‘I can’t remember the birth of my son because of a bike crash’

A cyclist has said he can’t remember the birth of his son after being severely injured in a road crash.

The doctor, who asked not to be named, was cycling along on St John’s Hill near Clapham Junction, south London, when he was hit by a passenger who was trying to get out of a bus in April last year.

The 31-year-old was passing a double-decker bus while riding in the cycle lane when a passenger used the emergency handle to open the door as the bus sat at a red traffic light.

Footage shows the passenger jumping directly on to the cycle path and into the cyclist, forcing him to try and stop his bike quickly before he landed face-first onto the concrete road.

The cyclist, a dad-of-two, was then taken to the hospital, where he had a CT scan, revealing a severe concussion, and he suffered injuries to his shoulder and arms.

He told Metro: ‘I was completely taken aback. I went over my handlebars, over the person and head-first into the ground.

‘There are seconds where I don’t remember what happened, except when I gained some recollection, there was the person who opened the emergency doors shouting “why did you do that?”‘

‘I had rolling blackouts and memory loss, and personality changes. For around seven months, I didn’t have the cognitive ability I normally would have. I was sleeping for 18 to 20 hours a day. I had to stop work – I lost my income.’

In the month following the crash, his second child was born – but he said he can’t remember it happening.

‘I am the father of a 16-year-old and a newborn. He was born around one month after the accident, so that really affected me because I wasn’t able to drive them to the hospital,’ he said.

‘The whole 72 hours that my partner was in labour, I was there, and I was awake, but I don’t remember a lot of it.

‘I had a complete personality change, I was extremely irritable compared to how I normally was and I was unable to hold conversations. I wouldn’t describe it as depressed, but I was just getting things done without any emotional attachment.

‘I had very bad short-term memory. I could not be able to remember conversations from the same day. I would try to write everything down as much as I could, and I came up with tactics to try to cope with it,’ he said.

Since then, he has struggled to find work and has been job hunting for a new role ever since.

He tried to seek compensation from the bus operator, Transport for London, but the company’s insurers said they weren’t liable as the bus driver or vehicle were not directly responsible for what happened.

Metro understands that no appeal was made because his injuries were not life-changing or life-threatening, and no criminal road traffic offence was identified at the time.

‘I understand their position that it’s the responsibility of the person who pressed the emergency button, but I don’t think that’s fair,’ he said, adding TfL found ‘there was no physical contact between me and the bus.’

He is now calling for a change to the emergency buttons on buses. He feels they should work similarly to trains, which generally block people from opening the door if the engine is running or the train is moving.

‘Even one second of oversight – that could have stopped me from having the majority of my last year from being terrible,’ he added.

Rosie Trew, TfL’s head of bus service delivery, told Metro: ‘Our thoughts are with the person who was injured following this incident on Lavender Hill last year.

‘We care deeply about the safety of everyone using the road network and we have support available for anyone affected. We would like to remind customers to only leave the bus when it is at the stop and the driver has opened the doors for everyone’s safety.’

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said: ‘At around 16:10hrs on Wednesday, 16 April 2025, officers responded to reports of an incident between a bus passenger and a cyclist on Lavender Hill, Battersea.

‘Officers attended the scene, where it was reported that a bus passenger had opened the rear doors of a stationary bus without the driver’s permission.

‘As they disembarked, they collided with a cyclist. The cyclist was taken to hospital by officers, where his injuries were assessed as non life changing and non life threatening.

‘The passenger had left the scene before officers arrived.’

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