‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensation

‘I honestly don’t know how I survived’ … Jane Ouartsi. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianView image in fullscreen‘I honestly don’t know how I survived’ …

Jane Ouartsi. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian‘I felt my spine and body split’: the woman who was hit by a child on a Lime bike – and denied compensationThe 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?As 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 accidentLast 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.View image in fullscreen‘I thought my life was over’ … Ouartsi after the accident.

Photograph: Supplied imageOuartsi, a retired Marks & Spencer shop worker, says she has become a different person since being hit. When she was discharged from hospital, ambulance staff had to carry her up to her first-floor flat and, for a year, she was unable to walk upstairs to her bedroom or to the bathroom – she had to have a single bed and a commode installed in the sitting room. “I almost forgot what it looked like upstairs,” she says.

She spent weeks practising walking up steps, and Mathias, a joiner, had to take an extended period off work to help her recover, installing grab handles around the flat so she was able to manoeuvre herself into a standing position. It took months before she felt confident enough to take a bus, she still relies on a walking stick and the couple, who loved travelling to Scotland, do not envisage making the journey again.“I’m made up of nuts and bolts and screws.

I had to learn to walk again like a baby,” Ouartsi says, as Mathias pulls out an A4 file of X-ray photographs revealing different attempts by doctors to mend the complicated break in her femur. The titanium inserted into her leg buckled and failed, so it needed to be replaced. “I’m very scared of falling.

I don’t want to go back to hospital again. It has been a horrendous time.”Ouartsi wants the company to rethink the weight and the speed of the bicycles and impose stiff penalties on people who cycle irresponsibly.

“I honestly don’t know how I survived. I was a broken china doll – it’s amazing how the doctors put me back together.”View image in fullscreen‘I’m made up of nuts and bolts and screws’ …

Ouartsi in hospital. Photograph: Supplied imageIn the abstract, Ouartsi and Mathias support the idea that cities s