[hpv] CPSC proposals

[David Gordon Wilson]

The letters so far reacting to my proposals to the CPSC have sickened me 
and made me very angry.  Almost everyone agreed with Gabriel DeVault, so I 
will respond to him. But let me first give some background to explain my 
considerable unhappiness.

A few years ago my wife and baby were almost killed.  They would have gone 
out on the Trek bike I had bought for her, and had put a baby seat on the 
back, except that I borrowed the bike for a short run.  The straddle cables 
of the two Shimano cantilever brakes broke without warning, first one and 
then the other.  I was going uphill.  She would have gone downhill and 
would have tried to brake hard at a dangerous intersection down the 
hill.  I found that the Shimano brakes were of an appalling design in which 
the straddle cables flexed through a large angle at a bolted joint and were 
absolutely bound to fail in fatigue in time.  The straddle cables were 
shrouded by a plastic tube so that any fraying could not be seen.  I 
designed a fix that would cost a couple of cents, photographed everything, 
wrote a report and sent it to Shimano and to this list.  I wanted to save 
lives and to prevent serious injuries.  All I got for my trouble and 
concern were a whole lot of nasty letters, mainly from people on this list, 
who implied that I was a muddled academic and that I was (in some way that 
I couldn't discern) responsible for my family's near elimination.  Shimano 
sent a perfunctory acknowledgement.  At least it has incorporated quadrants 
to prevent cable failure in brakes that it has since designed.

So I knew that I was sticking my neck out when I wrote to this list about 
other bicycle hazards. Again I have been treated patronizingly as if I were 
a well-meaning but muddled academic "Dave suggested ., . . good on the 
surface, . . yet he provided no actual solutions."  Your ignorance is 
shocking.  None of you asked me for my offered copy of my letter to the 
CPSC.  None of you apparently read any of the interim reports I have been 
sending out over the last several years about the loose-tire problem, 
principally to Human Power, culminating in a full treatment in the last 
issue.  Three successive students have done research on it.  We quote 
supporting statements by many experts,  including a senior person in a 
major bike-tire company and, incidentally, by Bill Volk.  We propose exact 
standards, but allow for the possibility of a committee being set up to 
propose something better.  What right have you languidly to dismiss years 
of unpaid effort for the public good because you are too damn lazy to read 
the literature?

Apparently also you have no idea why the bicycle regulations are so 
bad.  They are that way because they are written, as are a large proportion 
of the laws of our great country, by lobbyists for special 
interests.  Those special interests are the manufacturers who want to be 
able to put out lousy products without being sued.  Our senators and 
representatives listen to them because they get all kinds of gifts from 
them and because they then don't have to do any work on any laws they 
pass.  If you don't want to get off your asses to help to write better 
regulations, you should at least support Common Cause, a wonderful 
organization that is trying to clean up the mess that government in this 
country has become.

I met someone of the same ilk as y'all when I was asked by Paul Dudley 
White, Eisenhower's heart surgeon and a bicycle booster, to join his 
Committee for Safe Bicycling.  What an opportunity to improve the safety of 
the sport, I thought.  But the committee was largely dominated by a 
lobbyist for Schwinn, who complained about my talking about 
needed  improvements when bikes were perfectly safe already.

This was at a time when we had almost zero braking in wet weather.  My 
students and friends and I labored for around ten years and produced a 
brake that was almost perfect (I'm rather modest about it.)  It worked as 
well in the wet as in the dry, it was self adjusting, would fit in the same 
place and with the same brake levers as regular brakes, and the pads would 
last almost for ever.  (I used a Positech brake for several years as the 
only brake on my first recumbent at a time when I was riding around 10,000 
miles per year.  It never needed new pads, and only one cable adjustment 
was required in that period.)  We worked with three companies to try to get 
it adopted.  A lawyer who read about the brake in Bicycling  petitioned the 
CPSC to have its performance specified on bicycles.  The bicycle  industry 
didn't want this, it dithered, and then suddenly switched to aluminum rims 
to avoid having to use our brake.  So now we have rims that, if used long 
enough, will certainly explode - I have had six do so.  If you are unlucky 
you could be converted into an instant vegetable for life.  The bike 
industry knows about this but is apparently uninterested  in doing anything 
about it.

I've tried to switch to disk brakes to avoid the exploding-rim 
problem.  I'm now on my third make:  Shimano Deore.  On my worst day this 
winter, when there was a deluge all day, I left the house with the pads 
perfectly adjusted.  At the end of my eight-mile commute there was zero 
braking.  Shimano uses some type of water-soluble pads. The mechanism is 
such that when the pads have worn to the point that I would like to adjust 
the cable, the actuating lever comes up against a fixed stop without 
warning.  Why the hell has Shimano done that?  I set the pads again at 
lunchtime, a long process that requires that the whole brake be loosened 
off its mounting and that  thin shims be inserted to get the brake centered 
over the disk with small clearances - not something you could easily do in 
a deluge on the road.  By the time I reached the steep downhill to our 
house eight miles later, all braking was again totally gone.  A month or 
two earlier I replaced the disk pads on both front wheels of my wife's car 
after over 100,000 miles on the original set.  It took me less time and was 
less expensive than replacing the pads on my Deore brakes.

To replace the Trek (on which other components, like the BB axle, had 
broken) I bought my wife an expensive German Kettler Alu-Rad "City 
Shopper".  All kinds of simple things have broken on this bike.  It has 
V-brakes.  She frequently says to me "Honey lamb" (she's a Southern gal) "I 
have no braking again on either wheel - could you please look at the 
bike?  She uses the bike on her visiting-nurse rounds. And in some 
irritation I go through the extremely fiddly job of replacing the pads and 
getting them set properly, and adjusting the cables that don't have enough 
adjustment to handle a new set of pads.

Since the manufacturers are unconcerned about our safety, our alternatives 
are regulations or trial lawyers.  The lawyer route is expensive.  First 
someone prominent has to be killed.  (If my wife and baby had been killed 
there would have been a perfunctory police  report that "subject failed to 
stop at stop sign".  Bush and Kerry are just show bikers: they don't put 
enough miles on to run into any problems.)  Then years of discovery and 
pre-trial stuff goes on during which more bicyclists are killed and 
seriously injured,and then usually the case is settled out of court.  (I 
have frequently been involved as an expert witness, and it is not pretty.)

For heaven's sake wake up!

Dave Wilson