neil

Before this year, the last time I remember falling on a bike was when I was 15 years old (12 years ago.) This year's been different...I've fallen about 4 times as I adapted to clipless pedals on tour, but they were always very low speed falls because I was a little overweight to the left, and have never gotten the hang of releasing my left foot. But then there was today, which really startled me.

I don't wear clipless on my commute (don't want to carry the extra shoes). So getting my foot down should not be an issue. Somehow, though, I managed to completely wipe out on a corner I've taken every ice-free day for 3 years, and more than a few icy days, too. Just suddenly my bike came out from under me.

No big injuries or anything, just a little road rash on my elbow. The corner is into a back alley, and the path of my fall just threw the bike across the sidewalk and into a retaining wall...no other traffic to cause damage to me or my machine. But still, it's left me a little shaken...if anything, I'd say I was going slower than usual.

So do you guys fall from time to time? How often? Or is it just me being unusually inept?

m_yates

Only once, and mine sounds very similar to yours. I was making a sharp turn and the bike slipped out from under me. It was last fall and wet leaves made the shoulder of the road slick as grease. The bike slipped down so fast that I had no time to react. In fact, my right hand was bruised because I was still holding onto the brake hoods as my bike went sideways. I was more embarrassed than seriously hurt.

1nterceptor

I try my best not to crash, falling in my area
might get you run over by the cars behind you.
SPD clipless for 4 years.

gholt

I haven't fallen down on the road for a long time, now on the mt bike trails, that is another story.

coffeecake

No falls this year with SPDs. Two bad ones last year, on regular pedals no less, and at low speeds. Have yet to bite it with clipless. Actually, now that I think of it, I fall more often while on foot than on bike.

Sometimes you just have bad days. I've used retractable knives every day for almost 4 years with my job, but I managed to slice a meaty chunk off my finger a couple weeks ago.

Ruffinit

Washington state, Olympic Peninsula; riding every day on a 26 mile commute. It's not an issue of whether it will rain, just how much and when....

I probably average a good spill every 1000 miles or maybe 6 times a year averaging 7,000 miles per... Most of it is just pavement related. Wet pavement, wet oily pavement, black ice, frost, wet train tracks, uneven pavement. It doesn't help that most of the time I'm riding rural roads in the dark. That's just the way it is.

I have found that Continental tires hold the best in wet pavement situations and I get greater mileage out of them by 2 to 3 times. 5,000 miles from the rear.. 27 x 1 1/4.

I've flat out broken 2 hard shell and one microshell helmets. In the incident that involved my beloved V1 Pro, it was broken by a pyramid shaped rock embedded in an off-road trail. Broke the helmet between the temple and forhead. My shoulders and back were sore for weeks. Never did figure out why that bike stopped suddenly on a downhill run.

Trick fall

Just started riding again last week with the intention of removing my car from the car, train and subway commute I have. On my way home last night car pulls out in front of me and I went down pretty hard. I don't think I'd fallen since I was kid riding bmx, but I haven't done a ton of adult riding either.

JanMM

Haven't gone down for maybe 15 years - that was when I touched wheels with the bike in front of me on the Hilly Hundred. Scratches and scrapes to the rear rack and pannier but I was fine. The other guy stayed upright.

Knock on wood. (sound of rapping on head)

AdamDZ

I slammed the ground two years ago when my front wheel skidded on black ice. Thanks for the helmet. I don't do skinny tires in Winter since then

bhop

I've only fallen once. I was messing around, trying to trackstand in my friend's driveway on my new fixie with both feet in the straps. I lost my balance and just went right over because instead of yanking my foot backwards out of the straps, I tried to twist out because I was used to the clipless on my road bike.

Kojak

Worst fall ever was during a race..... Badly fractured femoral neck, split helmet, ruined watch, $750 damage to my bike.

Worst commuting fall (of my own doing; sort of)..... front tire was apparently going flat, although I didn't know it at the time. Part of my commute was on a little connector trail between two roads. In the middle of this trail was a fairly short but sharp drop with a 70 degree turn right where the drop bottomed out. Front wheel went out, and bam, right down on the same hip that I'd broken a little over a year earlier.

Worst commuting fall (not of my doing); Van took a left while I was trying to go straight through a green light. Head hit the side of the van, my front forks were ripped into 3 parts, front wheel mangled. Mostly I was ok, but I didn't have my cell phone, and I couldn't make my brain recall anyone's number to come pick me up. Finally conjured up a buddy's # and he came down to snag me. I was a little foggy for a few days, but could still eat and dress myself. Can't say for sure what role my helmet played in preventing a more significant head injury (some things you can't know), but personally, I was glad that I was wearing one.

Aquakitty

On the road I've never fallen, but I did hit the back of a parked pickup trick, did a 360 in the air and landed in the bed in a cross legged position. However; I fall all the time off road, just fell yesterday into a treated sewage drainage ditch

LesterOfPuppets

Look on the bright side, at least it was treated.

My last fall was from running into a headtube-high cable that separated two parking lots. Cable snared bike, body continued forward. Luckily I held onto the bars for a little bit, so I did a front flip, almost landed on my feet again.

I wasn't so lucky on another bike stop/body keeps going crash. Front wheel fell out of fork while going off a curb. Dropouts plant quite firmly into pavement followed shortly by hands and face. Ouch! It was winter time and they sanded the roads with small volcanic cinder there. I had a couple of cinders drive up under the skin of my palms. Had to get the X-acto knife and some alcohol out to dig those puppies out.

sadsack

Actually you don't fall, the world tilts. I went down for the first time as an adult yesterday morning in the rain trying to traverse over a huge branch that had landed (or placed) on a paved bike path. Hitting the pavement this time felt a lot softer than I remember as a kid. Of course this event was witnessed by a line of truckers waiting at a grain elevator. They were all blaring their air horns as I got up, brushed off and moved the stick.

GamblerGORD53

I've slid out on sand spots a bunch of times and ice a few times. Bent two pedals. No helmet any times. Some minor scrapes under the blue jeans.
One time i was doing an s curve and the front wheel zipped out. So i let my torso twist to the left and did a perfect 4 paw landing. Palm heels and the soft spot under my knees. All 4 spots just had pavement and pebble dents.

Also during my last school year i was playing pickup hockey and fell twice on both my unpadded elbows. Im sure they were
both cracked but i didn't go for x-rays. Didn't want casts or lost school time. So anyway, they just hurt when leaning on them. I think there was a chip floating for 10 years. haha

LesterOfPuppets

I've had several floating bone chunks in my elbow region. I used to play a lot of street hockey, and always had elbow pads for that, but bit it on skateboard and/or bike to produce the floating bone chunks. I had a couple go away - either got dissolved or grew back into the rest of the bone. Now I've a fresh one in my left elbow. Kinda fun to push around now that the pain's subsided!

My shin bones are serrated from years of skateboarding.

ghettocruiser

I've gone down once on an actual road in 10+ yrs, a bus-knuckle incident in 2005 or so.

And probably a few low-speed slide-outs in snowstorms when motor vehicle traffic was gridlocked and stationary.

As soon as I leave the road and auto/bike/pedestrian traffic areas (usually on my mountain bike) I basically ride like an idiot, and crash pretty often.

oboeguy

I don't hit the ground too much but with all the riding I do it's bound to happen from time to time. The potentially worst crash I ever had was when a friend in front of me in a paceline touched wheels with another friend and took me out. Very painful but no lasting injuries, despite the high speed. Tegaderm brought new skin to the road rashed spots, great stuff.

I've also been hit by cars a few times and walked away with barely a scratch. That hasn't happened in a long, long time (older and wiser?).

Worst crash in terms of lasting effects was the result of a dooring which I almost certainly wrote about here some five years ago or so. My elbow still aches a little sometimes after presumably being sprained.

While technically under the Queensboro Bridge as part of my approach to get on it, less than a year ago IIRC, I hit the pavement. It's a shoddy bit of sidewalk that always seems to have some dirt on it and requires a right turn to get to the proper bridge path entrance. I was preparing for the right turn when someone coming off the bridge came around the corner the other way and for some reason this one time whatever automatic, small adjustment I made in my trajectory sent me into a skid which I very nearly stopped by unclipping and dragging my right foot. In the end I came to more or less a stop and plopped down on my rump. No real harm to me or the bike or even my bike shorts.

GamblerGORD53

Well speak of the devil. This afternoon i was loafing at the busiest bicycle intersection in the city and saw a slideout.
It was a young guy on a pretty red bike. He was beating the light, to cross on the crosswalk ( the road doesn't cross thru here ), and needed a sharp right turn up the sidewalk ramp. There was a bit of winter road sand, that never goes away totally, around here. So his right hand and hip planted hard, but not much scraping. His derailer took a beating, but he was rolling in 5 minutes. He was wearing sandals and a helmet, but it didn't matter.

B. Carfree

The best fall I ever saw wasn't mine. About thirty years ago I was in a group of 40 or so riders about 50 miles into a double century. We were going about 30-35 mph as we approached a T-intersection. Since the CHP was notorious for hanging out at the rural stop signs on this ride, we all yelled out that a stop was imminent and began to slow down. Someone a bit behind me didn't hear or see what was going on. This guy literally flew over my shoulder upside down. He landed in a gap between the two rows and slid across the intersection and into the ditch on the far side. Surprisingly, his cleats never came off his pedals and he just rolled over and rejoined the group (minus some of his jersey and the back of his shoulder). I talked to him a while later and he was embarrassed but unhurt.

My own best spill was 1/4 mile from my home. A carcissist buzzed me in a 25 mph zone then he slowed down and moved into the oncoming lane. I held my speed (20-25 mph) and then he swerved back into my lane in an attempt to hit me. He missed, but I couldn't stop in time so after he left a 13 foot skid mark my bike stopped on his bumper. Unfortunately, my town bike had upright handlebars that curve back towards the rider so I hooked my right thigh on the bar on my way over. That led to both a nasty bruise and the need to add a 1 1/2 twist to the already necessary flip. The fat creep was rather surprised to find me standing next to his door when he got out. Since in my town cyclists are treated like blacks in the South, I knew that having witnesses to the attack would not do any good (it didn't). I hoped to goad the driver into throwing his fist so I could "defend" myself. Unfortunately, he could see my desires and crawled away.

It was one of the few times in my life that I have been prepared to kill a man. This time I'm not sure letting him live was the right thing to do, but it saved me from having my wife watch what would have been total exposure of my darkest side. I just can't wait for the end of cheap oil.

noglider 

There are two types of cyclists: those who have fallen, and those who haven't fallen yet.

jeisenbe

At least we don't have ice around here like they do in Copenhagen:
https://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/01...ding-away.html

But we do have diagonal steel rails for the Metro Blue Line.
On my second or third day commuting by bike (last year), I tried to cross the tracks while riding straight down the road on my 3-speed Schwinn Breeze. The day before it went well, but this time my wheel turned into the grove and the bike slid out from under me. For a moment I thought I would be run over by a car, but fortunately there was no traffic coming at the time. I had scrapes on my hands and knee, and my nice pants got a few holes; the bike was undamaged. I ended up taking transit home that day, but was back on the bike the next, with an alternate route!

oboeguy

ALWAYS cross tracks perpendicularly. Anything else is asking for trouble!

woodway

I went down on some black ice last year, was down before I even had a chance to react. Kind of comical to be laying on the MUP holding onto the handlebars still straddling the bike fully clipped in.

I go down on a regular basis while clipped into my Mountain Bike, but the landing is typically a little softer.

tligman

I fell last week. My son and I ride on the sidewalk up the big hill on the way home (because we're not moving much if any faster than walking traffic on that thing, and the correct side of the street is riddled with pot-holes and fallen branches), and at the top of the hill, after stopping at the cute little kid's lemonade stand, on the way to the crosswalk we use to get back onto the street for proper riding, i got a little close to his back tire just before he swerved a little as he tried to turn and say "thanks for the lemonade, dad" and I couldn't get my right foot out of the toe clip until just before I hit the ground. With an audience of dozens