CPSC denies bicycle handlebar petition.

Commissioners recently voted 2-1 (with Commissioner Thomas Moore dissenting) to deny a petition from a Pediatric Injury Control Research Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which had asked CPSC to issue a performance standard for bicycle handlebars.

The petition stated that the hospital had seen numerous incidents of injuries to children resulting from trauma suffered in accidents where the victims were struck by the end of the handlebar.

Chairman Stratton and Commissioner Gall voted to deny the petition because the preliminary findings did not show that bicycle handlebar ends present an unreasonable risk of injury and that a mandatory performance standard is reasonably necessary to eliminate or reduce the risk in question. (3)

The letter of denial from Todd Stevenson, Secretary to the Commission, stated that the CPSC staff estimated that approximately 352,000 children ages 2 through 17 were treated at hospital emergency rooms in 2001 due to bicycle-related injuries. About 5,000 of these incidents were estimated to have involved trunk injuries due to impact with a bicycle handlebar. This amounts to approximately 1.4 percent of all bicycle injuries treated in emergency rooms for that year. (4) Thus, injuries associated with bicycle handlebar ends are a very small percentage of total bicycle-related injuries. (5)

Stevenson's letter pointed out that in making an "unreasonable risk" finding under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA), Commissioners should look to legal precedent.

One court said that "the requirement that the risk be 'unreasonable' necessarily involves a balancing test like that familiar in tort law: the regulation may issue if the severity of the injury that may result from the product, factored by the likelihood of the injury, offsets the harm the regulation itself imposes upon manufacturers and consumers." (6)

Stevenson ended by saying that CPSC staff is working with the ASTM Task Group for Bicycle Handlebars and Stems for a possible voluntary solution to the handlebar ends risk.

(3) Letter from the Office of the Secretary, U.S. CPSC, to Flaura Koplin Winston, MD, Ph.D., Director, Traumalink: The Interdisciplinary Pediatric Injury Control Research Center, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, July 16, 2003.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Office of the Secretary, Op Cit.

(6) Forester v. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 559 F.2d 774, 789 (D.C. Cir. 1977).