Road Bike Racing - Be careful with your wheels. Crash Report.

As there wasn't any particularly interesting racing in NC this weekend, I decided to go up to Virginia Beach to spend the weekend at my family's beach house. There's a small LBS up there that runs a morning ride every day, so when I'm up there I usually go out to ride with them.

There's a sprint point a few miles into the ride, so when I saw one of the strong cat 2s on the ride moving up toward the front, I jumped on his wheel. As we arrived at the front of the group (we rode up alongside the main bunch), he launched into his full sprint, and I stood up and started hammering. I was second wheel with several of the other racer types behind us in line winding it up. Rides in this very flat area typically go between 25 and 30 steadily, and at this point we had accelerated to somewhere around 35.

All of a sudden, I saw something wrong about his bike- I didn't even know immediately what it was, but something just looked wrong. I dove off to the right instinctively as all hell broke loose. His front wheel came off, and I ran over it as I just managed to clear him and the rest of the bike on their way to the ground. Fortunately, and pretty amazingly given the speed and close quarters of the wreck, no one else went down.

He went down as hard as I've ever seen anyone hit the pavement, and because of the nature of the crash, he went in literally face first. He bled a ton, but he was able to move his fingers and toes, so it didn't appear that he had any major spinal injuries. We cared for him as best we could while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Once they arrived and took him in, we completed a much more sober ride than we we had set out on.

OK, all the background aside, while we were waiting for the ambulance, I took a look at the bike and determined the cause of the accident. The QR lever was still in the closed position, so I had a feeling I already knew how the wheel had come off. This was confirmed when I looked at the bike: as some racers do, he had filed off the lawyer lips on the fork dropouts. His wheel had been on tightly enough that it stayed in place just fine during easier parts of the ride, but when he jumped to sprint and flexed everything back and forth so much more, the QR slipped and the wheel came out of the dropout. At 35 MPH or so, his fork hit the ground and sent him flying. I'll take going down on a bike in just about any other way there is to that type of crash, because you just don't have any good way to mitigate the crash- you're clipped in, so it's hard to try to roll, and you end up superman-ing into the ground.

Moral #1: Be very attentive to your QR tension, and use the skewer correctly!

Moral #2: Don't file the dropouts unless you really really believe it's worth the five or ten seconds it can save you when swapping wheels.

Moral #3: If you do file the dropouts, check your QR even more closely than you think you need to.

As long as you adhere to Moral #1, Morals #2 and 3 are completely irrelevant. Use the skewer properly and the absence of lawyer tabs won't matter.

http://home.gwu.edu/~bdcheung/darwin.gif

Pete-

Agreed, absolutely. But what happens the one time that you're interrupted while you're putting the wheel on and then you forget to go back and crank it down just that extra bit? Or when you put it on tight enough to hold it in place for riding but find (as this guy did) that that wasn't tight enough with all the flexion occurring during a hard sprint?

Was the guy visiting from New Jersey?

Or, as I just thought of, the time that your QR lever gets popped open by close contact somehow (you'll say that's unlikely without resulting in a crash anyway, and it is, but let's say it did happen)?

Honestly, I'm not one to advocate the tabs on the fork (my commuter doesn't have them, and I love that I don't have to readjust the skewer every time I take the wheel off). I just figured I'd share the story so as to hopefully keep people thinking about it and checking their QRs.

merlin-

Are you referring to me as the guy visiting? I'm from Chapel Hill...

Pete-

Agreed, absolutely. But what happens the one time that you're interrupted while you're putting the wheel on and then you forget to go back and crank it down just that extra bit? Or when you put it on tight enough to hold it in place for riding but find (as this guy did) that that wasn't tight enough with all the flexion occurring during a hard sprint?

I hate to sound callous, but it's the rider's fault. A QR actually has to be pretty damn loose to allow a significant amount of movement, not to mention for the wheel to come off.

merlin-

Are you referring to me as the guy visiting? I'm from Chapel Hill...

No, the guy that crashed. (reference to the new NJ quick release statute thread)

I agree it's his fault, callous as it sounds (I tried to write so it wouldn't come across that way, though). Maybe someone with a better physics background can chime in on this: I suspect a QR can be tight enough to hold the wheel so that you don't feel play rocking it sideways by hand, and tight enough to hold it in place throughout most of the stresses placed upon it in riding- that is, tight enough that it seems to be solid- but loose enough that the flex involved in the side-to-side movement of the bike during a hard sprint could pop the dropout up away from the skewer.

I believe from what I saw that on one of the rider's right-side downstrokes, he was pulling up on the right side of the bar, and the fork pulled up out of the QR due to the amount of force flexing the wheel, fork, bars, etc.- that would explain my instinctive "something doesn't look right" thought just before he went down. Physics people? Any ideas?

No, the guy that crashed. (reference to the new NJ quick release statute thread)

Nope, he was one of the Fat Frog's (the LBS) team members.

Ouch. I've had a QR wiggle itself loose after a long ride on bad pavement...fortunately I'd noticed it before any ill effects came to pass.

How is the guy who crashed?

I haven't gotten an update on his condition yet. I hope to hear today.

Noah, are you going to the Lenoir crit Saturday?

I haven't gotten an update on his condition yet. I hope to hear today.

Noah, are you going to the Lenoir crit Saturday?

Probably not...it's looking like I have to work Saturday, but I'll be doing the State Games crit on Sunday.

I agree it's his fault, callous as it sounds (I tried to write so it wouldn't come across that way, though). Maybe someone with a better physics background can chime in on this: I suspect a QR can be tight enough to hold the wheel so that you don't feel play rocking it sideways by hand, and tight enough to hold it in place throughout most of the stresses placed upon it in riding- that is, tight enough that it seems to be solid- but loose enough that the flex involved in the side-to-side movement of the bike during a hard sprint could pop the dropout up away from the skewer.

I believe from what I saw that on one of the rider's right-side downstrokes, he was pulling up on the right side of the bar, and the fork pulled up out of the QR due to the amount of force flexing the wheel, fork, bars, etc.- that would explain my instinctive "something doesn't look right" thought just before he went down. Physics people? Any ideas?

I'm not a physics expert but almost all the force and flex during sprints occur in the bb and stays. That's from the force coming from the pedals through the crank arms. You are putting very little force on the fork from you hands and arms, and certainly not enough to cause the front wheel to dislodge.

I'm not a physics expert but almost all the force and flex during sprints occur in the bb and stays. That's from the force coming from the pedals through the crank arms. You are putting very little force on the fork from you hands and arms, and certainly not enough to cause the front wheel to dislodge.

Ever hear a front wheel magnet slap the sensor during a sprint? There is plenty of force going through the front...

1. His skewer wasn't on right to begin with
2. Lawyer lips may have saved him from his own mistake... that's their function.

If this was Sat morning's ride, most of the Fat Frog guys were up in Stony Creek doing a TT. Sunday they would have been in Richmond for a circuit race.

Hey Truckin - how BIG was the ride on Saturday? There's been some local news on this ride and other similar rides because it's so big (up to 100+ on nice summer Saturday mornings) and the cyclist clog the skinny residential roads before heading into the less busy roads by the cornfields/strawberry fields. (This is already the most non-friendly cycling area anyway). I've been on that ride on several occassions but stay away just because of the size and number of hazards (read newbies) on that ride. The last time I was on that ride one of the guys on the "A" pace did an endo in a ditch and ended up about 20 feet into a cornfield.

I'll see if I can find out any news on this guy's condition and report back.

The crash was on Sunday. Saturday we had a small A++ group of about 10 because, as you mentioned, most of the racers were at the TT in Stony Creek. The A, B, and C groups were all good-sized on Saturday- probably 80 or 90 people total. Sunday was maybe slightly smaller. We had a few more people in the A++ group on Sunday, where the wreck happened, because some of the racers had come back instead of doing the crit as well.

As to the size and composition (i.e., newbies, etc.), I'm generally riding with the A++ group, who are pretty reliable wheels.

I wasn't aware of any bad press about the ride, but I'm only up there occasionally- not nearly as often as I'd like to get to our beach house!

How could you determine the QR was closed? During the crash from 35mph, I'll bet that it flopped around open and closed about 50 times before everything came to a rest. 50/50 chance it ends up "closed."

My bet is that he never closed the QR at all. I have a friend who completed a 15 mile commute, arrived at the office, and pulled his bike into the rack, and the front wheel stayed on the ground as the bike went up. He nearly passed out when he realized the peril he was in all that time.

Some more information, the rider had been riding hard all day Saturday (at speeds >40mph) and hadn't done anything to his bike overnight. My guess is that the base nut that the cam on the QR tightens against was turned sideways making it secure as long as that nut doesn't turn. It all works until that little nut turns and the QR is then loose. It could have come loose with contact with another rider but no one remembers any contact.

I wasn't out with that group yesterday but went today (Monday) and saw the bike about an hour ago. The seat stays are toast and there is some other damage (plus a gouge and blood on the road where he went down). He came fairly close to having an emergency tracheotomy with a presta valve by a couple of Seals that were on that ride before he regained consciousness and started breathing again. The blood in his mouth was external from the (his words) hamburger of his face.

He went in for plastic surgery (reconstructive) this morning to fix the mess around his mouth. His nose is broke and he chipped a tooth. The bike is totaled.

As a side note, the ambulance crew apparently had a discussion in front of some of the gathered riders that bikes shouldn't even be on those roads- with one of the crew defending the rides. With so many keyed up riders standing around, already angry at the ambulance for getting lost in route, it's a good thing that two people weren't transported to the hospital.

Last summer there were some issues with the same route- mostly because some construction put a lot more cars on those roads that weren't used to cyclists. It all calmed down when the construction finished and school started. Additionally, a major bike advocate in the area (Tom Coghill) canceled a major charity ride (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=124577&ran=174475) because of problems with the city of Virginia Beach.

To address the size and composition of these rides, sometimes in the summer >200 people show up on Saturday rides broken down into at least five ability groups. Sundays are quite a bit smaller and only an A pace (18-21mph but really ~22) and an A++ pace (>24mph) are organized. Often smaller groups and individuals head out on the same route at slower paces but the fast paces are made up of racers from several local teams (not on race days so much) and the pace is rather fast. Sean, the guy that went down was apparently hit 37 with the rest of the line doing ~35.

Weekday rides are very different and generally much smaller- today there were about 20 riders. Most days there is simply a fast group and a slow group each going however fast (or slow) that the group wants to go. Also there are two bike shops in the same shopping center (there used to be a tri shop in there as well) that each use the same route. Tidewater Bicycle Association list the rides at TBA rides (http://www.tbarides.org/weekly.htm).

Trevor-

Thanks for all that information. I spoke to Joe (shop owner) a little while ago on the phone to find out how Sean was doing and was reassured to hear that the damage was largely superficial- hamburger, as he said, but nothing major wrong on the interior. I hope he heals quickly.

I'll probably be back in VB weekend after next- will you be out riding then? Is there any good racing close to VB that weekend (June 29-July1)? I didn't see anything on the race calendars.

The 1st is Go Fast Turn Left #2 in Richmond but nothing here locally. I don't race, brain surgury last year put a halt to that idea and ride generally at an A pace.

Out of sheer curiousity, what road was it? I used to live off of North Landing.

at the end of muddy creek as it turns into nanny creek.

ElJ, we were on Muddy Creek at the time.

Trevor, thanks- Richmond's further than I'll want to go, having gone four hours just to get to the house. Too bad.