Originally Posted by
electrik
You want to crash with 50lbs of bike and panniers attached to your feet while following your rag doll crash philosophy. It's ok for you, but it doesn't sound too intelligent to me. The idea you can't tuck or roll out of a crash or adjust which body part hits first is nonsense.
You can't "tuck and roll out of a crash'
on ice because of the speed of the event. I've never crashed on ice where I had much time to think about anything. Even in mountain biking, crashes are much slower events and usually preceded by an "Oh crap!" moment. I've never experienced mountain bike crashes that happen as quickly as crashes on ice.
Yes, you might be able to bail on a mountain bike trail and expect a reasonable result. Most often, however, you want to keep trying to avoid going down so you fight to the last minute but slowing down, trying to find a better place to crash, adjust your body, etc. But in a mountain bike crash your front wheel generally isn't sliding out from under you. Brakes, tires and friction are usually effective.
On ice brakes tires and friction are ineffective or, more probably, the cause of the crash.
Originally Posted by
electrik
I can imagine the sort of mountain biking you get up to when you're scoffing at people who are able to very quickly ditch the bicycle. Of course that level of skill needs to be practiced, something which you admit to none of so i guess i understand your skepticism. The worst mtb crash philosophy is to go down with the ship. Do you hang onto the bars for dear life when endoing? I hope not.
You don't know me. You don't know where or how or what kind of terrain that I ride. I don't huck off cliffs but that just puts me in with 99.99% of mountain bike riders who either don't have the nerve to huck off cliffs or who don't have a death wish. My mountain biking tends more towards cross country riding which is very, very different from extreme riding. However, if you watch videos of extreme mountain bike riders, even they don't
always jump off the bike nor do they always land on their feet. Watch them closely and you'll see that when they hit the ground (if they don't land on their feet) they are almost all in rag doll mode. It's the way you avoid injury. In the video below, you don't see a whole lot of people bailing off their bikes
As for endos, those fall into two categories: relatively slow speed events or unexpected high speed events. If they are slow, you might try to bail but you likely can't get untangled from the bike and are just have to deal with the embarrassment. If they are high speed events, you have about a much reaction time as you do on ice and all you can do is try to avoid broken bones. I've done both. In neither would I try to jump off the bike. Look at the guy who tries to bail around 55 seconds in the video. All he end up doing was damaging the dangly bits.
Originally Posted by
electrik
Lastly, i don't think i'm being hypocritical by recommending studs and not recommending clipless. Which is all i'm doing.
You busted hairytoes chops about not thinking that studded tires are worth it, you say that clipless are dangerous in winter and then you admit that you ride clipless (occasionally) in those conditions. The reader can draw their own conclusions.