LONDON — Eduardo Rodriguez doesn’t want to talk and neither do his drivers.

The owner of London Rickshaws is not too happy to see a journalist nosing around his business, which usually operates hidden away in a huge garage deep under Holborn Viaduct.

“None of my riders are available. They are all busy,” he says, as another cyclist asks to know why we’re there and two more skulk off into the shadows before we can engage them.

The atmosphere inside this cavernous workshop, where bikes come in for service and riders return to recuperate, is decidedly hostile on a warm summer night, perhaps for good reason.

Rickshaws have been back in the news again recently, after a brazen cyclist was filmed trying to charge £206 for a 1-mile journey through central London. The ensuing coverage of the story sparked a deep mistrust of the media while opening up a schism in the world of pedicabs.