caloso

I went down during the Giro di SF last year, I'm guessing at 29 or 30 mph. I got my wheel taken out by a guy who grabbed his brakes and fishtailed into me. I recall time slowing down as I high sided over the bike and I remember hoping that I wouldn't come down on the sharp edge of the curb. I was lucky and came down on the flat part of the shoulder. Both the bike and rider suffered some superficial, cosmetic damage, but nothing serious.

It was after the lap cards had come out so I couldn't take a free lap and hop back on, so I hobbled back to the start/finish and got myself bandaged up and then got my daughter ready for the kids' ride.

jaredcasper

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...r-a-base-layer

IIRC he had just led out the sprint, tried to come back on the left side, but people crossed the double yellow and went around him to the left, pushing him into the middle.

AdelaaR

I've had about 7 years of Judo training ... it improves balancing, reaction time and falling.
In fact ... it improves balancing so well that I have never fallen since.
Not biking, not walking, not building the roof of my house, not climbing trees ... never

AdelaaR

Isn't pain versus falling speed a cube function?

lunacycle

Everyone says "tuck and roll", but in the fraction of a second it takes to hit the pavement, if I have the luxury of deciding whether to tuck and roll, thereby landing on my head or spine and potentially suffering a serious head or neck injury, or stick my arms out with a higher probability of breaking a wrist or collarbone, I'll stick my arms out every time.

Velo Vol 

Be more specific.

GamecockTaco

holding bars will not guarantee your collarbone survives the fall. I went down about three weeks ago at about 22 mph. Not a scratch on my gloves nor hands, but collarbone is snapped. some road rash on knee, elbow and shoulder.

Val23708

First start with somersault from standing (with a helmet on). Grass or mats are preferable. Try to roll on one of your shoulders.

Some people then try with their bike. I didn't.

Also just practicing being limber on your bike and being able to ride from all sorts of positions helps with handling skills (to prevent crashes). I got to a point where I could pick up a fallen water bottle off the ground while riding by (try this on grass if you're going to try...).

DeadheadSF

My only experience at a high speed (well, high for me anyway) crash was 20 years ago... doing 20mph and hit a curb that came up out of nowhere. Tacoed front wheel, fork was trashed, frame all out of alignment, etc... The bike was totalled, but I was fine except I had the wind knocked out of me from where the stem came up and hit me square in the chest (initially thought I'd broken something but was fine 20 minutes later). I remember the time-warp (everything seemed to happen in slow motion) and thinking about how I wanted to land while I was flying through the air. Somehow, I landed right and rolled.

I flew about 15 feet at least from the point of impact, right into the middle of a street which, while normally busy, had no traffic at that time.

I call that "luck".

Shuke

Try to flip over your handlebars and land on your back in a pile of small pea gravel.

caloso

Oh, crap! You just reminded me of my last crash: Up at Tahoe on my CX bike, I thought I could ride through a pile of what I thought was loose corn snow. It turned out to be a big crunchy mass of ice with a dusting of snow on top. Endoed and landed on my back. Only bruised my pride and luckily there was no one around to laugh at me.

ultraman6970

My fastest track fall was in the middle of the banks passing another row of guys, we were trying to get a second extra turn/round and here comes the bell... we started accelerating from 45 to 60 km/h in the 1st curve and i heard a nasty flat, saw one of the guys we were passing go up, closed my eyes and thats it, i was the last of the group of 5 so i did not know what happened. Just grab the handlebar really tight, close your eyes and wait for the best. When nothing else moved around me i was like 10 meters from my bike and flat over the lawn. Grabbed the bike and continued, lucky me nothing mayor.

In the road my fastest fall was around 70 km/h down hill from the Andes Mountains, weekend training going down hill relaxed and talking between us. Something happened the guy in front of me moved and i touched his wheel, to the pavement and landed with my face and chin. Got lucky again, no broken bones because when i saw i was in the ground basically u have to slide as much as posible so the bike is ok and your shoulders to, this was not the case 3 stitches in the chin, the nose scratched, shoulders, hips, almost everywhere scratched also. Never gotten a broken bone, thanks god.

miwoodar

I would consider myself a lucky wrecker. I've wrecked my MTB maybe 100 times and only a few had any bodily consequence (all scrapes). As mentioned by those above, there are skills to be learned w/regards to wrecking. I don't feel like I have them on the road bike yet but considering that I've had four road wrecks w/o any major injuries....well....I'll continue calling it 'luck'.

I've gone down 4x on the road bike:

1) 20 mph? I was trying to keep pace with traffic on a busy street. As I went to turn at an intersection I hit a patch of sand the size of a dinner plate and lowsided. I landed directly on the side of my head breaking my helmet in two places. I walked away w/o blood but I did have some painful bumps on my knee, hip, elbow, shoulder. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to take my hands off the bars before making contact. This wreck scared the crap out of me. I remained timid for many months afterwards.

2) 25 mph? Was standing for an uphill sprint and ran right up the tailpipe of a rider who had decided not to sprint. He got spit out of the pack right in front of me in an instant. My front wheel glanced off his back wheel causing the bike to go left while my body went right. I landed into a backwards roll motion that smashed the back of my helmet as I came through. No blood. No pain. The roll spread the energy out well enough that the helmet impact was real but minimal in a relative sense.

3) 25 mph? Crit corner. Went in too hot, hit a drainage channel, and lowsided. Minor surface cuts on the arm and hip. No pain. Full fingered gloves saved my hands.

4) 18 mph? Crit corner. Neighbor clipped a pedal and went down. His front wheel ended up beneath mine a moment later. My bike went up to the left while my body did a counter-clockwise corkscrew motion. Same impact motion as #2. Minor scrapes up my arm and hip. Another big ding in the back of my helmet.

Velo Vol 

Oh dear, that kind of training.

From now on I think I'll just ride down roads covered with fluffy pillows.

Val23708

Well I don't know how much it helps... gymnastics or judo is defiantly better

caloso

Football and baseball for me. Especially playing on some of the fields we used to....

bitingduck

Yes.

My GF was a competitive gymnast and has landed standing up next to the bike after more than one endo. Being comfortable flying through the air upside down helps a lot... She made me take some adult tumbling classes at a local gymnastics gym and my crashing improved a lot-- there's often a lot of time to think on the way down and if you have some practice you can minimize your injuries.

Shuke

I got slammed into the curb in a group sprint around a corner with two lapped riders in the middle of it. It's funny looking at spectators upside down while flying forward. I flipped over my bars and my speedplays didn't unclip so it must have looked catastrophic to all who were watching. I landed on my back in a pile of pea gravel with the worst injury being to my ego.

kenji666

Didn't know it could get much better.

baribari

A regular 'woops' crash when you don't hit anything but the ground doesn't hurt that much when it happens. It's mainly the bruising and scabbing that hurts later. Don't let road rash scab up. Keep it under a sealed, wet bandage. Scabs take forever to heal and are painful and don't flex (which is BAD if you consider where you probably got the road rash), whereas if the wound stays wet until it heals it will feel better quicker.


I don't have any idea what it feels like to actually hit something though. Hitting a tree or car, or falling off a mountain road is something else entirely.

Elmog

The ground sucks. That's why everyone sooner or later finds themselves sitting in the middle of the road licking their wounds. If you ride long enough, you too will find that the ground sucks.

guadzilla

Does 19 years of jujitsu qualify? Sometimes, you might have the time to react; other times, depending on how unexpected the crash was and what happened, you may not.

Grumpy McTrumpy

here's a report including crashing and getting run over by several riders at race speed. (more than 20)

https://grumpyeatstheworld.blogspot.c...05/morale.html

I was using 80 square inches of Tegaderm to cover the road rash. It has been over 3 weeks and I still cannot sleep on my left side from the bruising, but the rest is mostly healed.

No broken bones. I have been in three major race crashes in the past 12 months. This one was the worst.

ilike3bikes

Most of my bike spills have been low speed mishaps. I have had only one high speed (17 mph) crash. It happened a few months after I started riding. I was taking a right turn with my right pedal down …something experienced cyclist don’t do; the pedal caught the pavement and down I went. My head and shoulder absorbed the impact. My head was okay because I was wearing a good helmet; my shoulder was stiff for nearly two years but healed without surgery. I was bloody and had road rash. An elderly man walked over to me and said, “Sunny boy; you okay?” I was 58 at the time. When falling, I try to go limp and never attempt to brace myself with my arms extended. Levi extended his arms to break his fall in last year’s tour and ended up with a broken collar bone. Yes, I am saying I can fall better than Levi!

terrain

Yep - that way when you hit the pavement your body will be 'lax' and incur much less damage.