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Bicycle & Skate LawProduct Liability And Product ImprovementA recent jury verdict in Santa Clara, California for $17 million
on behalf of a brain damaged bicycle rider against Bell Helmet Company
was a wake up call for bicycle helmet manufacturers, and disturbing
news for those of us who wear a helmet when we ride to protect ourselves
from head injuries. Just the other day, I was presenting a bicycle safety program including a nice little video entitled "The Bicycle Zone" to my daughter's second grade class. I was talking about how I represent many injured bicycle riders and have seen at least a dozen instances where a helmet had saved a rider from serious injury in a collision with a motor vehicle. "Wear your helmet" is often the last thing I say to one of my kids when I see them heading out for a bike ride, and it always makes me feel more secure when I strap on my helmet before swinging my leg over the top tube and heading out. Now it appears that bicycle helmets may not give us the protection we expected. Long time bicyclists may share my observation that bicycle helmets have gotten smaller and smaller over the years. The original hard shell helmets were converted climbers' helmets. When the bulky Bell Biker came out with the vented top, it was a real innovation. Since those early days, helmets have emerged which have many large air vents and a much smaller profile or silhouette. It is interesting to note that while "high performance" bicycle helmets have gotten smaller over the years, the same grade of motorcycle helmets have gone in the complete opposite direction, with chin bars and extensive coverage of the face and back of the neck. Unfortunately, part of the reason bicycle helmets have gotten so small relates to style and fashion, rather than performance-based improvement of design. Sometimes the only way a manufacturer has incentive to improve a poor product design is when it gets hit with a jury verdict finding that its product has a major safety defect. In the Santa Clara case an experienced rider with a Bell Oasis Pro bicycle helmet was in a collision with a left turning car in a low speed accident, a common type of accident. His helmeted head hit the "A pillar" of the automobile, leaving a clear impact mark on the left side of the helmet above the left ear. Post-accident analysis placed the impact speed at only between 9-12 mph. However, because of the design of the helmet, it failed to protect the most vulnerable area of the rider's skull, the lateral temporal temple bone which fractured, causing transsection of the middle meningeal artery and residual epidural bleeding, with resulting brain damage. Scientific analysis of the helmet revealed that the geometry of the design failed to protect the thinnest and most vulnerable portion of the skull. While the helmet was defended by the manufacturer as being in compliance with safety standards, such "standards" provide only a minimum level of impact protection and energy dispersion. Most riders do not realize that the helmet standards do not require that the entire surface of the helmet absorb the required level of energy, only the portion above an invisible "test line" which is one to two inches above the bottom edge of the helmet. If a rider has an impact in an accident which is below the area required to be tested by the "standards," the helmet may not provide sufficient protection to prevent an injury. It has been known for years by the helmet industry that the majority of head impacts occur below the "test line," and that the majority of injurious impacts are concentrated in the front or temporal region. While the helmet industry knows that studies have shown that something less than 5 percent of impacts occur at the crown of the helmet where the protection afforded by the helmet is greatest (where the helmet is thickest), it almost appears as if helmets are designed to meet the test standards, instead of protecting the head of the purchaser. Further, the new "cut away" profile helmets do little to protect riders from skull fractures at the base of the skull or low-level side impacts. While industry claims that their helmets comply with the "standards" are technically correct, these standards include the ASTM (American Society for Testing & Materials) standards adopted in large measure by the Consumer Product Safety Act, which are intended to encourage innovation and improvement while setting only a minimum base line for safety. In the last several years, it appears that bicycle helmet manufacturers are competing with each other to see who can make the tiniest helmet, not the safest head protection for consumers. Ironically, the retailer's catalog for the helmet product line which included the Oasis Pro boasted:
Well now there is a judgment against Bell for a bike helmet, and the jury in the Santa Clara case recognized that not all are "safe enough." Satisfaction of minimum standards that are not true performance standards (but instead only measure certain areas on a helmet which are not involved in the majority of head injury accidents) is not sufficient for making a product safe enough for use on the streets. The Santa Clara case served as a wake up call to an entire industry that something more than satisfaction of minimal standards is necessary to protect riders from injury. Next time you strap on your helmet think about how it has to protect your head, your whole head and not just the part that is above the "test line." The Santa Clara jury's work in holding the helmet manufacturer responsible for a preventable brain injury provides a financial, as well as a moral incentive, to the helmet industry to create a safer helmet design with a larger zone of protection. |
