Cyclist dies after crash during Tour of Colombia

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news?slug...v=ap&type=lgns
Cyclist dies after crash during Tour of Colombia

June 11, 2004
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A cyclist was killed Friday when he crashed during
the fifth stage of the Tour of Colombia.
Juan Barrero, a 31-year-old Colombian, suffered serious head injuries after he
got tangled up with other cyclists and fell while negotiating a fast downhill
curve.
He had a cardiac arrest and died while being transported from a small hospital
to a larger one, said Orlando Cardona, director of the San Vicente de Paul
Hospital, located about 100 miles west of Bogota.
Two other cyclists were also injured in the crash, Cardona said.
``The fall was massive and Juan took the brunt of it,'' said his brother,
Manuel Barrero, also riding in the tour.

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 19:31:20 +0100, "Tony Raven"
wrote:

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news?slug...v=ap&type=lgns
Cyclist dies after crash during Tour of Colombia

June 11, 2004
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A cyclist was killed Friday when he crashed during
the fifth stage of the Tour of Colombia.
Juan Barrero, a 31-year-old Colombian, suffered serious head injuries after he
got tangled up with other cyclists and fell while negotiating a fast downhill
curve.
He had a cardiac arrest and died while being transported from a small hospital
to a larger one, said Orlando Cardona, director of the San Vicente de Paul
Hospital, located about 100 miles west of Bogota.
Two other cyclists were also injured in the crash, Cardona said.
``The fall was massive and Juan took the brunt of it,'' said his brother,
Manuel Barrero, also riding in the tour.


And yes, he was wearing a helmet:

http://www.dailypeloton.com/displayarticle.asp?pk=6391

What should have been a day of epic cycling, with the main contenders
battling it out on the first real mountain stage of the 54th Vuelta a
Colombia, from Santa Rosa de Cabral to Jericó over 171 km. turned a
day of sadness and tragedy as the 31-year-old cyclist Juan Barrero of
the Alcaldía de Fusagasugá-Juegos Nacionales 2004 team lost his life
after falling heavily on a descent, less than nine minutes into the
stage.

Riding at a speed of about 80 km., the man got tangled up with other
cyclists and fell while negotiating a fast downhill curve. He hit a
rock and, despite wearing a helmet, reportedly suffered serious head
and thorax injuries, and later had a cardiac arrest; Barrero died
while being transported from the Hospital de Santa Rosa de Cabal to
the larger "San Jorge de Pereira", located about 100 miles west of
Bogotá, said Hospital director Orlando Cardona.

Two other riders, Barrero's teammate Victor Hugo González, who
fractured his wrist and collarbone, and Óscar Santo Álvarez, that had
some bruises on his left arm and thigh, were also involved and injured
in the pile-up, Cardona said. González was the only one that briefly
commented "We were on the descent between Santa Rosa and Chinchiná,
everything was going fine, but the road was wet, and all of sudden we
found ourselves on the ground". "The fall was massive and Juan took
the brunt of it," Juan's brother Manuel Barrero, also riding in the
tour, added.

Born in Facatativá on May 9, 1973, Juan Antonio Barrero had been a
professional rider for eight years, most of which in the ranks of his
current team. Barrero took part in several editions of the Vuelta a
Colombia as well as other races like Clásico RCN, Vuelta a Chiriquí
and the Tour of Costarica, and more local events in his home country.
He was Cundinamarca Provincial Champion both in 1998 and the past
season, and this year notched up a stage victory at Clásica de
Fusagasugá.

From the cyclingnew.com site


'Death in Tour of Colombia

....The fall occurred some five minutes after the start, but due to the
descent the peloton was already descending at high speed. Other riders
said the turn was slick with some type of liquid on the surface.
Barrero suffered injuries to the head, cervical area, and the thorax
area. Ambulance attention was immediate and all resuscitation measures
were given at the hospital. All three riders were wearing appropriate
helmets.'


Look out for all the 'cycle helmet again fails to save cyclist in
crash' headlines...

On 12 Jun 2004 14:50:54 -0700, (Howard)
wrote (more or less):

From the cyclingnew.com site


'Death in Tour of Colombia

...The fall occurred some five minutes after the start, but due to the
descent the peloton was already descending at high speed. Other riders
said the turn was slick with some type of liquid on the surface.
Barrero suffered injuries to the head, cervical area, and the thorax
area. Ambulance attention was immediate and all resuscitation measures
were given at the hospital. All three riders were wearing appropriate
helmets.'

I doubt /any/ of them were wearing helmets appropriate for cycling at
80Km/h down steep roads covered in a slippy fluid.

They were probably wearing bicycle helmets, which are appropriate for
up to about 12mph (about 19Km/h)

An appropriate helmet would have been a heavy-duty motorbike helmet.
then again, that'd just have resulted in a spate of 'cyclists die from
heat prostration' stories.

Look out for all the 'cycle helmet again fails to save cyclist in
crash' headlines...


--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

They were probably wearing bicycle helmets, which are appropriate for
up to about 12mph (about 19Km/h)

I'm not quite sure where this 12mph figure comes from? In the Snell
standards (http://www.smf.org/stds.html) helmets are tested by simulating
a 2.2 metre fall onto a flat anvil or 1.3 metres onto other surfaces. It's
a long time since I did any physics so this may be incorrect:

S=0.5at^2 = 2.2=0.5*10*t^2
t = sqrt(2.2/(0.5*10))
V = at = 6.6 m/s

which corresponds to about 23kmh ~= 15mph which is in the right ball park?

also a 1.3m drop ~= 11.4mph impact

I'm left wondering how well this simulates being thrown over the
handlebars, where you have your whole body weight behind your head - the
tests just use a 5kg dummy head.

If you go ice skating and aren't better than me, you'll find that it
doesn't hurt much more if you fall over at speed compared to if you fall
over whilst standing still - unless you slide into something.

On the same principle, presumably a 12mph helmet might give some useful
protection if you fall off at high speed but scrape to a halt on the
road without hitting anything else. Or else fall off, scrape
almost-but-not-quite to a halt, then hit something?

An appropriate helmet would have been a heavy-duty motorbike helmet.

Interestingly, motorcycle helmet drop distances are 3m and 2.2m
respectively - not as large a difference as I expected. Though I guess
there's more to their differences than impact absorbtion

then again, that'd just have resulted in a spate of 'cyclists die from
heat prostration' stories.

On a related topic, I wonder how big a drop in cycling we would see if
helmets were made compulsory in the uk? I can see how wearing a cycle
helmet might be onerous in Australia because it's hot. I imagine
that's less of a problem here (so far).

Incidentally (to state my position), I currently wear a helmet about 50%
of the time. I'm opposed to helmet compulsion but undecided whether to
wear one myself. I am interested in the theory that helmets increase
torsional injuries, and I accept they're far from the panacea they're made
out to be.

AC

There are a number of differing standards for helmets, the highest one
give a 15 MPH rating, the others 12 MPH or so. In reality many helmets
when independenty tested fail to even meet these standards and when
incorrectly worn quite possibly no protection at all.

The main point about the impact absorbtion abilities of helmets is
that the sort of impacts they can absorb, be they sustained in a low
or a high speed fall, are unlikely to be life threatening in any case.
In an impact high enough to be life threatening a helmet has such a
low ability to absorb impacts it will make little or no difference and
may well just fail catastrophically.

As the energy that has to be dissipated in a crash rises with the
square of the speed a rough estimate of the forces involved can be
calculated as follows:

At 12 MPH the force would be 12 squared x mass. Lets give the mass, a
standard value of 1 so we can compare the effects of speed. This gives
a value of 144 at 12 MPH.

At 42 mph the force would be 42 squared x 1 = 1764. Substracting the
tested ability of a helmet to absorb energy from this this leaves
1620, which still equates to 40.2 MPH, still very likely to result in
a fatality.

When it comes to 'road safety' helmets are a serious distraction away
from the real issues: reducing the number of collisions that occur and
reducing vehicle speeds to a low enough level that colisions are
survivable when they do occur.

For one I would accept the compulsory wearing of helmets to give
protection from minor injuries, and the odd rare serious injury, at
speeds below 15 MPH if vehicle speeds were restricted to 15 MPH to
prevent all those serious injuries that occur above 15 MPH. (Given
current police guidelines 15 MPH would be enforced at almost 20 MPH
but with ISA systems that guarantee motor vehicles could not exceed 20
MPh I might support a universal 20 MPH limit in towns and on country
lanes).

anonymous coward wrote:

I'm not quite sure where this 12mph figure comes from? In the Snell
standards (http://www.smf.org/stds.html) helmets are tested by
simulating a 2.2 metre fall onto a flat anvil or 1.3 metres onto
other surfaces.

Pop into your LBS some time and try to find a Snell certified helmet. The
helmet makers pushed through a much lower set of standards to allow them to
produce something which was (a) cheaper to make for the same sale price and
(b) more acceptable to users who don't like having their heads boiled when
the ambient temperature is above freezing.

--
Guy
===
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

Victory is ours! Down with Eric the Half A Brain!

in message , anonymous
coward ') wrote:

They were probably wearing bicycle helmets, which are appropriate for
up to about 12mph (about 19Km/h)

I'm not quite sure where this 12mph figure comes from? In the Snell
standards (http://www.smf.org/stds.html) helmets are tested by
simulating a 2.2 metre fall onto a flat anvil or 1.3 metres onto other
surfaces. It's a long time since I did any physics so this may be
incorrect:

S=0.5at^2 = 2.2=0.5*10*t^2
t = sqrt(2.2/(0.5*10))
V = at = 6.6 m/s

which corresponds to about 23kmh ~= 15mph which is in the right ball
park?

also a 1.3m drop ~= 11.4mph impact

Yup. When I calculated it out I rounded that up to 12mph which is
probably where the 12mph figure comes from.

I'm left wondering how well this simulates being thrown over the
handlebars, where you have your whole body weight behind your head -
the tests just use a 5kg dummy head.

It's a joke, isn't it?

I mean, if you topple over sideways with your bike stationary that
almost gives the 15mph impact since your head started about 2m up. But
if (as has never yet happened to me) you go over the handlebars, you
must have considerable forward momentum - you cannot conceivably go
over the handlebars with the bike stationary - and that forward
momentum must add to the speed of impact. So an 'over the bars' fall
with no other vehicle involved onto a flat road must in most cases
exceed the design parameters of a helmet. If the surface you fall on
isn't flat...

It's crazy!

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

Tony Blair's epitaph, #1: Here lies Tony Blair.
Tony Blair's epitaph, #2: Trust me.

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 00:31:30 -0700, Howard wrote:

There are a number of differing standards for helmets, the highest one
give a 15 MPH rating, the others 12 MPH or so. In reality many helmets
when independenty tested fail to even meet these standards and when
incorrectly worn quite possibly no protection at all.

The main point about the impact absorbtion abilities of helmets is
that the sort of impacts they can absorb, be they sustained in a low
or a high speed fall, are unlikely to be life threatening in any case.

I've read a few newspaper articles to the effect that someone has been
punched, fallen and hit their head against a kerbstone and died.
I wonder whether low-speed impacts generally _are_ innocuous, or whether
we're so good at protecting our noggins that they _seem_ innocuous because
we manage to avoid or mitigate most of them?

In an impact high enough to be life threatening a helmet has such a
low ability to absorb impacts it will make little or no difference and
may well just fail catastrophically.

As the energy that has to be dissipated in a crash rises with the
square of the speed a rough estimate of the forces involved can be
calculated as follows:

At 12 MPH the force would be 12 squared x mass. Lets give the mass, a
standard value of 1 so we can compare the effects of speed. This gives
a value of 144 at 12 MPH.

At 42 mph the force would be 42 squared x 1 = 1764. Substracting the
tested ability of a helmet to absorb energy from this this leaves
1620, which still equates to 40.2 MPH, still very likely to result in
a fatality.

You haven't addressed my main point at all, which is that in real-life
collisions the energy of any individual impact does not have to be
equal to the total energy theoretically available in a collision occuring
at that speed.

For example, imagine a van pulls out of a side junction, and I hit it
sideways on (90 degrees) at 12mph. Let's assume for the sake of
argument that it does what the label says and can prevent me from
suffering brain damage under these circumstances.

Now imagine that a car pulls over to park on my side of the road, and I
have a head-on collision with it with a closing speed of 24mph. If the
windscreen is at an angle of 30 degrees my head will impact it at only
12mph (24 x sin(30)) so I may still be OK. As you've pointed out, a 24mph
collision has to burn off 4x the energy of a 12mph collision so I'll still
be moving, but if I'm lucky I may get away with it.

This is all horribly artificial, but I have hit a van at maybe 8mph
without hitting my head at all. So presumably a helmet might help in
scenario 1 even if the impact speed is a bit higher than 12 mph.

When it comes to 'road safety' helmets are a serious distraction away
from the real issues: reducing the number of collisions that occur and
reducing vehicle speeds to a low enough level that collisions are
survivable when they do occur.

I too would put helmets third. But I genuinely haven't yet made up my own
mind whether I think helmets are a 'might as well' option or 'useless and
possibly dangerous'.

For one I would accept the compulsory wearing of helmets to give
protection from minor injuries, and the odd rare serious injury, at
speeds below 15 MPH if vehicle speeds were restricted to 15 MPH to
prevent all those serious injuries that occur above 15 MPH. (Given
current police guidelines 15 MPH would be enforced at almost 20 MPH but
with ISA systems that guarantee motor vehicles could not exceed 20 MPh I
might support a universal 20 MPH limit in towns and on country lanes).

Shouldn't your limit be 7.5mph - so that no collision can have a closing
speed of more than 15mph?

AC

anonymous coward wrote:

I've read a few newspaper articles to the effect that someone has been
punched, fallen and hit their head against a kerbstone and died.
I wonder whether low-speed impacts generally _are_ innocuous, or whether
we're so good at protecting our noggins that they _seem_ innocuous because
we manage to avoid or mitigate most of them?

Quite probably a bit of both. I'd guess /most/ are innocuous (but can
still be painful) but you can get really unlucky and catch a sensitive
spot at the wrong angle. I've heard of a case of a death slipping
getting out of the bath, when the victim would presumably not have been
in a Big Hurry and probably fairly with it. Plus it is a natural
reaction to protect one's head.

Now imagine that a car pulls over to park on my side of the road, and I
have a head-on collision with it with a closing speed of 24mph. If the
windscreen is at an angle of 30 degrees my head will impact it at only
12mph (24 x sin(30))

No, it will impact it at 24 mph. There may well be a deflection effect
so you don't soak up as much energy, but it'll still be travelling at 24
mph. And the deflection effect may or may not be a good thing, if you
remember all that stuff about rotational effects etc.

This is all horribly artificial

Isn't it just. So that's why whole population studies tend to be
treated as more useful than individual what-ifs. They don't show any
recognisable aid from lids in KSIs.

I too would put helmets third. But I genuinely haven't yet made up my own
mind whether I think helmets are a 'might as well' option or 'useless and
possibly dangerous'.

I personally think neither of the above. "Might as well" assumes there
are no downsides, but if you find that a snugly fitting shell of
non-breathable material (vents can only do so much) with a snug
chinstrap has zero comfort difference then your head is very different
to mine.
I think they are potentially useful in reducing the effects of painful
but minor accidents, but they give a level of discomfort 100% of the
time, so it's a case of "you choose, you lose". I'm not in the habit of
falling off when I'm on the roads, so these days I tend not to bother.
I am in the habit of falling off the MTB if I'm Going For It, and
comfort is a minor issue in those cases anyway, so I will wear it there.

So I regard them for most of the cycling I do as "not useful enough to
overcome the downside of being relatively uncomfortable all the time",
which isn't the same as either of your options above.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/