@gembo
Bushes are good. We need more roadside bushes. But not thorny ones.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Stuff
Crashing - break, bruise or bounce - & which bits
(43 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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@neddie - Indeed. I was cushioned by a hedge when falling sideways when my seat stem broke.
If you want to have a dark pit of horror at What Could Have Happened stand bruised and shaken but otherwise okay looking at a jagged piece of metal where you had been sitting 4 seconds earlier.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@neddie, yes a johnny apple seed venture to create non-thorny cushions on all bends.
Two ice related fails around murrayfield. One as guy in front had spiky tyres before I knew about them and I slid around the corner at Riverdale on my hip. Remounted and cycled to Leith but stiff on way home
Second fell head first onto kerb on high speed bump near the same corner (not the same winter), helmet will have helped with avoiding bruising here.
Posted 4 years ago # -
A couple of low speed clipless moments don't really count.
1) Fell backwards on ice, hit head. Suspect that helmet may have reduced damage to head but have no evidence for this, and I carried on using the helmet afterwards. Note that I was riding the Brompton, on which I don't usually wear a helmet, but I had chosen to wear one precisely because it was icy.
2) Brompton front wheel went into a pothole. Damage to palm of hand. Not wearing a helmet, no impact to head.
Posted 4 years ago # -
All safe riding is the same but all crashes are unique?
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm not riding today so feel safer to post here. The crashes which come to mind are;
1) The worst was as a student in St Andrews a car pulled in front of me to park on the right hand side of Market Street. I went over the bonnet and landed on my shoulder while the bike stayed where it was and needed a new wheel and fork.
2) Glentress black route, I didn't have my weight far enough back going over a 6 foot drop and scorpioned on landing.
3) Going round the corner onto Ainslie place when it was still cobbles. I lost a wheel and ended up dazed on the ground.
4) The most embarrassing was going through Rodney Street tunnel I lost traction and ended up lying down having been riding in a straight line.
5) Slow crash along with my riding partner. I wasn't badly hurt but they ended up with a chainring in the back of their leg and still bear the scars.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Aside from the very lucky call when a driver hit me from behind on A9 at an estimated 40mph mainly broke ribs, a fractured hip, and kissing a car's rear window.
The rear shunt was a horror realisation, this guy ain't stopping, and I threw myself & bike over to the outside lane, got clipped and cartwheeled down the side of the car, watching the white line go past a few inches BELOW my head. The one satisfying outcome was that I wrote off the car. Less pleasant was the chip on a lumbar vertebra, which than kept rubbing a nerve and giving painful spasms for at least 5 years.
The hip was when the Brompton hit a hole and I suspect the rear wheel folded under, making the bike unrideable, I was unable to manage a roll and basically the energy of stopping for c.20mph to 0mph was absorbed than my hip hit the road. Still it was a neat simple fracture, unlike the guy in the same ward, who'd hit a sheep at around 50mph when it jumped out in the middle of a group riding LEJoG in the North Lakes
Ribs I remember were when the crank snapped going uphill at barely 5mph and as I rolled over the bike landed on top of me, and a 28mph downhill where I managed to lock up the rear wheel with the brake, and skidded perhaps 5 metres on loose road grit going through an S bend. Lost the line and body-checked a BT pole.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Yikes. I'm not reading this thread anymore!
Posted 4 years ago # -
a 28mph downhill where…
I can vouch for that one. The BT pole very nearly lost!
I've probably had quite a few little skids and wipeouts, but I've definitely had more on the road than on the trails. These are the ones I can remember.
In about 1990 while on my mountain bike I failed to sufficiently bunnyhop a large ramp, and I caught my back wheel on the lip. I mean, who puts a wooden 2x2 edge at the top of a ramp? Polystyrene notwithstanding, I think I was temporarily stunned, if not concussed, because I don't remember the incident, only the minutes before and after.
In about 1994 my right-hand crank broke. I accelerated to the ground and took a lot of skin off my knee.
In about 2003 I slid my mountain bike on a right-hand off-camber turn in the wintertime, pre-spiky tyres and just about pre-Kevlar tyres. I tore my cycling jacket and hit my head on the ground, but my Giro Ventoux took the impact (which wasn't much of an impact, but at least it didn't hurt). I think that was the only time in recent* memory I've hit my head.
In 2005 I was t-boned on a roundabout, by a driver in a left-hand drive car with steamed up windows. I was riding my much missed black quasi-low racer recumbent. That was my only real car-bike collision, but had bumps and bruises only.
In early 2010 I slid my black pre-sparkly purple recumbent on a roundabout, and grazed my right hip pretty spectacularly.
I've been properly over the handlebars only once, in about 2011, when on my mountain bike. I emergency stopped behind a driver who went, and who then didn't went. The snow and my rucksack provided a convenient rollcage effect, but I clobbered my shin.
I fell off my Brompton in 2015 while performing a low speed u-turn that my trailer decided to prevent. The right-hand crank gouged a lot of skin off my ankle and it took weeks to heal, and left me with a big, ugly scar that I'm quite minded to tattoo over to cover it up.
At the end of 2018 I slid and fell off Matilda the Elephant Bike on wet decking at Meggetland, and clobbered my shin and my right arm.
Earlier this year during winter I rolled the torpedo on an ungritted road, and slid on my side for about 20 yards, coming to rest by the verge. I hurt my arm a bit but otherwise I was ok; but the paintwork took a beating.
* for large values of recent
Posted 4 years ago # -
Oh yes I was rearended at low speed on the Brompton. Damaged the rear rack, bruise to my hip from nose of saddle I think.
Posted 4 years ago # -
this thread has served its purpose.. never consider the brompton
for most of my cycling life i've never worn a lid, indeed always resolutely against the notion
however as a commuting cyclist filtering up and down A90 dual at 30 kmph average, turns out it does make some difference to look the part
i get waay less argy bargy when i'm wearing a kask and as a minor plus my cap no longer blows off in FRB wind
that said - been over the bars and front bonnets etc and its been all hips and elbows, never the head, inshallah
Posted 4 years ago # -
Bromptons have the key benefit of step-over exit at speed, with practice this can be a smooth action followed by going up a flight of steps (it doesn't work so well for going down...)
Posted 4 years ago # -
The Brompton that was rear-ended was the old one that didn't have the rear hinge lock; so when it was hit it folded at that hinge (I wasn't sitting on it IIRC, it was in a queue for a roundabout). Crumple zone, effectively...
Posted 4 years ago #
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