Horrible accidents on sportives

I am the god of hell fire · June 2012

So now we have had 2 horrible, horrible accidents on sportives happening on consecutive weekends with minimal comment on this normally busy board

Thoughts and best wishes again to those injured

Brian B · June 2012

What happened and what event?

I have seen a few bad incidents on sportives myself but to be honest it's mostly been the riders fault thinking they are racing and taking risks they would not usually do or have the skills necessary. Also some are not used to riding in groups and get caught up in the excitment and are not aware of whats happening around them.

For me I generally enjoy events after the first 30miles as the nervous energy has calmed down and people are more spread out. I tend to ride alone on sportives due the above reasons.

Cornish-J · June 2012

i tend to agree with you Brian - i saw the aftermath of a wipeout yesterday on the dartmoor classic, the chap had overtaken me like it was a sprint for the line, then about half a mile later i came across him on the floor shortly after a wet cattlegrid.

There's probably lots of innocent riders that come a cropper too but sometimes riders do contribute to their own downfall.

Brakeless · June 2012

Take several hundred or even thousand riders and the chances are there will be one or two accidents. I've seen guys go over on gravel on clubruns, it doesn't call for any outcry about clubruns.

derbygrimpeur · June 2012

I am the god of hell fire wrote:

So now we have had 2 horrible, horrible accidents on sportives happening on consecutive weekends with minimal comment on this normally busy board

Thoughts and best wishes again to those injured

Maybe there's been no mention because nobody knows. Enlighten us please...

Mendip rouleur · June 2012

I saw the aftermath of a crash on the descent from Doccombe on the Dartmoor classic yesterday. It would have been about 2-2.30PM, in the wooded section. An ambulance was attending and it looked like a rider was by the side of the road being put on a spinal board.

That descent is OK if people are sensible, a few twists and turns, road surface not great, but not poor either. Main problem is that it is a downhill section close to the finish and there could be a tendency for riders to go a bit mad. The visibility is not great as it's entirely encased in tree cover and quite busy with motor traffic too.

Whatever happened I hope the rider and anyone else involved is OK.

Not sure if that is what the OP is referring to.

FoldingJoe · June 2012

They did make a point to mention at the start of the ride about taking it easy, and quoted one guy who, on the Exmoor Beauty earlier in the year, came off his bike and went under an oncoming car.

It's just one of those things, you can just as easily come off on a wet cattle grid doing 5mph as you can doing 30mph, and it's not great riding through that sort of tree cover when it's sunny. It's quite hard to pick out any sort of obstacles in the road, again causing unnecessary changes of direction at last minutes causing crashes.

dodgy · June 2012

I am the god of hell fire wrote:

So now we have had 2 horrible, horrible accidents on sportives happening on consecutive weekends with minimal comment on this normally busy board

Thoughts and best wishes again to those injured

I'm not surprised there's no comment, why be so cryptic, and why not follow up with a response after you were asked what happened? After all, we should all be commenting on (whatever it is) what happened.

rdt · June 2012

dodgy wrote:

I am the god of hell fire wrote:

So now we have had 2 horrible, horrible accidents on sportives happening on consecutive weekends with minimal comment on this normally busy board

Thoughts and best wishes again to those injured

I'm not surprised there's no comment, why be so cryptic, and why not follow up with a response after you were asked what happened? After all, we should all be commenting on (whatever it is) what happened.

I assume one of the incidents the OP's referring to was in the Polka Dot, as discussed on this thread last week:-
viewtopic.php?f=40007&t=12845428

Until the results of the police investigation are known, there's not really anything to comment on.

I've no idea which other incident the OP's referring to.

CakeLovinBeast · June 2012

I heard of a few accidents on the Dartmoor Classic yesterday, though I have no knowledge of any exact details. To further Mendip's comments below, the descent from Doccombe is poor at best, and horribly rutted/potholed in other places. The surface is not helped by the fact that certain conditions, such as strong sunshine filtering through the tree-covered sections (as we encountered yesterday), can make any surface faults very difficult to spot.

Rob Somerset · June 2012

I agree that the Doccombe road is tatty and seemed to have a lot of water running across it, I certainly rode it very cautiously. There were quite a few dire sections of road. Devon CC appear to specialise in destroying good roads with a tatty surface dressing . The problem occurs after several months when a good proportion of the gravel has just fallen off leading to a very rough and unpredictable surface. That combined with the piles of gravel that never gets swept up from day1. rant rant........

FoldingJoe · June 2012

.... at least at Sportive's there is a very good chance of getting medical attention fairly quickly.

Sounds like those crashes could have happened to anybody, and they were more a victim of the conditions than silly riding.

andy_wrx · June 2012

They might be more likely to happen if you send lots of riders off down these dodgy roads, half of them thinking it's a race because they are timed and they have a number on the front of their bike...

nickwill · June 2012

I think any event that attracts hundreds of participants is likely to have accidents. As someone has said if you amalgamated the statistics from some 50 or 60 clubruns, with 20 or 30 people on each one, you would be quite likely to record some accidents. This would particularly be the case where the rides were on narrow hilly roads. I rode the Fred Whitton for the first time in 5 years in May, and felt that the standard of riding had improved immensely in that time.

Pumpkin Positive · June 2012

I am the god of hell fire wrote:

So now we have had 2 horrible, horrible accidents on sportives happening on consecutive weekends with minimal comment on this normally busy board

Thoughts and best wishes again to those injured

Hasn't this topic been 'done to death' recently?

Of course there is an element of risk attached to almost any activity. All those who participate are aware of the risks and if they are not then they should not be allowed out of their own front door for their own safety. If you can't accept the risk then don't ride - simple.

I think the risk of me dying an early death through heart disease / diabetes / whatever brought about by inactivity is greater than the risk of death or serious injury on a sportive. For this reason I will continue to ride and enjoy these events; I'll take reasonable precautions and responsibility for my own actions. If I end up hurt (or worse) I'll just accept that I was unlucky. I worry that these events will become sanitised and over-regulated which will only serve to push up cost and reduce enjoyment and quality.

Horrible accidents on sportives

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