Preceding part: 1985
report Cyclops USA home
page
Brain Bucket
Bash: The big decision
The adoption of a strong helmet
rule was aided by timely misfortune
I was not at all certain that the USCF Board would
adopt stronger helmet standards in 1985, but several events changed the
political climate enough to make it happen.
Unfortunately, the specific rule that was adopted was rather badly
screwed up.
At about the time my report was released, SkidLid was sued by one of its former customers who had
been badly injured. SkidLid’s
insurance company consequently boosted the premiums by about 500% and the
company was forced to go out of business.
This couldn’t have happened to a more deserving outfit.
This meant that I would no longer have to deal with SkidLid’s coordinated attempts at obstructing the
development and use of helmet standards.
On the other hand, I was no longer on the Board, so I could not directly
argue the case. I was able to continue
harassing the Board in writing with the help of USCF Director Tom Nee, who
kindly distributed copies of Cyclops USA
at Board meetings.
There were signs that the directors were beginning to
pay attention to this issue. For one
thing, insurance rates were shooting up, as I had predicted. I confess that I did not foresee the
magnitude of the insurance crisis that would strike in the Spring of 1986, but
it did not take deep thought to figure out that insurance companies could not
continue to pay millions of dollars in settlements indefinitely while
collecting premiums that were a small fraction of that amount.
Shortly after I released the July 1985 helmet report,
another incident tragically underscored the message I was trying to get
across. A rider wearing a leather helmet
and competing in a sprint race at the Encino Velodrome near
In the legislative meeting of the Board several weeks
later, Director Chuck Pranke reportedly gave a
heart-rending account of the death of his good friend in this velodrome
accident. According to other informants,
Pranke actually barely knew the victim. In any case, his dramatic account helped get
the helmet rule passed.
Prouty now argued in favor of adopting the new rule. As recounted in his book, the Board voted 21
to 4 in favor of the new helmet standard.
This was a complete reversal from the preceding year, but for
understandable reasons Prouty’s book doesn’t mention
that. Voxland was one of the four “Nays,” playing
diehard to the end.
Unfortunately, instead of adopting a rule similar to
the one that I had proposed earlier, they had new legislation drafted by a
lawyer who knew very little about bicycle helmets and wrote the rule in such a
way that no helmet on the market met it!
The new rule said that the helmet must be “clearly labeled by
manufacturer of such helmet with a label, approved by ANSI and/or Snell
Memorial Foundation, establishing that such helmet meets such standards.” This overlooked the fact that ANSI is a
standards organization only and does not approve either helmets or labels. Helmets then on the market that met the Snell
standard had their labels inside, where they were invisible when worn.
As soon as I saw the new rule, I brought these
problems to the attention of the USCF officers and recommended that they be
repaired before the new Rule Books were issued.
Fortunately, there was a Board meeting planned for mid-December at which
this could be done.
Meanwhile, some directors got cold feet about this
rule change. For example, after talking
to some riders Rich DeGarmo wrote a panicky memo to
the Board advocating immediate reversal of the helmet rule. This was not atypical – Richard usually moves
in whichever direction the wind is blowing, like many successful “leaders.”
The meeting of the Board in December 1985 was a
stand-off on this issue: they decided to do nothing. Prouty and Technical
Chairman Seubert later applied a band-aid to the
helmet labeling blunder – they issued a memo waiving this requirement until
June 1. They also apparently feared
massive resistance and issued various threats regarding what would happen to
anyone who refused to go along with the new rule.[1]
Getting it right
After trying and failing to get the USCF
administration to take responsibility for providing a rational helmet rule, I
brought the problem to the attention of the membership via letters to Velo-news, pointing out that the new rule
apparently required that riders who had been sensible enough to buy a good
helmet earlier now had to buy another one, just to meet the helmet labeling
requirement.
The administration responded by telling riders that they
could send certain helmets back to the manufacturer to get a new label
applied. They did not explain what the
rider was supposed to wear during the period when his helmet was off being
labeled.
In disgust, I finally wrote
another letter to Velo-news describing how riders with
unlabeled helmets that met the standard could legally get around the labeling
requirement by taking advantage of the poor wording of the helmet rule. This advice was apparently widely appreciated,
but it elicited a counterattack.
Paul Therrio,
a cycling gadfly and former USCF director, wrote a letter to Velo-news accusing me of fraud and other
nefarious practices. I had gotten used
to being attacked and wouldn’t have minded if I had been permitted to respond,
but Velo-news uncharitably published the letter
without warning in the middle of the 1986 Board elections, in which I was a
candidate. They printed my refutation in
the issue just after the election, which was of course too late. When the results came in, I found that I had
lost by a single vote!
The first time that I officiated at a Category 1-2
race that year, the riders staged a protest against the new helmet rule – when
I blew the whistle for the start, they stayed at the line for awhile before
departing. I found this more amusing
than perturbing and they gave it up after two races. Despite the protest, I noted that they all
wore proper helmets.
In fact, despite dire predictions of massive
resistance, the transition to the new helmet rule was made by the riders with
almost no problems at all. Once the
officials learned what the approved helmets looked like, it was very easy for
them to spot any nonconformists on the starting line. There was no need to check labels.
Within two months there was 100% compliance and no
more grumbling. Within a year, the
example set by the racers had rubbed off on the general public – almost nobody
wore leather helmets anymore, though many people still ignorantly rode without
a helmet. While I had the impression all
along that the public was influenced by what the racers wear, I was surprised
at how quickly this influence exerted itself.
Later that year I sent a proposed fix of the helmet
rule to the Legislation Chairman for inclusion in the 1986 legislative
agenda. He ignored it, which left the
same irrational labeling requirements in the book. Fortunately, nobody was enforcing them.
I finally got back on the Board in 1987 and promptly
got the absurd wording in the helmet rule fixed, though it no longer mattered
much.
Not the end of the story
The ANSI Z90 committee is now engaged in modifying
their helmet standard in several ways, including an increase in drop height
from 1 meter to 1.5 for key impact tests.
This will improve minimum protection and bring the ANSI standard closer
to that of Snell. The revised ANSI
standard is unlikely to be released before next year, which means that it
probably could not be adopted by the USCF before 1991. I have joined the ANSI helmet committee to
aid in the review process.
There are reportedly 6 countries besides the
The UCI Executive Committee recently adopted a
resolution calling for the use of safety helmets in all international races,
including pro races, in1991. This change
is long overdue, but I frankly didn’t expect it to happen this soon.
Unfortunately, the UCI plan does not include a
specific helmet standard, which is likely to be a stumbling block inasmuch as
the various national standards are all different from one another and there is
no international standard yet. I fear
that the combination of nationalistic competitiveness and the inertia of
deadheads who resist all changes may yet succeed in delaying or preventing the
UCI from completing this important transition.
The best solution, I think, would be to get the
International Standards Organization (ISO) to establish a standard, which UCI
could then adopt. Work on such a
standard has started, but it is unlikely to be completed before 1991, which is
too late for the current UCI schedule. I
have called the attention of the
Summary to date
Many people seem to think that the adoption of a
strong helmet rule by the USCF was a sudden and capricious act. In fact, it was the product of a technical
and political struggle that spanned more than 20 years, beginning with Art Friskel’s advocacy.
Those who effected this change did not go unscathed –
it is not fun to be ignored, rejected, or abused by those who do not take the
time to examine the issues carefully or who resist all changes. I was not
bothered as much by people who proposed alternative courses of action for
dealing with the problem as by the reactionaries who denied there was a
problem.
Organizational stability is generally more comfortable
for the members than perpetual change, but there is such a thing as being too
stable. There are many situations that
are better characterized by the slogan “Adapt or die!” and the cycling helmet
issue seems to be one of them. Indeed,
that admonition applies to the helmet issue for both individual riders and
racing organizations and not even the powerful International Cycling Union is
exempt.
I sometimes wonder why I got into this mess, given
that there were few personal rewards along the way and no assurances of the
outcome until we got there. Perhaps one
reason that I stuck it out was that when “push came to shove,” I got more
pleasure from being right that from “winning.”
Besides, if I was not such a persistently righteous bastard I would not
be in a position now to write a long story about how “I told you so!”