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LOW speed bicycle crashes can badly injure 鈥攐r even kill鈥攃hildren
if they fall onto the ends of the handlebars. So a team of engineers is
redesigning the humble handlebar in a bid to make it safer.

Kristy Arbogast, a bioengineer at The Children鈥檚 Hospital of Philadelphia in
Pennsylvania, began the project with her colleagues after a study of serious
abdominal injuries in children in the past 30 years showed that more than a
third were caused by bicycle accidents. 鈥淭he task was to identify how the
injuries occurred and come up with some countermeasures,鈥� she says.

By interviewing the children and their parents, Arbogast and her team were
able to reconstruct many of the accidents and identified a common mechanism
responsible for serious injuries. They discovered that most occur when children
hit an obstacle at slow speed, causing them to topple over. To maintain their
balance they turn the handlebars through 90 degrees鈥攂ut their momentum
forces them into the end of the handlebars. The bike then falls over and the
other end of the handlebars hits the ground, ramming it into their abdomen.

The solution the group came up with is a handgrip
fitted with a spring and damping system
(see Graphic).
The spring absorbs up to 50 per cent of the forces
transmitted through the handlebars in an impact. The group hopes to
commercialise the device, which should add only a few dollars to the cost of a
bike. 鈥淏ut our task has been one of education because up until now, bicycle
manufacturers were unaware of the problem,鈥� says Arbogast.

The team has also approached the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to try
to persuade manufacturers to adopt the new design. A decision is expected later
this year.