bruce19

I will be 75 in June. This is kind of where I'm at too.

rosefarts

So you’re on medication that drops your blood pressure and can make you light headed. And this has caused a wreck at least once. Also, wrecks aren’t infrequent enough for you that you are considering a bike based on crashing it.

Thats insane.

It was about 12 years ago that I last wrecked. Unless racing, you really shouldn’t taste the ground. Even in racing, there are strategies to avoid it.

We aren’t talking about foot and shoulder dabs on mountain bike.

I think a three wheeled recumbent is your best/only option until you get this worked out.

FWIW, my mil got concussed at about your age and 5 years later still deals with TBI. Memory loss, balance, sleeping, concentration.

Don’t sweat the frame, worry about your body.

Phil_gretz

This was my immediate thought also. I didn't have the guts to come out and say it. You did. Bravo.

icemilkcoffee 

Every aluminum bike on the market today, has a CF fork. You will not find one without a CF fork unless you are shopping department store level bikes. So if you really think carbon fiber is all that dangerous, then you need to turn back the clock 30 years and buy yourself a pure aluminum bike with Al frame and fork.

BTW I echo the other poster that riding TT aero bars on an MUP is a bad idea. Whether the bike is aluminum or carbon is not the issue here.

blacknbluebikes 

In a crash, it's rarely the bike that hurts you. Does happen, so do winning lottery tickets and lightning strikes, but... probably not you, not ever.

Maelochs

Not to judge (much) but after the first impact, I would make darn sure I was never in the impact zone. I did daily commuting and utility riding for a decade-and-a-half in what was, at the time, the most deadly cycling city in the lower 48. Again, not to be too judgmental, but how much pain does it take to wake you up? I learned really early how to not get hit by cars--- and this was in a city where the cars would sometimes aim at you and think it was funny.

"Operator error" sounds harsh when someone is nursing a broken body and a broken bike, but if the same accident happens twice, it isn't an accident, it's operator error. Odd, in all the cities in which I have ridden, I have never seen that. When commuters do use a commuter bike it is because it is hard to put sturdy racks and heavy loads on lightweight CF bikes---or because they park in high-crime areas and use throwaway bikers, which I don't recommend, but if you live on a college campus, I guess it makes sense.

Lot so f folks commute on CF bikes. I have read the accounts of posters here. I just did it a few days ago because I found my working bike had a flat and I didn't have time to swap in a new tube. (Riders do drive to rural areas to ride, but not to save their CF bikes---but because they want to ride fast and/or in groups which is not convenient in urban environments.)

Here is the key, which others have mentions:

DON'T FREAKING CRASH.

As @rosefarts puts it, The idea that riding a bicycle involves frequent crashes is fine .... send me your particulars and I will take out a large life-insurance policy on you.

Seriously, why crash? Riding a bike is Not that hard, and even riding in dense traffic is not That hard. I have been riding in traffic since I was eight years old. And I have ridden in some hellaciously bad traffic. learn how----PLEASE. Much joy as I might get from teasing you here, I sincerely don't want to hear about how you became a statistic in a thread on A&S.

To repeat---YOU SHOULD NOT CRASH. You shouldn't fall over, ride off the shoulder, get hit, get squeezed off the road ... You should develop sufficient situational awareness that you can tell when a car is coming, and basically judge the speed and direction, and act appropriately. It is not hard to do. if it were we'd lose a lot more than 1,000 riders per year.

And yes, there is always the unexpected and the uncontrollable---but as some say, "Chance favors the prepared." Somehow in more than fifty years of riding in traffic I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have been hit of forced off the road where I was not at fault to some degree. Head up, eyes open, so you can get home.

You should adjust your medication so that you don't pass out whether riding or not

Imagine how some family will feel if you fell in front of them and they ran you over. You could scar those people for life, because you didn't learn how to ride and/or didn't want to accept your physical limitations. That is selfish, and in fact suicidal. Don't do that.

As for the fictions about frame material .... it's all BS and we all know it. Any impact severe enough to shatter CF into lethally sharp shards has already messed you up. And I have gotten hurt from hitting undamaged, unbroken bike parts--crashing onto metal is not somehow safer or better than crashing onto high-tech composite. Hitting a chain ring will gash you no matter what the frame is made of. Anyone care to compile a list of riders killed by CF shards? We'll wait.

The takeaway here is ---STOP CRASHING. If you think steel is somehow safer, buy steel. There are some beautiful steel bikes out there. Shoot, buy a bamboo bike. Ride in peace and joy. But if you think one sort of bike is safer than another in a crash, you are not well mentally. It isn't the bike, it's the pavement which hurts. Stay off the pavement. Stay On the bike---whatever it is made of.

Eric F 

Because a shocking amount of people will believe unfounded statements by those who are willfully ignorant, or have an agenda.

Eric F 

In my experience with aluminum-framed MTBs, they were a lot more delicate to impacts to the sides of tubes than any of my CF bikes. One was a crushed and cracked seat stay after tipping over in a singletrack rock garden. The other was a crushed top tube against a tree in another-low speed incident. The CF MTBs that followed proved to be a lot more resistant to the battering and abuse.

Rolla

That's not even remotely true. I can think of ten off the top of my head: Kona Dew, Dew Plus, Dew Deluxe, Coco; Specialized Sirrrus 1.0, Sirrus X 2.0,; Trek FX 1 Stagger, FX 2 Disc; Giant Escape, Escape 3.

Eric F 

Actually, no it didn't. In the test of the CF frame, you could hear popping noises that got increasingly frequent until the moment of complete failure. That's the popping of individual CF strands in the material matrix. This is a slow failure, and is the nature of CF material. The ultimate failure point for CF was SIGNIFICANTLY higher than aluminum, yet somehow you think it's a safer choice? I don't follow that logic at all.

RJM

I was riding a Trek Emonda SL6 in a group ride and suffered a crash. A rider in front of me hit the rear wheel of the rider in front of him, he went down and I went over him and completely wiped out. The only thing broke on my bike were my wheels, which were nice aluminum wheels made by November bicycle with Hed Belgium rims and White Industries hubs. Great wheelset right up until the crash. The Hed rims got very beat up and dented, but I was able to finish the ride even though the front braking suffered. No issues with the frame or other components which I rode for a couple more years and then sold to a friend and she is still riding it today. I was impressed with the carbon frame for surviving that crash and that was a lightweight "climbing" frame from Trek.

Since then I've gone through a few mountain bikes - one aluminum, one carbon, and one steel. The only one that broke was the aluminum one at the chainstay which had to be replace under warranty. It was a Kona Hei Hei.

My experience has been that carbon is a really great material for a bike frame depending on how it was made and who made it and that aluminum is not any more able to withstand a wreck than carbon....and steel rules.

Rolla

QFT.

icemilkcoffee 

Note that all the bikes you've listed are all hybrid type bikes. When it comes to road bikes, what I said is true- all aluminum bikes come with carbon forks.

rosefarts

There are so many boutique frame builders that you really can’t say this.

Certainly in 2021 you can buy a steel frame with steel fork with all the modern features. You can even get that steel fork with a carbon steerer tube. I’m sure there is some goofball aluminum builder out there too.

I think an accurate statement might be if you changed it to “major brand aluminum frame sold at a shop” thereby excluding the custom stuff and the department store stuff. In this case, it might be true.

Rolla

LOL. I was wondering how you were going to try to squirm your way out of your ludicrous claim that "every aluminum bike on the market today has a CF fork."

Of course, you're even wrong about road bikes, but don't let that stop you.

icemilkcoffee 

But the OP was inquiring about road bikes.

Do you understand the concept of 'the exception proves the rule'? If you had to go to great lengths to find an exception to some rule, that means that rule generally holds.
There are 1000's of makes and models of bikes in the world. Of course you can find a few exceptions to every rule. But the point is, if you just look at the bikes that are reasonably mainstream here in the US, without going to obscurities and esoterica, all the aluminum framed road bikes have carbon forks.

Eric F 

You're nit-picking semantics for no gain. Even if he's only 99% right, the point is still valid. CF has PROVEN itself to be a reliable, durable, high-performance material for frames and forks (and lots of other bike parts) for decades, and a metal fork on a metal frame road bike has become more of an exception than the standard....and that's not a new thing.

Rolla

I didn't go to any lengths. I looked at the bikes my shop sells and named ten that didn't fit your original claim.

This is rich. First it was EVERY aluminum bike. Then it was every aluminum ROAD bike. Now it's every REASONABLY MAINSTREAM aluminum road bike.

Keep whittling it down and you'll eventually be right.

Rolla

I'm sure he appreciates your defense, but

a) That's not what semantics means.
b) I'm not arguing that carbon isn't a good material, I'm just disproving his erroneous statement that "every aluminum bike on the market has a carbon fork."
c) If he wasn't wrong, he wouldn't keep moving the goalposts.

Eric F 

Does proving that he over-stated his position a little change anything? Nope. He still didn't miss by much, and the intent of his point is still 100% valid.

spelger

The most recent MUP that opened near me is about 5 miles long and usually i am the only one riding on it so i often am on the aero bars. what is not to like? very smooth and cars are about 20-30 feet away moving at about 70MPH. there are 2 1/2 intersections that i need to go through.

spelger

let's not be too hard on the guy, ever been to manila?

Rolla

Who needs integrity, as long as you make your point, right? Keep fighting the good fight for exaggeration and inaccuracy.

Cpn_Dunsel

Steel is real ....

... heavy.

Paul Barnard

My bicycles are made from neither beer cans nor fishing poles.