Cat's eye, kerb, crash, bang, bo***cks

Mike67

Had my first (road) crash today.

Just clipped a cat's eye whilst going round an open right hand bend somewhere just over 20mph. Threw me off line and I ended up trying to get out of the kerb/road interface bit for about 20yards.
Thought I'd got away with it for a couple of seconds but got dragged back in and then off.

Landed on the pavement luckily but lots of scrapes on me and more importantly my bike.
Worst one is a couple of gouges across the brake surface I'm guessing about 1mm deep and 3 to 4 mm long. Hopefully I can smooth them off a bit.

Well miffed and well sore now.

Watch out for those cat's eyes folks.

TuckerUK

From experiencing I can tell you they're even worse when attached to the cat!

Ben6899

Hope you mend soon.

Can a highways engineer ask you what type they were, please? These case studies are good for the "best practise / case studies" library at the back of my head.

Mike67

Cheers

Not sure what type it was but it's an old road so I'm guesing an older type

It was raised, smooth, oval (ish) and in the centre line of the road.

I'll give it a closer look next time when I'm giving it an extra wide berth

Ben6899

So it was wholly glass rather than the steel cage with rubber insert?

Sirius631

I was racing in the City of Birmingham 3-Up TTT at the start of this season when there was a fatal accident, and I do say 'accident' as it turned out that the rider involved had suffered a heart attack. I had initially thought that he may have struck a cat-eye as I had hit one or two. They were very pronounced as it looked like they were designed to be set into tarmac, but instead they were set on top of a concrete carriage way.

Mike67

Ben6899 wrote:

So it was wholly glass rather than the steel cage with rubber insert?

No, it was a steel (or at least shiny metal to my non-metallurgists eye) cage, didn't see it long enough to inspect the innards

danlikesbikes

Hope you mend soon