How was your first Crash !

Pross

Moral of the story. WEAR A HELMET. If I wasn't i probably wouldn't be here today.

Oh no - now you've done it!!!

BenWatson89

Haha, yep. Here come the arguments.....

KillerMetre

Im noticing a general trend here...SLOW DOWN ON DESCENTS!!

Anyway ,my first involved hitting a submerged pothole at 22mph flying over the handlebars and ending up with a 2 inch gash in my knee which required stitching.Luckily for me two lovely farmer ladies stopped and took me 15 miles out of their way to Winchester A&E.However this did involve an 18 mile walk to go and retrieve my bike from their house one week later.Thankfully this all happened the ride before I planed to put my new SRAM rival groupset on.

Hibbs

I (touch wood) haven't crashed since returning last year (touch wood again). When I was younger, however, although I didn't crash that often and had some great saves, when I did crash it was spectacular! I crashed three times:

1. When I was 13 doing a 2-up with my brother as he came past me to take a turn I clipped his rear/he clipped my front going downhill at about 32-33mph. Apparently I finished rolling/sliding 50m later lying in the middle of the road saying "I can't move, I can't move" To this day I can't remember anything of it and my next memory is coming around in the clubroom about 45 minutes later covered in blood with people stood around me. Apparently I was "awake" all the time though :?

2. On a winter MTB group ride we were blasting down a hill in a forest with some nice slaloms when my rear brake cable snapped :shock: Cue hitting a tree face-first at about 25mph. With that one I came round in about 5 minutes and cycled home, but with a strange vibration from the front of my bike. When I got home it turned out my fork steerer had split :shock: The funniest bit was that the cable snapped about 20m before the tree, so I had plenty of time to think "aaaaaaaaaaaaaah sh*t, this is going to hurt...." *ooooof*.

3. During a chain-gang another front wheel clip and down I go. Only about 15mph as coming out of a corner, but it was on gravel and completely ripped my left knee apart. I spent 6 weeks on crutches and to this day have ligament trouble.

My favourite "save" was doing team pursuit training on the velodrome when *BANG*, my rear tub explodes at about 35mph. Managed to keep that one upright, to a standing applause from the mid-90's junior squad

guilliano

My first real crash was when I was about 11. Came down a hill in Great Brickhill, hopped up onto the pavement and went a bit too far. Onto the grass mounds between driveways, down one and the front wheel stopped dead as it hit the next. Over the bars at about 25mph. No helmet, bike landed on my head. God it hurt!!!

Next one was 2 weeks later. Front wheel slid on oil on the road, I went sliding along the road on my face. 70 odd cuts, concussion, cracked bones in hand and 2 broken teeth just in time for 2 weeks in Skegness! To make it even funnier my sister had come off her bike the previous day and broken her wrist!

desweller

KillerMetre wrote:

SLOW DOWN ON DESCENTS!!

I'm sorry, I understand the individual words but the sentence doesn't seem to make sense?

Tony666

Had my first serious crash in December 2008 (but not so serious by some standards). I thought that day would be a good day for a ride. Sunny, little wind but quite chilly. What I hadn’t bargained on was just how chilly it was. I was riding quite happily when I hit a patch of black ice. One moment I was riding along, the next I was laying on my side with my arm in agony. I had no recollection of falling, it all happened so fast. I guess the lucky thing was that it was in a rural area as there was no other traffic.

I managed to get back on my bike and struggle home. Most of the way my arm was at my side as it was too painful to hold the handlebars.

When I got home, I took off my helmet and my head was quite badly bruised – I always insist on wearing a helmet and can now smugly justify why as without it I have no doubt at all that I would have had a fractured skull. My helmet was cracked all the way through in two places.

I went off to the hospital for a check up and it turned out that I had a broken elbow and suspected broken writs in two places. Also, my thigh was very badly bruised. The ligaments in my arm were also badly damaged, limiting movement.

Still, the good news was that the only damage to my bike was to the handlebar tape which was easily fixed.

neilmacd

First crash I remember was riding to college one day on my cheap shitty piece of crap hybrid. Head down as I was riding into a headwind looked up and saw a car double parked about 400 yards up the road, head back down carried on riding, looked up again and car was 2 ft in front of me. Went crashing straight into the towbar and catapulted over the bars into the rear windscreen cue broken nose, whiplash, top lip split in two, front forks snapped clean in two and more blood than you can shake a stick at.


"Best" crash I've had or two that are up there is the two dopey buggers I've knocked down on the same bit of road. First one was some eejit who decided to cross in front of a bus while I was descending a hill at 30mph+ and going round said stopped bus. He looked more dazed than I did. reported it to Police and they asked if I hit him to which I replied course I did that's why I'm phoning you at which point Strathclyde's finest asked "no, did you punch him?"
"No" - "well you should have" came the reply.
Same bit of road couple of years ago I'm riding to work and some old duffer decides to run to catch his bus. I shout at him to get the fck out the wya and he jumped into my path agian I was descending at about 30mph smacked him and went down like a sack of spuds, mashed my rear hanger up and split my helmet in two at the rear. Silly old b*stard got up and ran and caught his bus. I got left with £200 worth of damage to my bike plus the cost of a new Atmos.

jim453

Yesterday.

Tucked in behind my good friend somewhere on exmoor. Fairly long flat road hammering along feeling a bit guilty that he was doing all the work.

Daydreaming about the tour or something, not concentrating.

Next thing i notice a 10-15cm overlap between our wheels and his drifting towards mine. Contact. Thought 'this is not good'.

Horribly disconcerting feeling as his wheel gradually nudges mine away from it's lovely comforting line directly beneath my centre of gravity.

Slow motion as i over correct and bike is no longer beneath me.

Somehow hit the floor chest first on opposite side of road. Road rash elbow, knee, knuckles. What i assume (judging from pain) is some sort of rib injury.

Bit shaken up really. Had there been any opposing traffic I would have certainly been very seriously injured or killed.

Friend nursed me over the next climb and down to a pub where (shame) I had to call my wife to get us as my rib was not allowing me to breath in properly.

Two questions though. Does the fork on the bike need checking by an expert for potential weakness following the crash. No impact really, just slid out from under me and came to rest. Not a mark on it. (right shifter and rear mech did most of the skiing)

Second question. I know this was my fault. I wasn't concentrating. However, what should I have done on realising the overlap and contact. Brake? It all happened in slow motion and was over quickly at the same time. Whatever I did was the wrong thing to do. Any ideas?

I've been avoiding looking at this thread for reasons of bad karma. No point now.

STEFANOS4784

Maybe the 'beginners' section isn'tthe best place to post these

Never really crashed as such but got side swiped by a car resulting in buckled wheel broken collar bone and lying in a cold puddle The bloke gave false details also so that was nice :x

Had a few near miss/saves latest was going about 30 down a slight slope and i took my right hand off the bar to have a decent look behind then when i went to grab the bar i knocked it and the whole front of the bike did a huge wobble but i didn't come off luckily. Shat me shorts though

macondo01

Maybe the 'beginners' section isn'tthe best place to post these

lol! It's an interesting place beside the other thread of 'First PROPER decent' ...... 58mph. That's the one that makes my palms sweat to read!! I am using it as exposure therapy!

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12699475

STEFANOS4784

Yeh that Banana spokesman guy often remarks on his feats of atonoshing bike skill, he should save it for amateur race, training or Cakestop