Emergency services in North Wales rushed to treat a cyclist whose leg was “penetrated” by a handlebar during a crash on a coastal section of National Cycle Route number 5.
North Wales Fire and Rescue Service dispatched two crews and were joined by paramedics on the cycle path in Llanddulas near Abergele on Sunday 4 May at around 3pm.
While the woman’s current condition has not been disclosed, Wales Online reported the cyclist had to be cut free by firefighters before being taken to hospital.
North Wales Fire and Rescue Service confirmed crews were dispatched from Abergele and Colwyn Bay following the call at 2.58pm, the woman trapped after the handlebar had “penetrated” her leg during a crash.
The cyclist was taken away in an ambulance at around 4pm and transported to Glan Clwyd Hospital. The incident happened on a coastal section of NCN 5, between Llanddulas and Abergele. No further updates on the cyclist’s condition had been disclosed at the time of the writing.
While handlebar and lever-related injuries are rare, there have been numerous similar stories reported on this website over the years.
In fact, last year a senior physician at the Department of Paediatric and Adolescent Surgery in Klagenfurt, Austria, worked with Graz University of Technology to analyse the role of handlebars in children’s cycling injuries, using a dummy to analyse the likelihood and severity of abdominal injuries from different types of bar ends.
The research found that widened protective caps afford the best protection and that properly moulded bar ends can help reduce the number of such occurrences. Senior physician Christoph Arneitz suggested that there are around 600 child injuries each year in Austria from direct contact with the handlebars, with 19 per cent of those cases resulting in hospitalisation.
A cyclist recently filed to sue Shimano and Trek for $2m after a brake lever “impaled” a foot-long wound in his thigh. The lawsuit alleged the injury was sustained when the cyclist lost balance trying to avoid a crash, and claimed his left thigh was torn open by the lever and required three operations in hospital.
The most serious incidents similar to the one in North Wales on Sunday have tended to involve children.
In 2018, a father in the US warned parents to check their kids’ bikes after his six-year-old boy died in a “freak accident” which saw him impaled by the end of his handlebars. The handlebar tube had become exposed through the grips, the bars “turning ninety degrees and impacting the asphalt and impaling him in his abdomen” as Denny Curran rode with friends on a quiet residential street.
A year later a nine-year-old girl was killed in Kentucky after a brake lever severed an artery in her neck when she hit a kerb while riding her bike on her ninth birthday.
Three years ago doctors said it was a “miracle” that an 11-year-old from Worcester had survived after the boy was impaled by bike handlebars. The boy’s family spoke out against government “cuts” after initially being informed that they would have to wait two hours for an ambulance to arrive on the scene.
42 thoughts on “Firefighters cut cyclist free after rider impaled leg on handlebar”
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It can be nasty if someone
It can be nasty if someone gets a bar end in the stomach. I know of one fatality from this, though it was some years ago. A wine bottle cork is a quick fix if you’re missing a bar end. You’ll get some smart ass comments probably but as long as it’s cork or plastic, it does the job well.
OldRidgeback wrote:
I sometimes carry around a couple of spare bar end plugs in case I see someone who could benefit.
I’m just glad that no-one has mentioned “de-gloving”
hawkinspeter wrote:
Sorry!
I have a couple of sets of
I have a couple of sets of expanders from my Jones grips, which if anyone starts locking their ride up at work sans ends I shall mysteriously add them…
OldRidgeback wrote:
I recall that some years ago an extremely unfortunate chap had the most intimate part of his anatomy, in the eye-watering phrase used in reports at the time, “degloved” in a freak accident with an unprotected bar end. I could take any number of smartarse comments rather than risk that! Anyway, weren’t corks regularly used as bar plugs back in the day, as well as for brake pads? If you want to be really snazzy, the right cork from a decent bottle of whisky (example below) can actually look very posh.
Carrying a spare bar end is a
Carrying a spare bar end is a lot easier than carrying corks that won’t even fit easily.
Thankfully many modern grips on MTBs gave solid ends that eliminate this issue.
imajez wrote:
Who goes about carrying a spare bar end? Corks though …
They can also be picked up en-route – I’m sure there will always be someone happy to take the bottle minus cork off your hands!
Give it away? Are you mad?
Give it away? Are you mad? Obvioulsy its too dangerous to carry on cycling with a full and open bottle of fine whisky, so I see only one solution…and I may be glad of that bar end cork later on.
David W wrote:
If you’re racing under the more traditional rules I suppose that is the best solution (e.g. as IIRC Rendel noted when race organisers sometimes felt the need to alert racers that they would have to bring their own drugs). Or possibly invite a rival to knock it back?
If I was on a recumbent trike then of course the solution is simply to decant bottle contents into your water bladder, noting that it’s harder to fall off such a machine. But if you’ve “tank steering” which seems more common for them then perhaps bar ends aren’t really such a worry?
I once cycled to the shop to
I once cycled to the shop to buy a bottle of whisky. As I was about to set off home, it occurred to me that if I crashed on the way home, the bottle would break, so the safest thing to do was to drink the whisky first.
It’s a good thing I did, too, because I crashed three times on the way home!
Here we see Roger Walkowiak,
Here we see Roger Walkowiak, winner of the 1956 Tour, in 1957, so desperate for a replacement bar end that he’s filling his water bottles with chianti!
I reckon he might be after
I reckon he might be after that raffia cover to replace his missing helmet too.
imajez wrote:
I don’t think anybody is suggesting carrying corks around as a replacement, but if you happen to lose a bar end whilst out riding and there’s no bike shop in the vicinity chances are the local pub might be able to help you out for a temporary repair and you can stop for a pint at the same time, win-win. Of course you can always carry around spares with you but that’s pretty high multi-day-cycle-tourist-organisation level for most people.
imajez wrote:
If you’ve got some bar ends with you, fine. But wine bottle corks (actual cork or plastic) are widely avaliable and do the job very well and they’ve fitted easily when I’ve had to use them on MTB or BMX bars. I raced a whole season with one in. It got a lot of laughs from other racers and scrutineers, but it passed every time.
This is the handlebar. The
This is the handlebar. The ends look solid to us. (This is the end that hit the ground, not my daughter.) How would bar ends work, and how would we fit them?
MoC wrote:
That looks like a handlebar with handlebar ends already fitted.
Thank you! My husband chose
Thank you! My husband chose the bike and did prioritise safety – the handlebars were already fitted like this. So I was a bit confused by all the comments saying that it wouldn’t have happened if we fitted bar ends!
MoC wrote:
Sorry for the confusion. The far more common type of injury with kids bikes is when it’s been used for a while and the rubber handlebar ends have worn through, so we kind of assumed that a similar thing had happened.
When organising MTB events,
This is why bar end plugs are so important. When organising MTB events, at times I also used to do bar end checks at start of races and folk would get very stroppy if their bikes were deemed not fit to race, despite ‘fitting bar end plugs’ being one of very few rules. We didn’t have a unlimited supply of spares for lazy folk. Even now I automatically check bars ends when I see a bike or photo of a bike.
Pierce your femoral artery and you’ll quickly bleed to death.
This is also why brake levers have a kink or ball at end.
How do bar ends attach? Image
How do bar ends attach? Image is my daughter’s handlebar, the end that hit the ground, not the end that narrowly missed her femoral artery.
(She also hit her head, but hadn’t noticed, there was a mark from the helmet on her forehead, which faded quickly.)
I teach Bikeability in a
I teach Bikeability in a school.
On day one we always check the bikes to make sure they’re safe.
Initially it was quite hard work to get the other teachers to take lack of barend plugs seriously. The story about a child dying got their attention. But the one that completely changed their attitde was the teenage boy who degloved his penis.
Do NOT click the link if you’re squeamish – there are pictures!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6887373/
Absolutely classic non
Absolutely classic non cyclist incident write up there, “subject wasn’t wearing a helmet” – dude his entire balls were ripped off and you write about that! His head is goddamnd fine.
Prosper0 wrote:
Well, his head might be fine, but his helmet was in some jeopardy
Is this something more common
Is this something more common with flat bars than drops?
Certainly seems to be.
Certainly seems to be. Thinking about it, there would seem to be some logic. If you picture a flat-bar bike lying on its side, the bar end will be sticking straight out and in the perfect position to impale someone. With a drop bar bike on its side, it is the side of the drop that you would be landing on. See random pictures from t’internet:
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-bicycle-lying-grass-image9544792
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bike-left-on-side-path-1876730476
If it was an ordinary toy or
If it was an ordinary toy or piece of play equipment, I suspect that the potential for an easily exposed sharp edge would trigger a recall and refusal of a CE marking.
What sharp edges?
What sharp edges?
I can understand that making the end bigger/blunter would make impalement less likely. But this looks like a blunt end.
Image failed to upload 1st
Image failed to upload 1st time.
Those grips are so dangerous,
Those grips are so dangerous, they give the illusion of preventing these coring type injuries, but a thin layer of soft rubber is not sufficient. As you can see in this pic, the rubber has been cut through by the sharp end of the bars from inside.
Grips with integrated bar ends should have a hard plastic stop within the rubber, or else be open for the aluminium expanding plug type bar ends
That’s the end that hit
That’s the end that hit tarmac/rock, hard enough to drive the other end 6cm into muscle. The other end penetrated her thigh, and hadn’t failed – the end was still covered. The bike is currently stored away so I can’t check, but from memory was less affected. NEITHER end had failed, no metal.
MoC wrote:
That sounds like a horrific impact. I imagine it would have been even worse if the handlebar end had failed as the impact would have driven it even further into her thigh.
Glad to hear she’s recovering, anyhow.
Thank you! They kept an
Thank you! They kept an operating theatre empty, and vascular surgeons on standby for hours, just in case, then had at least one vascular surgeon on standby for both ops, “because it’s so close to the femoral artery”. (Yes, I am well aware of the connotations.) We’re hoping she’ll be healed up in the 1st half of July. Her consultant said she was lucky, it had parted the muscle fibres rather than severing them.
FYI the child is recovering
FYI the child is recovering well, and back in school this month. Her handlebars seem to have solid ends, covered by the grips. Please could someone explain how bar ends would attach? Pictures would be great. Thank you.
Good to know she’s recovering
Good to know she’s recovering. By “bar ends” people mean the plugs that go into the end of the bar like a stopper in a bottle. Did her bike have those fitted as well or just the grips? If just the grips they could be pushed back in an impact for the metal of the bar to make contact; if the ends are solid, i.e. you can’t poke your finger inside the bar from the end, it’s a bit mystifying as to how the bar managed to penetrate.
Pictured a plug in the end of a flat bar.
Rendel Harris wrote:
They look like they’re close to failing as it is.
Actually you’re right, my eye
Actually you’re right, my eye was naturally drawn to the bloodstained end but in fact the bagged end appears to have snapped and presumably that is what caused the injuries. OP, if that’s the case then bar ends would have made no difference. If it was a fairly new bike and it has been reasonably looked after you might want to talk to the manufacturers about that, shouldn’t happen in that sort of crash.
The bagged end was covered
The bagged end was covered with material from her leggings, which were cut away before the handlebar was removed – this photo was taken in Resus while waiting for her to come round from ketamine. It was a new bike, first time using it (taken to the cycle path as a safer alternative than our road). The end that penetrated her thigh remained intact. The other end (which hit tarmac or rock hard enough to drive the other end 6cm into her thigh) is pictured. I haven’t photographed the penetrating end, and the bike is currently stored away. (Note, someone has commented that the metal had penetrated the rubber; this is not the case.)
MoC wrote:
There’s two main types of bar ends – the ones that are like a plug and insert into the hollow handlebar end and the ones that are incorporated into the handlebar grip that goes over the hollow handlebar. The handlebar that you’ve shown us has the external handlebar grips which look a bit worn. To replace them, you have to remove the existing grips by pulling them (or maybe cutting them if they’re really stuck on) and then push new ones onto the handlebar.
This pic shows typical handlebar grips (go over the end):
This pic shows typical handlebar plugs (go into the end):
You’d only want the first type to replace the existing ones.
This is the end that hit
This is the end that hit tarmac or rock with enough force to drive the other end 6cm into her thigh. It looks similar to your 1st example (thank you). The gear mechanism & brake lever were badly damaged and need replacing I think, but the handlebar grip just looks a bit bashed, no metal penetration, no actual breaks. The other end wasn’t affected as badly (when I took this photo, the other end still had cut-off legging fabric over it, hence photo of this end). The bike was chosen with safety in mind, her father is a keen cyclist (more than me). Am I right in thinking that grips covering the end are considered no good because they allow metal to penetrate – which didn’t happen? Is everyone assuming that we failed to take adequate precautions?
Thank you all for your
Thank you all for your responses. I had thought you must all be refering to a different version of “bar ends”, somehow more bulbous of something, than the integral bar ends inside the solid grips on the handlebar that penetrated 6cm and narrowly missed my daughter’s femoral artery. But it seems not.
So… it is possible for handlebars with solid grips & integral bar ends to impale a rider, WITHOUT failing and exposing metal.
And it’s also possible that my husband’s choice of bike/handlebar ends (because he prioritised his daughter’s safety) saved her from more severe muscle damage, and potentially a severed femoral artery (which I don’t think she would have survived). Just as her helmet left a transitory red line on her forehead, while she didn’t even notice hitting her head.
She does intend to get back on the bike (once they’re both repaired). And I’ll take her wild swimming again – much safer than cycling! 😏
Wow, the impact must have
Wow, the impact must have been one of massive force to do that without any bare metal, terrifying. Great to hear that she’s recovering well and thinking about getting back on two wheels, best of luck to her.