Cyclist sues Halfords for £1 million, claims steerer tube "failure" led to severe facial injuries

Oh well Halfords that'll teach ya for supporting ' Think bike '

Oh well Halfords that'll teach ya for supporting ' Think bike '

There are far safer and more effective ways of reducing obesity than cycling. OK cycling buffs do it, but really don't expect most of the nation to adopt it as a lifestyle or travel option. May as well expect the whole country to go jogging.

Cycling safety is a no brainer. The less that do it the less killed and injured. Simples

This statement seems deliberately ambiguous.

"Gerald Martin QC, acting for Mr Love, told the High Court that the steerer tube of Mr Love’s £250 Saracen Raw 2 bike had sustained a “sudden and catastrophic failure,” with the cyclist hitting a crash barrier head-first."

"He said: “We ask the court to bear in mind that Saracen marketing literature for the Raw 2 bicycle would lead an ordinary person to assume that fairly robust riding is to be expected – as it says, 'give the trails a kicking'.""

What we know:
#1 - It was the steerer, not the head tube weld that failed.
#2 - the cyclist hit the crash barrier head first.

What we don't know:
#1 - did the steerer fail at the crown or at the shaft?
#2 - did the steerer fail to CAUSE the accident or as a RESULT of hitting something?

It looks like dodgy wording to mask the fact that it was the RESULT of "robust riding". In other words, he beat the crap out of the bike, thinking that hitting things like crash barriers was within acceptable limits for the bike.

A 19 year old who rides a $400 bike who puts due diligence into making sure his bike is always in good condition and he rides within the limits of what a bike at that price point can likely handle? Almost as rare as Magrathean Condors.

If the judge has a brain in his head, Halford's million is safe as can be.

I would imagine that rather than 'Halfords' it's probably their insurers that are fighting the case.

As horrible and tragic as this is for the guy, I just don't think the legal case made is very good, no mention of even a consulting engineer as an expert witness or failure analysis, I know this costs money, but it's more or less essential.

I do know of another case, which was successful, where the QC put the defence expert witness down by listening then asking....when was the last time you assembled, serviced or indeed rode a bicycle.......answer was never, never and when I was at school...

While I certainly don't beat the drum for Halfords, this is a bum rap. No service or pre delivery inspection is going to find a crack in the steerer tube, especially if it is under the bearing cup. That would require a complete strip and aircraft level crack detection.

So while Halfords may be, as everyone here seems to think, rubbish, this time it isn't their fault.

As a bike mechanic, I get a lot of work from Halfords, when people take their bike to them to be fixed, then they bring it to me to be fixed properly. Last year, I had three or four customers with bikes purchased from Halfords, with the front brake cable wrapped around the headtube, so that when you turned a corner, the cable tightened up and applied the brake. I think that particular Halfords employee must be looking for a new job though, as I haven't seen it again since.

Sedgepeat wrote:

There are far safer and more effective ways of reducing obesity than cycling. OK cycling buffs do it, but really don't expect most of the nation to adopt it as a lifestyle or travel option. May as well expect the whole country to go jogging.

Cycling safety is a no brainer. The less that do it the less killed and injured. Simples

This is either sarcasm or trolling in its purest form! I can't tell which! Though either way I have no clue why its posted on this particular thread (which is about some, frankly rather dull, legal case that none of us have enough information to say anything useful about!).

Incorporating physical activity into everyday life, as something functional, is by far-and-away the best way to improve health. If you have to go out to a gym or something to make a special effort to 'get exercise' (like jogging) you are far less likely to stick to it than if its just what you do to get to wherever you are going (or if its part of your job).

I find it interesting that two occupational groups with some of the highest incidence of heart disease are (a) lorry drivers and (b) taxi drivers. Though that probably has a lot to do with the kind of food they, for reasons of culture and habit, tend to eat in their respective cafes as much as it is to do with the driving. The job-enforced physical inactivity can't help though.

And as for reducing the killed and injured - I think you'll find its the fewer people who drive the fewer people who will be killed and injured on the roads.

Also, the bad punctuation in your signature is irritating. Punctuation and spelling errors in posts are not worth complaining about, but when one is repeated over-and-over again in someone's sig it doesn't help their credibility.

This case seems to be a shot in the dark. The gap between him receiving the bike and the failure seems far too long for it to be a build issue….and if it wasn't then he should have taken it back to Halfords earlier.

The exception is where he has barely ridden the bike for a long period of time….but something the defence is going to exploit.

Halfords have a bad rep on bikes, and it is because of the way they mix bike parts and car parts, with their mass scale retail approach. They don't look tend to deal with the top end stuff and so when someone with a real interest turns up they cannot really deal with the product needs.

I don't use them for servicing my bike and I don't use them to purchase my bike parts. But having had my bike serviced by them on the RAB, I can attest that at least some of their guys know what they are doing. I suspect that if more cyclists came to them looking for decent bike parts/clothes they would start to stock it.

The result of the case is more crucial as opposed to the fact that a law suit has been filed.

I was out on my road bike this morning, a steel framed machine built for me over thirty years ago, and I realised that I've not actually taken a spanner to the (Campag Record) headset once in all those years, because it has never needed adjustment over the intervening 100,000 miles or so. Perhaps I should have done but, rightly or wrongly, I'm only human and I guess I've been subconciously relying on the fact that I've never heard of a steel fork and column combination suffering from catastrophic failure.

The thing is, we're all placing our trust in one or more other people, whether they be component designers, manufacturers, mechanics, the frame builder, or the previous owner if purchased 2nd hand, because, like me, most people have neither the skill, nor the facilities to scientifically check each component on a regular basis. And yet component failure seems to be becoming much more common, despite inprovements in scientific knowledge.

I'd like to see an industry funded central reference, easily available to everyone, that documents every component failure, encouraging everyone to focus much more on safety, and rather less on manufacturing (or indeed assembly and servicing) economy.

Although I'm not in favour of "compensation culture", I hope this chap wins his case.

Just to add my experience to the Halfords saga........Observed a Halfords' assistant trying to prevent the bars from rotating by levering the star nut on an Aheadset with a large spanner. When challenged, it became clear he was only a Saturday morning lad and trying to be helpful to the customer. No supervision, no training and no idea. He hadn't been told the limit of his responsibility.
Halfords aim their business at the Average Joe who are not bike mechanics. The reason laws are enacted (in this case Sale of Goods) is because traders generally cannot be relied upon to do a professsional job.
If I go to a LBS and buy a new machine I expect the shop to check it over before release regardless of how knowledgeable the customer appears.

Shocked.....

Oh well Halfords that'll teach ya for supporting ' Think bike '

Oh well Halfords that'll teach ya for supporting ' Think bike '

Shocked.....

Shocked.....

It was only a matter of time this happened. Might make Halfords realise some of their employees are badly trained eejets.

Since when does an pre delivery check look at the steerer tube joint to the fork? If it was loose, and even if the shop missed it, surely the rider would be straight back?

It's also, according to this, 6 months since they last seen it.

Surely a case of product liability for the manufacturer, who possibly may want to look into if it was damaged or not....driven into a garage roof for example.....

It's a horrible accident, I feel for the young man, but his legal guys have taken the wrong path I fear.

I've never used a Halfords workshop, or bought a bike there, it's not my kind of place.

Edit... I checked up and Saracen as a brand changed ownership around this time, leaving the only recourse to the retailer

Bought from a Halfords. Bits fell off. Not put together properly - I build my own bikes normally. Emailed Halfords to complain and Boardman whose bike it was. No reply.

In summary, not surprised by this story.

Halfords are sh*t.

End of.

I find it interesting that on one hand Halfords aren't worth shit, then on the other, they are seen as the experts... I do not know a single person, bike or no, that woul describe halfords as an expert.

But that's by the by.

I think this lad is going to struggle to win his claim on this occasion. For a start, unless other Saracen Raw's suffer the same issue, how is this anything other than a freak one off incident... and how, in that case could Halfords have done more to stop it happening?

Catastrophic failure does not sound like human error, that sounds like a dodgy part, so we can almost take the Halfords name out of the equation.

I wonder if we did so and replaced it with LBS, would attitudes to the success/failure of this action be different.

I know those Saracen Raw's from my bike industry days... they are well over-engineered, designed to survive the stupidity of youth riding... I am surprised to learn of one that simply 'let go'.

edit - we've removed the reference to lights and mudguards from the story as we believe that's a misunderstanding on the part of Metro

Love my Boardman, but when I first took it out I noticed loads of play in the FSA headset. I tried tightening the main hex on top, but this didn't make any difference - after Googling the problem, I discovered that there's effectively a larger hex inside that needs tightening first and Halfords had clearly missed it. Additionally, the handlebars weren't tightened sufficiently and the gears' indexing was out.
Great bike once I got these bits sorted, but if I'd have just gone out and bombed it down a hill at forty I'd hate to think what damage it could have caused.

I can corroborate other stories on here about shoddy bike building at Halfords.

I'll mention no names but a friend of my son had a weekend job at Halfords. He saw several incidents of just plain dangerous building. In one circumstance the bike was built with the forks round the wrong way.

Now you and I would just laugh and get them fix it. But Halfords customers are not the Velominati. So they accept what they get from the "expert".

The fact is at Halfords your bike is being built and serviced by someone that may not actually know that much about bikes.

I regularly see kids turning up at the BMX track for a few laps with the forks on the wrong way round. Quite often the parents are nearby and I'll point out that the bike has been assembled incorrectly, only to be told "It's brand new, I just bought it from Halfords."

I've sorted out a few of these bikes in the past but I don't do that any more as I'm concerned there will be something else wrong with them that could go wrong and I could then be blamed. Instead, I now simply tell the parent that the bike's not safe to use and shouldn't be ridden until it's sorted properly, but that I don't have any tools with me.

ANY new bike from a major retailer needs checking.
Had a new "parent helper" turn up at the kid's MTB club I coach at. While the kids went through their M checks as they do every week, I checked hers, a brand new B'twin hybrid. Old school type quill stem - top bolt was so loose bars could easily be turned independent of wheel.

5 miles after I picked up my boardman the saddle gave way.

It hadn't been tightened properly.

I don't have a million though.....

Something doesn't sound right.

No retailer is going to void a warrantee because of the fitting of standard accessories surely.
Define "fairly robust riding". Don't forget this is a £250 bike.
Did the steerer tube fail in the impact or before it?
What does "severe facial injuries" that have "wrecked his life" mean?
Why wait five years?

Sorry, everything is too vague and doesn't add up!

Isn't it interesting that people who are always propagating the urban myth of the so-called "cheap Chinese carbon crap" spontaneously combusting mid-ride, how they always conveniently neglect to bring up the fact that we hear way more often factual accounts -- like this one -- about cheap British crap failing in real life?