Lecrae

Have you ever had anyone not point out pot holes/debris? Did it end badly like this, or did you give the guys up front a good talking to?

GlennR

I trust no one and generally ride a bit wide so I have a clear view of the road.

rebel1916

That was brutal. Those guys were flying. I didn't see whoever had the gopro appear to swerve. Which is weird.

StanSeven

It happened to me. I ended up with a broken finger and permanent scars on my arm and hip. We were in a fast, tight line and the lead didn't call it out. Everyone was tired and hot and weren't paying enough attention.

Looigi

Going through it I see that a piece of that road debris got though the spokes of his front wheel stopping against the back of his fork. Ouch. The guy that swerve around his right to miss him did an amazing job.

On the group rides I go on pointing out hazards is a mixed bag. Many point out every little thing, things that are not really hazards, and many point out things way too late for those behind them to react...and then some don't point out true hazards, like narrow longitudinal cracks that a wheel can drop into.

SouthFLpix

That metal rebar or whatever it was looked like it was laid horizontally on the road and being black was very difficult to spot and almost impossible to avoid unless you have Peter Sagan type bunny hopping skills.

AlmostTrick

This. I won't rely on others to tell me my path isn't clear, and won't cross intersections or driveways just because a leader called out "clear".

Riding in tight, fast packs is dangerous stuff, and best avoided if you really want to be safe.

practical

Exactly. Thank you. I appreciate an occasionaly "car back" or "car up" warning, but it gets old if done everytime. Use warnings when needed. By the way, there's a banner ad across the bottom of the video and it blocks the view of whatever the biker ran over.

Panza

Shoulders tend to collect the garbage that cars ride over and push aside... glass, sand, bars, car parts. We cycle in a dangerous zone... that object should've been pointed out for sure.

eastcoasteddie

And that's why you wear a helmet, too.

If I were anyone with a bit of clout at Canyon bikes, I would flat-out give that guy a whole new bike...
Jeeze...!!!

BugDude

That was literally head over heals. Brutal indeed.

billyymc

Last Memorial Day (a year ago, not yesterday), my wife and I were riding a city street in Binghamton, NY. We didn't know beforehand, but the road was in super bad shape. We were headed East, directly into the sun, wearing sunglasses. She wasn't right on my wheel, but not far off - only going around 15-17 mph, and as I moved from full sun into the shade of a roadside tree I passed directly between two enormous potholes that I couldn't see when I was not in the shadow. I had no ability to see them until I was literally passing over them. It was pure luck that I missed them - riding a 4 inch wide strip of intact asphalt that divided the two.

I didn't react quickly enough to warn my wife who hit the deepest of the twoand went over her bars much like in that video. She ended up with a third degree separated shoulder, two broken ribs, lots of road rash, broken helmet. Surprisingly the bike fared pretty well. Some good samaritans stopped immediately and rushed us and our bikes to the hospital which was less than two miles away on the same road. I went back later and put my size 10 shoe in the potholes to take pictures for reference...the one was about three feet in diameter and 2 to 3 inches deep, the other was only a foot or 14 inches in diameter, but about 5 inches deep.

She's back on the bike, but she can't really bring herself to draft me yet except for short stretches on really clean good road surface. And she's afraid of going much over 30 mph down a hill. Can't say I blame her. My stomach still sinks when I think of seeing her lying in the roadway, and to this day I second guess myself as to why I couldnt' react quickly enough to warn her.

One thing about the convention in cycling to point AT the obstacle or problem in the road -- it's at odds with what we used to do in whitewater kayaking which was to point at the direction of the clear or preferred route to take down a rapid.

rebel1916

That situation really sucks. I hope she is regaining her confidence.

I think the big difference in the conventions between paddling and cycling is that to miss the road object is usually gonna require moving inches or rarely feet. Whereas in a rapid, you use the whole stream and the direction you are pointing and paddling even well upstream can make a big difference in where you end up. As in if you point at that sieve, even while 50 feet upstream, and get pushed that way by the next wave because your angle is wrong, you may end up too close to the sieve for comfort no matter what you do. So we train to never even momentarily direct someone's attention to the dangerous spot.

ColaJacket

If you didn't see the potholes until you were passing them, and she was less than a bicycle length away from you probably didn't have time to tell her.

By the math you were going about 24-25 feet per second. Let's say that a bike is about 6' long, and you were half-way past it. That's about 9' of distance to her front wheel. Even good athletes have a reaction time of about .2 seconds. So for you to react to tell her that there was a pothole, and her to react to your warning would be about .4 seconds. In that time, you both would have travelled 10', so she would have been reacting at almost exactly the same time that her front wheel was over the pothole.

While this math won't fix her injuries, I hope it helps you sleep a little easier.

Also, from the way you described it, even if you did warn her in time, she wouldn't have been able to see where the pothole was in time to avoid it.

The only thing you can try to do is either put more space between you, or have her track you exactly. Of course, if you had actually hit the pothole, she would have followed you into it.

GH

billyymc

ColaJacket - I've been through all that in my head over and over. You know how it is though. When something like that happens you always wonder if you could have done something different to prevent it. We actually changed our route slightly mid-ride to take that road...if we'd stuck with our original route, she would't have hit that pothole.

It felt like I didn't see the holes until the were directly under me. If I'd hit them I wouldn't even had time to shift my weight or bunny hop - I would have likely gone down and I"m a lot more experienced than my wife.

Anyway - just a reminder to everyone - you can't always see what's in the shadows until it's too late, espcailly riding toward the sun.

TakingMyTime

I don't even want to click "Play" on that one.

rgver

Sorry, was I the only one that laughed hard at this, that flip was amazingly funny. Not funny he got hurt, not funny about his bike, hysterical in the instant slapstick visual.

Yes it sucks for the guy that flipped. I avoid doing flips by relying on what I see, not expecting anyone to look out for me. I wouldn't blame anyone for this but myself.

mozad655

Nope. Not the only one. I found myself laughing too when replaying it one picture at a time. The scale of the accident with a body in mid ar and a bicycle way up in the air and cyclists trying to avoid the fallen AND the flying bicycle was amazing.

fietsbob

This Is why you pay attention to where you are going , and don't overlap wheels with the guy in front of you , and Etc, Etc.

Eric3.0

Wow, worst one I've seen and look at how much air that bike got. That dude got slammed into the pavement, can't imagine the pain that must of been.

I don't really ride in groups, but I normally and faithfully remove debris from bike routes if I see it out there.
I've removed everything from glass, sticks, wood and sacks of dirty diapers.....from the roadside.

Eric3.0

I totally ripped that video for my personal archive, lol.... I need to see this on the big screen.

OldTryGuy

Kind of remembering that when this vid was posted on 41, the object was identified as a truck wiper bade assembly.

BlazingPedals

Yeah, I've seen the video before. The only thing that could have done that is something getting caught in his wheel and jamming against the fork. Most likely something the guy in front, possibly even in front of the one with the camera, kicked up and into the victim's spokes.

Eric3.0

Proof that carbon does in fact, snap....

Wicked troll move right there, lol.

m_bisson

Pretty good traction on that front wheel. Wonder what kind of tires he had lol.