Lynne Tolman's 1995 Article about
Fabio Casartelli
Summary: Bicycle columnist Lynne Tolman wrote an article about the death of Fabio Casartelli in 1995.
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE, Worcester, Mass.
Bicycling column
August 13, 1995
Use your head: Wear a helmet
By Lynne Tolman
Rebecca and Paul Cooke of Boylston have had some bad days on bikes this year, but a common-sense precaution kept their
mishaps from becoming tragedies.
The Cookes race for the UMassters, an amateur team based at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester,
where Paul Cooke, 38, is an anesthesiologist. His wife, 35, is an engineer with Commonwealth Gas Co. in Southboro.
The couple was winding up an easy training ride when a truck pulling out from a side street caught them by surprise. Paul
hit the brakes, and Rebecca, right on his wheel, slammed her brakes too hard. Over the handlebars she went, head
first.
She suffered a mild concussion and some scrapes but was able to ride home. "The helmet was scraped, so it was obvious the
helmet took the impact instead of my head," she said.
Her husband's brush with the pavement came during a spring race in Plymouth. Wheels overlapped, and he lost his balance.
His helmet had a big crack in the polystyrene foam liner, but his head was not injured.
Under the helmet maker's crash replacement policy, both Cookes traded their damaged lids for new helmets, paying only a
modest shipping and handling fee.
"It's crazy not to wear a helmet," Rebecca Cooke said. "They make them so light, and the vents actually channel air to
your head for cooling."
That ought to be the last word on the subject. But resistance to helmets persists, especially among European racers,
whose traditions trickle down to the cycling masses worldwide. When Motorola rider Fabio Casartelli died in a mountain
crash during the Tour de France last month, the Tour's senior doctor said a helmet wouldn't have saved him because the
fatal blow was to a part of the head that a helmet doesn't cover.
However, the forensic doctor who examined the body told The Sunday Times of London that the impact was to the top of the
skull, and with a hard helmet, "some injuries could have been avoided."
Wearing a helmet reduces a cyclist's risk of head injury by 85 percent, according to a study reported in the New England
Journal of Medicine in 1989.
Nonetheless, Hein Verbruggen, president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), told Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport after
the Tour de France, "Even on this occasion, the UCI has decided not to change its position: Forcing athletes to wear a
helmet would be ridiculous in certain situations."
The UCI had imposed a helmet rule for the Tour in 1991, but riders rebelled and the UCI backed down.
Without Verbruggen's leadership, it is unlikely the Tour's policy on helmets will change soon, said Les Earnest, a board
member of the U.S. Cycling Federation, which has required racers to wear helmets since 1986.
Only a few other countries require helmets for racers: Belgium and the Netherlands for the pros, the United Kingdom for
amateurs, Australia for both. Some racers still use "leather hairnets," which consist of lightly padded straps that offer
hardly any protection.
A common excuse for not wearing helmets is that they are too hot. However, lab tests show that helmets are actually
cooler than the cloth caps many pro racers wear, according to Phil Graitcer, director of the World Health Organization's
helmet initiative.
Most bike crashes aren't "head-on at 55 mph" like Casartelli's, Graitcer said, but that accident points up that "you need
to wear a helmet all the time, not just in traffic." Graitcer said 80 percent of bike crashes do not involve cars; it's
just one or more cyclists meeting the ground.
Casartelli's death prompted the U.S. Product Safety Commission to issue a press release urging all cyclists to wear
helmets "no matter what their age or level of skill." An estimated 600,000 bicycle-related injuries were treated in U.S.
hospital emergency rooms last year, about a third of them injuries to the head or face, according to the commission's
chairman, Ann Brown.
The United States logs more than 700 cycling deaths each year, with the highest death rate among 10- to 14-year-olds.
Americans seem most comfortable insisting on helmets when it comes to children. Thirteen states, including Massachusetts,
have passed laws requiring children on bikes to wear helmets (see chart), and cities or counties in a half-dozen other
states have done the same. A few counties have such laws for cyclists of all ages, as do Australia, New Zealand and the
Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
For cyclists with any gray matter to protect, donning a helmet just makes sense, said Dr. Tom Breen, an orthopedist at
UMass who's team doctor for the Saturn pro squad and rides with the UMassters. It becomes second nature, like wearing a
seat belt in the car, he said. "I hate to say it, but it's a no-brainer."
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BIKE HELMETS REQUIRED BY LAW
STATE AGE GROUP EFFECTIVE DATE
New Jersey under 14 July 1, 1992
Georgia under 16 July 1, 1993
Connecticut under 12 Oct. 1, 1993
Tennessee under 12 Jan. 1, 1994
California under 18 Jan. 1, 1994
Massachusetts under 13 March 8, 1994
New York under 14 June 1, 1994
Oregon under 16 July 1, 1994
Pennsylvania under 12 March 1, 1995
Alabama under 16 Sept. 19, 1995
Maryland under 16 Oct. 1, 1995
Delaware under 16 April 1, 1996
Rhode Island under 8 July 1, 1996
SOURCE: BICYCLE HELMET SAFETY INSTITUTE
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Copyright 1995 by Lynne Tolman, All Rights Reserved. Broadcast, publication or storage -- including on CD-ROM,
listservers, BBSs, WWW, FTP archives or anywhere else -- is STRICTLY PROHIBITED without PRIOR written permission.
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provided that 1) the file is transmitted in its entirety, from the newspaper's name and date on the top to the end of
this paragraph, and 2) NO FEE is charged. Reasonable enough?
Lynne Tolman
ltolman@ltolman.org
BHSI Note: This article is on our website by permission of the author. Her columns are available
at
her own web page.