“It would have been safer if they had nicked it.”
So said a shaken Anna Semlyen today after she discovered that her e-bike had been tampered with.
Anna, the co-organise of the York Naked Bike Ride protest on 10 June, has a Transeo electric bike after she was injured in a road crash in 1992.
“I still have a broken left fibula. And so it’s otherwise difficult for me to get around without a bike. I can’t walk all that far without limping.
“It’s a Transeo bike that I bought fairly recently because the previous one got stolen.
“It says on it, I am disabled by a broken leg. And this is my mobility vehicle that’s equivalent to my wheelchair, in effect, because I need it so I won’t make my leg worse.”
Anna, who is also a campaigner for the 20s Plenty transport campaign, told YorkMix Radio what happened. “What thieves have done is taken out six bolts from the back disc brake, and the main bolts that attached at the side of the bike to the disc brakes, leaving my back wheel unsafe, and the brakes broken at the back.
“It’s equivalent to cutting the brake cable of a car.
“I was riding it around thinking, Oh, these brakes aren’t working very well, I’ll ask my friends to come down and help me fix them.
“I don’t quite know when it happened, probably Friday evening, I think.
“I also understand that these parts are very cheap. They are six different bolts that attach your disc brakes to the back of the bike, and then as a single bolt that attaches the the bike frame into the back wheel hub.
“So I don’t know why they would bother to take them off my bike.”
She dreads to think what might have happened.
“Why are you attacking a bike that is labelled a disability vehicle? It’s completely appalling and nasty behaviour to the point of potentially putting my life at risk,” she said.
“What this does is leave me with a ticking time bomb, with a back wheel that is so unsafe that if I hit something hard, the wheel’s going to come off.”
She sent the video to her mechanic.
“He said it’s criminal damage damage to the point where they could have killed me.
“I feel shaken. I’m extremely upset about this. This is very stressful – it’s not just a little bit of theft. It’s an appalling version of theft that is completely dangerous to my my welfare.”
She is warning other e-bike owners to be on their guard.
[tptn_list limit=3 daily=1 hour_range=1]