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Australian coroner asks standards body to look into mandatory safe life for bike parts after man was killed by aluminium steerer tube failure

Victim’s bike had recently been serviced but coroner said flaw could not have been picked up

A coroner in Canberra has recommended that Standards Australia investigate a mandatory safe life for bicycles components after the alloy steerer tube in a man’s bicycle "unexpectedly and catastrophically failed" in January 2015 resulting in his death.

Lisbeth Campbell made the call after investigating the death of Richard Stanton.

The Age reports that Stanton had been riding with a friend at about 35km/h on Kent Street in Deakin when the carbon fork of his 10-year-old Trek 2000 failed and he fell from his bike. He suffered head, facial and neck injuries and died three days later in hospital.

Campbell said that Stanton's riding, maintenance of the bike and any previous minor prangs had no bearing on the crash and said the failure had most likely been caused by a fatigue fracture in the aluminium steering tube.

She said the crack could not have been picked up by Stanton or the mechanics who had serviced his bike less than two months earlier and deemed it an "inclusion flaw" from the manufacturing process.

Campbell pointed to upper safe life limits in the aerospace industry, which uses many of the same materials found in high-end bikes and recommended that Standards Australia look into this.

Peter Bourke of Bicycle Industries Australia said there would be difficulties in imposing the same standards for bikes, pointing out that it would be difficult to guarantee the integrity of an ageing bike without subjecting it to x-rays and other expensive tests. "It is certainly one of the risks associated with buying a second-hand bike, especially of certain materials,” he added.

Stanton’s widow, Sonia, agreed there were issues but hoped there could be some sort of solution.

"A bike doesn't have a speedometer, so the age of a bike can mean so many different things,” she said. “If someone parks a bike in a garage and rides it twice a year for the first five years, then clearly at the end of the first five years it hasn't got anything nearly like the metal fatigue of a bike someone rides 6,000 kilometres a year. So it is difficult but I still am hopeful that difficulty can be gotten around in some way."

Jason Pye, general manager of Trek Australia and New Zealand said: "Whilst we may differ on the coroner's conclusions as the ultimate cause of the accident in this case, Trek is committed to rider safety and education and we're therefore more than happy to work with the coroner to put forward consumer and regulatory outreach on the importance of regular bicycle and safety maintenance."

In 2014, Gravesend cyclist Joseph Love launched a £1 million lawsuit against Halfords after suffering permanent facial disfigurement as a result of a crash he claimed had been caused by a faulty steerer tube.

After hearing from expert witnesses, Judge Sir Colin Mackay dismissed the claim. He found that it was probable there was nothing wrong with the bike when it was bought in May 2008.

The judge said he believed the steerer tube snapped after the cyclist hit a row of posts after he lost concentration while “riding too fast” to make up ground on his friend.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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12 comments

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FatBoyW | 7 years ago
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Yep 2006 Paris Roubaix. Broke his collarbone.

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FatBoyW | 7 years ago
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To be fair the dramatic failure of components does happen more than once in a blue moon. I know someone with a dramatic and severe scar from a sudden failure of a stem. I have had a stem faceplate snap, and most memorably was George Hincapie throwing his arms in the air during a classics race (Roubaix?) then realised he still had his bars in his hands! That was a steerer failure. 

Point is fortunately when these things happen for most of us it results in grazes and sometimes a cracked bone not a fatality. Tragic but I would to be forced onto heavily built steel bikes to minimise such problems.

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Flying Scot | 7 years ago
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I don't really see this 'flying'. There is a very restricted pool of aircraft, they are inspected regularly by trained personnel, they know where they all are, they can be monitored and bulletins issued if an Issue is found anywhere on the fleet.

 

How on earth do you do that for cycles?

I have a suggestions though

All production forks, stems and handlebars should be fully fatigue tested, crash tested etc. Over a long period before being released for sale. And maintenance instructions need to more specific and not just a load of arse covering.

 

I know this would lead to a more limited range of such parts, but so what, none have an especially huge performance impact, but all have a devastating impact if they fail.

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antigee | 7 years ago
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mortbone | 7 years ago
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I never considered that metal would fatigue until my cheap FSA crank did this while commuting.

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Municipal Waste | 7 years ago
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Marin wrote in their owner's manuals that light weight handlebars should be replaced every two years.
It didn't help them (or the guy who died) when a 10 year old set of bars broke after a few crashes.

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freebsd_frank | 7 years ago
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Quote:

A fatigue crack growing slowly over 10 years would surely be noticeable at some point.

Not necessarily. With fatigue failure, what happens is that a small crack initiates from what may be some sort of defect in the material which can be microscopic. Over the course of more stress cycles, the crack will grow until it reaches what's known as the "critical crack length" and the crack will immediately propagate across the width of the material. This results in catastrophic failure of the component, which is what happened in this case.

 

Most Al alloys are known not to have a "fatigue limit" like carbon steel has ie. if you keep the stresses below a certain level, it will not fatigue fail.

 

That's why you should replace critical Al alloy componentry on a bike such as handlebars and stems after you've done plenty of miles on them, or you'll end up face-planting like this unfortunate bloke did.

 

 

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imaca replied to freebsd_frank | 7 years ago
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freebsd_frank wrote:

Quote:

A fatigue crack growing slowly over 10 years would surely be noticeable at some point.

Not necessarily. With fatigue failure, what happens is that a small crack initiates from what may be some sort of defect in the material which can be microscopic. Over the course of more stress cycles, the crack will grow until it reaches what's known as the "critical crack length" and the crack will immediately propagate across the width of the material. This results in catastrophic failure of the component, which is what happened in this case.

 

Most Al alloys are known not to have a "fatigue limit" like carbon steel has ie. if you keep the stresses below a certain level, it will not fatigue fail.

 

That's why you should replace critical Al alloy componentry on a bike such as handlebars and stems after you've done plenty of miles on them, or you'll end up face-planting like this unfortunate bloke did.

 

 

Visual inspection is still a useful and important part of aircraft fatigue detection. While aluminium has a limited fatigue life in practice well designed parts can last a long time. For example there are lots of 80 + year old aircraft flying around with original fuselage and wings. I've seen old style quill stems fail, the stems had a small diameter  (1") and the area of highest stress was at the edge of the top bearing where a shap edge would start to press against the stem as the bearing aged increasing the risk of crack propagation. The design of modern stems and bars is such that I would be suprised to see a fatigue failure (as opposed to crash/incorrect assembly damage). Steerer tubes on the other hand are highly stressed at the lower bearing and are hidden from view. A visual inspection in this case may have picked up the issue but was unlikley to have occured unless the bike shop changed the bearings. With the advent of 1 1/8 headsets, bearings last a very long time and rarely need replacement. My old 2008 Trek Madone had an aluminium steerer and I occasionally drop it out to check it.  After reading this story those checks may become a little more frequent.

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Yorkshire wallet | 7 years ago
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I know someone died but I hate this sort of thing and it's red tape potential. As has been pointed out, how many millions upon millions of miles have bikes done and not had this sort of failure but the first time it happens then it's time for legislation. 

I'm also putting my money (or lack of it) where my mouth is and running some chinese forks on one bike. Hopefully mine will never fail. 

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Jamminatrix | 7 years ago
4 likes

What type of stem and headset were used? How many spacers below and above the stem? Star fangled nut or compression plug? Steerer minimum insertion into stem met? Were the stem bolts correctly torqued? Didn't see any mention of any of these? How much corrosion from rider's sweat? When was the last time the headset was serviced? A fatigue crack growing slowly over 10 years would surely be noticeable at some point.

Way too many unnamed variables to specifically name design flaw, especially when there's been literally tens of thousands of these exact forks with no reported incidents.

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mike the bike | 7 years ago
3 likes

 

She can recommend what she likes but this is never going to happen.  It would be unenforceable, expensive and intrusive.  Apart from that it's a good idea.

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StuInNorway replied to mike the bike | 7 years ago
2 likes

mike the bike wrote:

 

She can recommend what she likes but this is never going to happen.  It would be unenforceable, expensive and intrusive.  Apart from that it's a good idea.

 

While it could never be enforceable, it would not be inconceivable of a manufacturer to include a reccomendation that certain "critical" components should ideally be replaced after xx years or, xx,ooo km/miles.  Clearly anything reaching these levels would be outside of warranty anyway. I feel especially with carbon items, where failure is be default "spectacular" wherear with metals there is a better chance of a failure happening in a manner that gives some warning and allowing the rider some chance to stop/slow down.  
Having a friend who had a carbon seat post fail catastrohically and come very close to the ragged top ripping an artery open in his thigh, I've seen what a catastrophic failure does..  

Realistically it's likely to be the people with decent logging of their rides (Strava includes info on how far a bike has travelled) so shouldn't be too hard to add in setting a warning when you get to a set limit. 

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