Cyclist taken to hospital with handlebar impaled in leg

I note that everyone is assuming that the handlebar impaling the victim MUST have been missing a bar end plug. Does anyone know this to be a fact, or is everyone just guessing?

I was run over by a car, in Leeds, just after I first moved there. I was impaled in the abdomen by a bar end which was fully stoppered by a bar end plug.

So it is possible for a very well-maintained bike to do this to you if a car rams it into your limb or body hard enough.

Obvious troll is obvious, and probably pays £1000 a month to share a space under a bridge with lots of other wage slave trolls...

Similar thing happened to a friend of mine in the '70s but it was the Weinmann brake lever that went into his thigh, not the handlebar. I still wince thinking about it.

Where to begin...?

The first 'Yorkshire cyclist' (link at the bottom of the article) was a Lancastrian at Lancaster University - the clue is the big picture in the Yorkshire Post article.

The lady in question was not a man, as the article states. She is on the way to recovery though. :)I understand it was a flat bar bike and it was the brake lever not the bar end. Just sounds like an extremely unlucky set of circumstances. It was a newish bike so the presence of decent grips with stops was probably a blessing...

One of the key reasons that bike racks on the front of buses are unlikely to get EU approval - random condition of bikes loaded on racks, with handlebars at head-level

I saw a mate get his leg impaled on his bars in a crash during a BMX race once - not a pretty sight. I hope this guy recovers ok. My mate did.

Corks with Belgian beer bottle tops glued on look ace.

Not sure how safety compliant a beer bottle top would be though with it's edges though!

Wine corks for me too. Italian bike so the corks came from a chianti.

A wine cork is doing the duty on my commuter bike at the moment, simple, functional and stylish* too. Cork, naturally, not the vinyl sort. I'm not a monster.

*to a tramp.

Not just drop bar bikes - did a good job of impaling my left thigh with my Grifter handlebars when I was a kid.
Now off to buy replacement plug for my current steed, hadn't considered the apple corer risk..

Having lost several over the years I've now got bar end plugs with a screw to tighten them. Haven't moved so far...and they're reusable.

That reminds me, I need to check the bike of one of the kids at Go Ride tonight to make sure they have put a new bar end plug in. I'll try to dig out a spare to bring with me, rather than ban them from participating. It seems very common for people to lose bar ends, and if you warn them of the dangers then they just look at you as it you are a do-gooder half the time.

I keep spares in my rusksack, and hand them out to riders I see with any missing. Often pop them on bikes I see parked up in the works cycle store too. Aesthetic and practical reason to have them.

...and oh, the irony of you showing an A&E 'Walk in' sign....I am guessing this poor cyclist did not...

Bar plugs are not only there to hold the tape on. I know if a man who had a hole in his leg, like an apple corer...after a bar accident!