 Hi, I'm Vince Amodio, Mechanical Engineer at Consumer Product Safety Commission. Today I'm going to go over the CPSC Bicycle Regulation and compare that to the U.S. and International Bicycle Standards. This is an overview of what we're going to be discussing today. Again, the CPSC Bicycle Regulations, Bicycle Voluntary Standards, and I'm going to go over Bicycle Usage Conditions and a comparison of test requirements in CPSC Bicycle Regulation compared to the Voluntary Standards. We're going to then go over a few selected Bicycle Recalls. The CPSC Bicycle Regulation is found at 16 CFR Part 1512. This is the mandatory standard for bicycles sold in the United States, and it was originally codified in 1978. The purpose of the CPSC Bicycle Regulation is to reduce the risk of injury from bicycles sold to consumers in the United States. All bicycles that are sold in the United States must be certified to CPSC Bicycle Regulation. Certification of all bicycles designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger must be based on testing conducted by a third party conformity assessment body whose accreditation has been accepted by the CPSC. Since 1978, when the CPSC Bicycle Regulation was first established, there has only been minor changes. The CPSC Bicycle Regulation does not address Bicycle Usage Conditions. Bicycle Usage Conditions are usage-based on intended terrain and type of riding. It does also not address technical improvements in bicycle design since 1978. This includes disc brakes, electric motor assist, integrated shift brake levers. It also does not address use of modern materials such as composite fiber. The CPSC Bicycle Regulation sets basic requirements for mechanical and safety systems found on all bicycles regardless of intended use. It does include specific requirements for sidewalk bicycles, which are bicycles with a maximum saddle height of less than 635 millimeters. It also includes requirements for two or three-wheeled bicycles with electric assist motors that are less than 750 watts, one horsepower, with functioning pedals and a maximum speed of 20 miles per hour when operated solely on electric power. Here's an overview of the requirements that are in CPSC Bicycle Regulation Part 1512. It includes all the major systems for bicycles. There are other organizations that have bicycle standards. These are U.S. organizations and international organizations such as ISO and SEN. ASTM is the major U.S. standards organization body that has bicycle standards. ASTM F2043-13 is the standard classification for bicycle usage. This defines usage conditions for design of bicycles. It includes graphical icons for placement on bicycles, aftermarket components and instructional material to provide retailers and consumers with an indication of the intended usage condition of bicycles or aftermarket components. ASTM F2043-13 defines six usage conditions that I will be going over. There are other usage conditions such as BMX, young adult and electrically powered assisted cycles. There are quite a few ASTM bicycle standards. There are several general standards such as the one I had just mentioned, standard classification for bicycle usage. There is also standards for manually operated front wheel retention systems for bicycles, standard bicycle serial numbers, standard specification for bicycle grips. There are several standards for bicycle forks. There is a test method and there are also test specifications. The difference is the test method goes over the procedure for the test. The test specifications go over the requirements for that specific use condition. F2273 sets the test methods for bicycle forks. Similarly with frames for bicycles, there is a test method F2711-08. Then there are several bike standards specifications for various conditions for bicycle frames. The European bicycle community has a few bicycle standards established under SEN. These are EN15194 for electric powered assisted cycles and EN16054 for BMX bicycles. ISO is the major international standards organization for bicycles sold in Europe and across the world. ISO 8098 covers cycles for young children which are saddle heights less than 635mm which is similar to ASTM condition 0. ISO 42110 is a rather new and expanded bicycle standard which goes into a lot more depth than the old 42110. I'm now going to cover what ASTM 2043 talks about and sets up for usage conditions for bicycles. Condition 0 is similar to sidewalk bicycles which are intended for children aged 3 and up under 80 pounds that are intended to be used with parental supervision. This slide shows the icon that ASTM F2043 established for use on condition 0 bicycles. Generally this icon will be shown on users manuals for children's bicycles. It can also be included as a sticker that is placed on the bicycle so that you know the intended usage. Condition 1 is generally for road bikes also considered as racing bicycles and this is the icon that ASTM 2043 has set out. Condition 1 bicycles are generally used on paved surfaces and are intended to maintain contact with the ground. Condition 2 is for hybrid or gravel type bicycles where it may lose contact with the ground on some occasion but is not intended for very high jumps. Condition 3 is generally for mountain bicycles that can do jumps and drops of about 24 inches. Condition 4 is for downhill bicycles and bicycles intended to be used on rough trails where you may encounter jumps of up to 4 feet. Condition 5 is for very extreme mountain bicycles and downhill grades of over 40 kilometers per hour with extreme jumping. EN-16054 also has a standard for BMX type bicycles but there's no icons associated with this. And they also have 4210 for young adult bicycles. EN-15194 has a requirement for electric power assisted bicycles. I'm going to now talk about a little bit of a comparison between bicycle standards requirements. Again the CPSC Bicycle Regulation 16 CFR 1512 is mandatory requirements for bicycles, sidewalk bicycles and electric bicycles. But it does not set requirements for various use conditions for bicycles. Again these are the minimum test requirements that all bicycles sold in the United States must meet. ASTM, SEN and ISO has a voluntary bicycle standard and these are generally set based on bicycle components. They also establish the requirements based on intended usage for the bicycle. These requirements established in ASTM and the SEN and ISO may be more appropriate than CPSC's general test requirements to ensure that the bicycles and bicycle components meet the demands of the user. I'm going to cover a couple examples of the differences between CPSC's regulation and the international or voluntary regulations. Here's an example of CPSC's test requirement for handlebar strength. The CPSC test requirement is 2000 newtons or 450 pounds for bicycles and 1000 newtons and 225 pounds for sidewalk bicycles. In comparison, EN and ISO establish requirements based on usage conditions that may be different than what CPSC requirements are. For example, for use condition 1, CPSC requirement is 2000 newtons and 450 pounds regardless of use condition. Whereas ISO establishes different test requirements for different usage conditions which can range from 500 newtons for use condition 0 to 1600 newtons or higher based on the usage condition. Example 2 is a test requirement for fork bending fatigue. We can see that CPSC does not have a requirement for fork bending fatigue whereas international voluntary standards do have a fork bending fatigue test. This table shows that CPSC does not have a requirement for fork bending fatigue while ASTM, EN and ISO have various test requirements for fork bending fatigue. So as you can see if you're designing a fork it may be appropriate to use an ASTM or ISO test requirement to make sure that your bicycle meets the intended usage condition. Example 3 is fork and frame assembly test requirements. CPSC's test requires that the fork and frame assembly be tested for strength by application of a load of 890 newtons or at least 39.5 joules of energy, whichever results in the greater force in accordance with the frame test. The fork and frame assembly static load test is only done for CPSC requirements. ASTM, EN and ISO have fork and frame assembly horizontal loading fatigue test and fork and frame assembly folding mass impact test requirements that CPSC's testing does not require. This table shows the fork and frame assembly horizontal fatigue test requirements. Again you can see here that CPSC does not have this test. But if you're designing a bicycle for sale in the US or anywhere in the world you should consider using ASTM, EN or ISO test requirements to design your bicycle forks and frames. The following table has a list of bicycle recalls conducted by CPSC and manufacturers from 2012 to 2017. Again you can see some of the components that have shown up as in CPSC bicycle recalls. For example, CPSC recall 17-140 in April of 2017 was a stem that had been recalled for clamp bolts breaking. Various other recalls are for disc brakes, forks, shocks, wheels, seat posts. We've also seen frames fail. Typically these are carbon fiber frames that may not have been designed adequately. Bicycle recalls are one of the most common CPSC recalls. There has been some bicycle recalls for battery issues such as 15-124 in April of 2015. In this case a battery was recalled for overheating. Again, CPSC does not have any requirements for batteries itself. You should consider using an international standard for bicycle batteries. We're looking at various recalls again going back to 2012 and as you can see there has been quite a few. Pedals are one of the components that we've seen a lot of issues with recalls. Just to wrap up what we've been talking about we've covered the CPSC bicycle test requirements and international and U.S. voluntary standard requirements. As you can see there's several differences in what CPSC requires for sale and what voluntary standards and international standards require for testing. In many cases those differences may mean that a bicycle may fail under its intended use condition if it's not designed appropriately. So you should seriously look at whether just designing your bike to meet CPSC requirements will be enough. Perhaps you can consider using an ASTM or ISO test requirement to design your bicycle to make sure that it meets the intended usage condition. Thank you and now I'd like to present Caroline Paul who will give a talk on CPSC bicycle incident data and case studies. Thank you. As Vince mentioned my name is Caroline Paul and I am a mechanical engineer here at the CPSC. This presentation will talk about how CPSC gathers data on bicycle accidents and gives examples of a few case studies of actual incidents. CPSC gathers information on bicycle accidents by two main methods. The first is the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System also known as NICE. The second are in-depth investigations conducted by our own investigators. NICE collects injury data from emergency departments across the United States. About 100 hospitals participate and they called code actual incidents that come into the emergency department with a specific product code. For example the product code for bicycles and accessories is 5040 and the product code for mountain bicycles is 5033. Now from this information these hospitals are specifically chosen to be a national probability sample so that this data when it comes to us we can then use it to calculate national estimates for how many incidents occurred across the United States. We also get information of bicycle accidents that are reported to us and then we send out our investigators to ask the victim's questions. The investigator then writes up a detailed report called an in-depth investigation incident report. Now IDIs provide very good specific information on the incident occurred but they cannot be used to make national estimates. So between these two we get ideas of what's happening nationally and then we also get specific information on what actually occurred. We also have a report from our Epidemiology Epi department on bicycle injuries seen in hospital emergency departments in 2013. Now this report goes over how many injuries there were for instance in 2013. There were 531,000 injuries associated with bicycles and accessories seen in emergency departments. Over 90% of these resulted from the person riding the bicycle and more than half were described as falls from the bike. Terms in-depth investigations they provide like I said detailed information on incidents and there were 302 IDIs from January 2007 to January 2017. There are many components to a bicycle and any one of these can fail to cause a bicycle incident. For example the top component failures based on the IDIs that we've investigated include pedals, wheels, the frame of the bicycle, forks, brakes and that includes everything in the brake system, stems, crank arms and handlebars. As I mentioned before the IDIs provide specific information on the bicycle incidents and many of the same descriptions come up in the investigations with the likely failure type of the bicycle. These type descriptions include words like something detached or loosened and then the likely failure type associated with that usually something related to the assembly of the bicycle or the maintenance of the bicycle. Now others include descriptions such as something cracked, came apart, deformed or fractured and the likely failure type there is structural and this is very important to us because a structural failure is usually related to the design of the bicycle and this is important because that's usually something that can be addressed through voluntary standards. And then an overall malfunction that comes up quite often and that's an unknown failure type. So in terms of bicycle incidents that involve pedal failures here are some actual IDIs that were conducted and one, IDI 050211 CCC 1472 this is a number that allows us to reference the actual investigation we can go back and look at what the investigator found. In this case it was a 25 year old female who flipped over the handlebars because her left pedal detached and this was serious enough for her to be taken to the hospital via ambulance. Another IDI 090521CNE 44429 involved a 19 year old male where the right clipless pedal of his bicycle now this was a race bike so he was actually in a competition and the pedal actually fractured. Again it's a bit of a catastrophic failure and the victim fell to the pavement and with lacerations and contusions to his right knee. We also have wheel related incidents here two typical IDIs both involve the front wheel that separated from the suspension fork one was a 16 year old male he was just riding his bike I believe this one was first time use he had just bought it from the store and for reasons unknown the wheel just detached from the fork and the victim flew over the handlebars. The other one the same thing was an 11 year old male he had been riding this bike for a while he was riding over a speed bump and the front wheel detached and wedged in the bike and that caused the bike to stop suddenly and the victim to flip over the handlebars. Next we have some frame related incidents now in these these are two sample IDIs I'm not going to repeat the numbers you can look them up but in both cases in the first one the aluminum frame literally broke in half an 8 year old male was riding this bicycle and he was thrown over the handlebar and an ontograph driveway and this other incident was a 20 year old male on a bicycle and this frame right at the head tube actually fractured in half and again thrown over the handlebar and multiple lacerations that particular IDI the one that ends in 2105 the bicycle actually was one that was recalled recall number 00-030 so sometimes like I said before when you have a structural problem it ends up usually being part of the design and in this case it can lead to recalls. This next IDIs have to do with fork related incidents and in the first IDI the fork came apart as you can see in the picture it came apart pretty catastrophically 20 year old male was riding the bicycle at the time he was thrown over the handlebars hit the pavement had some serious injuries there on the second IDI the fork on the bike broke and I was a 14 year old male and actually you know his head and face struck the pavement when this happened and resulted in a broken jaw these next IDIs relate to the big breaks on the bicycle on the first one the front wheel locked up when applying the breaks 17 year old female was riding the bike at the time and anything that locks up the wheel of a bicycle the bicycle stopped suddenly in this case she was thrown off the bike onto a concrete picnic table and fractured both her arms and it was hospitalized for three days and second IDI a 25 year old male was riding the bicycle and he lost control attempting to apply the brakes and he ended up falling onto the pavement with head lacerations and road rash these next IDIs are related to the stem of the bike this is where the handlebars are attached and in the first IDI 13 year old male was riding the bicycle and the stem fractured as you can see in the picture that's again a pretty bad failure there a material failure and you lose control of the bicycle and this victim fell to the ground the second IDI actually there are three here the second one the victim of a 52 year old male was turning the handlebars and the wheel did not turn and the bike doesn't respond crashes can happen and she severely fractured her leg and the last one it was an 18 year old male riding a bicycle on the stem cracked and fell to the pavement with the wrist and elbow fracture next we have a crank arm these are the parts the pedal is attached to on your bicycle so this is where you're transferring torque and power to the bicycle and in this first IDI 15 year old male was riding the bicycle and the crank arm fractured again this is some type of material failure and that caused the victim to fall and had head injury and a broken arm the other IDI was a left crank arm fractured again some type of material failure and a 35 year old victim fell to the pavement and had abrasions and a laceration and we also now have handlebar related incidents these are again actual investigations of actual incidents the first one was a 57 year old female was riding a handlebar and her handlebar just suddenly collapsed so that's you lose control of your bicycle since you control your bicycle with the handlebars and so that caused her to fall and she needed surgery to treat a broken ankle another incident 11 year old male was riding a bicycle and again his handlebars became loose and lost control of the bicycle fell over and had injuries to the face so those were all just examples of actual IDIs as I said earlier we have hundreds of them and next we're going to look at specific case studies of failures of specific failures and examples of what the manufacturers can do to correct that the first case here we have a fork failure and this particular product was a road bike with a carbon fork again as Vince mentioned this is a material that's not even covered in the CPSC regulations this is all through voluntary standards but innovations in bicycle design are areas where a lot of problems can arise and in this case it was a road bike with a carbon fork and the issue was that the disc brake mount was fracturing now the corrective action to rectify the material failure the manufacturer redesigned the aluminum disc brake as well as the carbon fibers layups in the fork where the disc mount is attached and all of this was done to reduce the stress in that area and to validate the design the manufacturer had the redesigned fork was tested to the fork test requirements in EN 14764 that's 14764 which is for city and trekking bikes and again this is a case where the voluntary standards can really help in manufacturing making sure that they design a bicycle safely our second case is a frame failure and needless to say it's very bad if a frame fails in this case this was a folding bicycle and the aluminum frame could fracture at the frame hinge and as you can see in these photos that's a catastrophic failure there in the material now in this case to rectify the material failure the manufacturer modified the welding process at the subject area essentially to increase the thickness increase the strength where the fractures occurred and in addition the manufacturer improved the quality control process to ensure the frames meet specifications before the bike is assembled and put together and lastly to validate that the design change addressed the problem the manufacturer tested the frame to the frame fatigue and impact test requirements in EN 14764 and lastly seat post failure I've ridden mountain and road bicycles and I can tell you that it's very very bad if your seat post fails this particular product is a mountain bicycle it's called a 29er because the wheels are 29 inches in diameter and the issue in this case was a carbon seat post that can fracture and the manufacturer to rectify again a material failure was to modify the carbon fiber layering to cover the transition area that was failing essentially this is to strengthen that area and to validate that the design change addressed the problem the redesigned seat post was tested to the seat post fatigue test requirements in EN 14766 in addition the manufacturer conducted in-house static load testing to ensure the strength of the product so here you have a manufacturer that recognizes the failure and then not only do they find the requirement in the volunteer state that actually addresses this problem they did their own in-house testing so these are all just good practices to make sure that you're manufacturing a bike to be as safe as possible so in conclusion these are just examples of the many components that can and have failed on bicycles and we at the CPSC we encourage all manufacturers to learn from the recalls and the corrective actions and to really look at all the different standards out there mandatory and voluntary standards and apply all of them and best practices to prevent future incidents thank you