Jack Tone 

First, I hope she's getting better. To those guessing it was the reflector, why would there be two on the same wheel?

Reynolds 

It can be said in other words - I don't use forks that aren't steel.

rumrunn6

wow, she was lucky, or maybe not. how fast was she going? what might she have surgery on? my Wife crashed her bike into a bollard last July 4th breaking her wrist. when that healed she then also needed carpal tunnel release surgery

when I ws a kid trying to ride thru a pile of leaves on my stingray the front wheel planted & I went over the bars, but luckily landed in the leaves so I was OK. cpl years ago I got spoked riding the edge. that trashed the fender & derailer & maybe 1 spoke? the bike just skidded to a stop. here's one of my favorite biking pics. (never found the stick)



maybe I didn't break a spoke just net one? I mushed everything back into place to ride in just one gear

dmanthree

I asked, and there was only a single reflector, so that's ruled out.

autonomy

Would a squirrel really cause that much damage? I know the reflector thing is a joke (did anyone mention the valve cap yet?) but wouldn't a squishy squirrel just get folded in half by the spokes and get sucked into the fork between the blades?

Berg417448

https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7...Squirrel_3.jpg

base2 

Wicked cool.

carlos danger

if you look really close you will also see that a few spokes got torn too. a reflector would at most break one spoke then i would shatter. I'm guessing a stick or steel squirrel got in there.

Its obviously not one of those classic "JRA" incidents where everything just exploded for no reason at all.

carlos danger

I'm telling ya those squirrels are no joke!

banerjek

While she could have kicked up a stick or other debris, brakes and crown would have gone straight into the wheels upon fork failure.

WhyFi

If the fork fails and brakes and crown go straight in to the wheel... then what? The wheel is completely free to move on its own at that point - it doesn't have the kind of mass and inertia to break a half dozen spokes when unmoored; something jammed in the spokes would just kick the wheel in to another direction.

banerjek

I think I agree with you.

It takes a lot of force to sheer those spokes off and the wheel was rotating in direction of travel when it happened. If you look at the spoke the reflector is connected to, it is bent in significantly -- whatever broke the other spokes hit the end of the reflector.

Whatever the case, not much consolation for the person hurt and if they had no chance to see anything, there's nothing they reasonably could have done to prevent it.

Seattle Forrest

Great name for a brake rotor.

canklecat

I once had a bird fly into my front wheel, get spun around and spat out the other side, apparently unharmed. Probably had a great story to tell his buddies.

I'm still betting on something like a wire stake for lightweight signs made of posterboard or gatorboard. I saw two of those damned things in the bike lane Sunday, in different areas. Guy riding ahead of me struck it and flipped it up, but just missed my wheel. I rode around the second one and called out to the riders behind me. Those wire stakes are a menace, and practically invisible until you're on top of them. That's also why I removed the old style SKS Bluemel fenders from my hybrid until I get breakaway mounts. Another reason to avoid sticking slavishly to "bike lanes" -- they're mostly kill zones.

felt15

Was riding an organized ride in nc and a rider had a trek front fork failure. He died at the hospital from internal injuries. My understanding is that he didn't hit anything. Saw a State trooper carrying the bike and the forks broke at the top just like the pic.

autonomy

So Treks are trying to (and apparently succeeding) in killing people. Got it.

Marci

Ekkk!! I have hit twice some wire in the road near by but only heard it didn't see it at all. Think I will pick it up today. I have hit a stick and had it get caught up in my fender, popping one out of the snap. Didn't know how close I got... Yikes. Poor squirrel.

cthenn

At what stage is the enormous-damages lawsuit?

WhyFi

So they had something get kicked up in to their wheel, too?

felt15

Don't know about lawsuits. I didn't know the guy and didn't see the wreck. There was storm debris in the road from a previous nights storm but people said he didn't hit anything.

amaroo

Those broken cable ties make me wonder if a computer sensor was attached to the right hand fork, and it became jammed in the spokes.

Seattle Forrest

A bird flew into my face once while I was riding after dark once, the day I bought my Cervelo.

Duragrouch

OP: Close examination of the fracture surface will determine if the failure was rapid yield (wheel impacted something) or slow fatigue failure (possible design deficiency), or initiated by a fatigue crack followed by catastrophic failure. The examination can also tell which side that failure initiated on.

The blown spokes could be an indication of failure mode, foreign object jammed in the spokes, but not necessarily. One side of the fork could have fractured first, then folding laterally onto that side and the remaining stubs of the fork crown or the lower fork could have jammed in the spokes. Close examination of the spokes, and most especially, if the fork tubes show any signs of impact, will give the answer. I cannot tell from here whether the slight distortion in the fork blade below the fracture is due to an impact, or localized buckling under bending stress, the latter of which might indicate a frontal impact and then fracture initiation on the side opposite the compression buckle.

f4rrest

Wish I could un-see post 1.

Dirt Farmer

Squirrels are squishy, true.