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news
Attempted bikejacking near King's Cross via FacebookLondon bikejackings: e-bike rider films moment would-be thief sprinted at him (+ video)
A London e-bike rider has filmed the moment a suspected bikejacker sprinted towards him on a popular cycle route in central London.
Facebook user Nicky Hill posted footage of the incident to the group E-Bikes UK, and said: “So just a little heads up for people. This happened today while travelling through King’s Cross area in London.
“I saw a guy running at me from the side so I was prepared. There was actually two of them as I saw after. Clearly going to try and steal the bike, luckily I got away!
“But just a warning or reminder that we are a target. Please be vigilant. He actually did push me but didn’t topple me so I carried on going.”
The incident happened on Regent Square, WC1 which forms part of a popular route for cyclists, linking the protected cycleways from Tottenham Court Road along Torrington Place and Tavistock Place to Cycleway 6 at the junction with Gray’s Inn Road, the location where the footage ends.
In replies to people commenting on the video, Mr Hill said that he takes the same route every day on his commute and suspects that the two would-be thieves had spotted him riding through there before and deliberately targeted him.
“I will go a different route from now as this was part of my daily commute. Possibly been watching me come past and was ready,” he said.
The bike he was riding was a Specialized Levo SL Comp Carbon, and he added in another reply: “The motor was kicking in and out to be honest so was lucky. I think by looking at it closer yes maybe they’ve been watching as who would run out like that for any old bike?
“Had traffic in front also so had to travel wrong side of road to get away!”
In the past year we’ve reported on a number of bikejackings here on road.cc, including a series of incidents happening last autumn in London’s Richmond Park perpetrated by muggers riding mopeds and carrying machetes.
There have also been numerous cases of cyclists being mugged for their bikes while riding on canal towpaths in Birmingham and the surrounding area.
The latest incident taking place on what is a relatively quiet stretch, in terms of pedestrian footfall, of a well-used cycle route does give rise to concern, however, hence Mr Hill’s advice to other cyclists to remain vigilant.
He added that he had passed the footage onto the Metropolitan Police, saying he did so because "This could be someone not as fortunate as I was. They’ll obviously do it again or have done in the past.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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38 comments
Looks more like a motorbike from the speed of the footage. Unrestricted bikes must appeal to thieves more I guess ?
They're doing around 24mph (rough calculation from Google maps 'cos I'm sad), which is good going but not outrageous, particularly when you consider what isn't that obvious on the video but I know as I often ride through there (part of C6 route from Kentish Town down to the river and beyond) that it's about a 1.5% downhill grade in that direction, I wouldn't have to push it at all on my road bike to do that speed there so wouldn't be hard on a top end road ebike without having to derestrict the motor.
Of course there was two of them.. I would have expected even more; those predatory thugs like to run in packs, as they are too gutless to try it on by themselves; an individual white chav might try and steal a bike locked up but the jackings seem to be done by a different ethnicity. In Australia, carjackings never occurred until the teenage children of Sudanese refugees started stealing cars this way; along with carjacking, their other method was aggravated burglary, targeting houses where expensive cars were kept and the Sudanese gangs would smash their way in, terrorising the occupants to hand over car keys and anything else of value. I'm so proud of the U.N. sending Australia such wonderful people.
I'm sure Australia is proud of sending your wonderful thoughts to a cycling forum too.
No, we're not proud of him at all. Gotta say though, 99.99% of Australians wouldn't be aware of what a "chav" is, so I suspect that he's actually one of yours or has lived in the UK.
Racist Australians are gonna be racist!
As above, not sure that he's Australian.
He's said so before and ex traffic cop.
Oh, the West have been sending Australia "wonderful people"* for a couple of centuries at least now.....
* are "wonderful people" similar in any way to "fine people"?...
Unless that was speeded up footage (which I don't think it was), whether her bike gets stolen or not should not be top of her list of worries. If she keeps riding like that, she'll be dead before much longer.
Did seem to be going faster than 15mph. But I guess you're refering to the way it was riden rather than the speed.....
Looking again looks 20+mph
You can hear the motor cutting in and out as he goes above 15 mph - ebikes are only restricted to 15.5 mph with the motor on, the speed you can go above that is only restricted by the power of your legs, on my Orbea Gain it's easy to get up to 35+ kph on the flat.
They are if they havent been modified and it seems a large minority on the streets these days have.
Again I am not certain but looks very much to me like at least 20mph in the clip
Yes there are masses of illegal ones out there but purpose-built ones from reputable manufacturers like Specialized to tend to be pretty hard to modify. As I said elsewhere, if you can get a road bike up to 25 mph you can get an ebike up to 25mph, the difference between my Orbea Gain road ebike and my carbon road non-ebike is about 8kgs, otherwise (once the motor cuts at the legal limit) they are pretty much the same.
" Mr Hill said that he"
Flight or Fright - not hard to put on a sprint for 10-15 seconds
Not sure I'd be usng a 6k+ bike on a regular london commute though !
How is that at all relevant to the article?
Probably a Daily Mail reader confused about the recent highway code changes and expecting a cyclist to give way (or dismount!) for a pedestrian wishing to cross the road!
Pretty scary experience and did well to get away. Good job the e-bike was still putting the power down at 25mph!
Bore. Ing.
Got nothing better to do with your life?
.
Perhaps not.
Have you?
Spot on there Captain. Being a man of leisure, I have indeed been able to allocate time to this today.
.
I probably have got better things to do. Or so my boss thinks.....
Oo you are not very nice at all are you? Kinda flinty.
As I noted above (or maybe below?) with a good road ebike it's perfectly possible to achieve speeds close to that of a good road bike after the power cuts off if you have the fitness - and I should think the rider's adrenaline was substantially boosting his wattage.
yep, could well be. also could be a s-pedelec registered as a moped.
If anything, it's a good argument for increasing the limit on e-bikes!
How? It does not begin to address the issues.
I was joking a bit! Although, I do think that a limit of 20mph would be beneficial for e-bikes. Would be great for longer country road type commutes and make overtaking less of an issue in urban 20mph zones.
Thats my old commuting route - used to be v busy.
Maybe its shock but thats some terrible riding from the e-biker.
What a nonsense thing to say, he's been subjected to a random attack in broad daylight completely out of the blue that could've put him in hospital and he's quite rightly getting away as fast as possible and somehow you're going to criticise him for it? Pathetic
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