All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

TOUR 08/2000
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A stem’s task is clear: to connect the handlebar firmly and safely to the fork steerer.

The sad truth looks different. Some stems cannot even fulfill this simple task. TOUR scrutinized popular stems in its test laboratory and checked the clamps’ reliability – with surprising results.

A horror scenario haunts road cyclist in their nightmares: material breach during the ride. With up-to-date bike technology, something like this should actually be impossible. But the trust in the material is not under all circumstances justified. At dealers, experts and insurance companies again and again cases go on the record in which it is very likely that the material caused the accident.

One component which in this context causes accidents time and again is the ahead-stem. The problem’s cause usually is the bolt connections of the faceplates. This actually clever part, which allows for quick handlebar changes, contains many sources of error. A basic problem is that many of these stems do not clamp the handlebar safely so that it can abruptly destabilize and twist. Also bolts which tore because they were underdimensioned or breaking threads already caused severe accidents. According to damage descriptions given to TOUR, not only one or two models are affected when particularly stressed, but quite a number of products by several manufacturers.

Author: Dirk Zedler

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