidents.
One user comments that “the motor cut out completely when I was in the middle of the huge junction by Vauxhall station, nearly got flattened by a truck”; another says “I once used a Forest bike with a dangerously faulty motor. I reported it, they were very dismissive and they kept it [the bike] active on their system.”
Another Forest user tells Sifted he crashed into a car in front of him while riding one of the company’s bikes — an accident he says was caused by faulty brakes. He says he requested the maintenance records of the bike to check when it was last serviced, and that Forest declined to share those records.
“I feel like there needs to be some kind of regulation for these companies to maintain the bike’s condition,” he says; “[Forest] did say they checked the bike and there was nothing wrong with it, but there clearly was.”
Forest says that when a bike is reported as faulty, it is automatically taken offline and made unavailable for hire. If the report includes any component related to safety then the bikes stay offline until they can be assessed and, in some cases, the bike will be made available to hire after being assessed as safe to ride, the company adds.
Forest tells Sifted the company completes more than 1m trips per month and that less than 1% report an issue, which can include things such as flat tyres and rubbish in the basket, with reports of faulty bikes being rare.
The startup has raised around $22.5m in backing from investors including Guil Mobility Ventures and founder of Cabify, Juan De Antonio.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/forest-ebikes-user-safety-concerns-news/
