AcornMan

Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but these pictures show the pavement joint where my wheel got caught last week, resulting in a nasty accident that caused ten broken bones and a punctured lung. The last one is a closeup of the damage to my helmet. Thank god I was wearing it. I'd hate to see a crack like that in a head x-ray.

tsl

Have you taken that up with your local DOT?

Fizzaly

Thats why im afraid to ride on skinnies, hope you have healed

JanMM

Dang! Glad you're well enough to visit the forum. Guessing that you had to have a chest tube.
Don't be afraid to take pain pills.

knobster

wow man, sorry to hear that. My wife and I had this happen to us at the exact same time at the finish line of a charity ride. Luckily for us, we were only going probably 2 mph. Stopped us dead in our tracks.

Mr. Beanz

Hmmm, afraid to ride skinnies? I'm thinking more like, didn't you see that?"

cyclist2000

Beanz, I had a similar incident happen 25 years ago. I think I saw it, not sure if I could have avoided it since I was shifting lanes to make a turn and didn't expect it to be that deep.

I still ride skinny tires but now I know what to look out for.

When I see a separation in the pavement that I need to cross, I treat it like a railroad track.

Mr. Beanz

I'm very cautious when it comes to grating, drain covers etc, that stuff looks dangerous too.

cyclist2000

I learned about the straight grates when I was a kid. Why do they make storm inlet with those grates? Luckily I was going slow but my front wheel dropped down to the axle. Painful.

dynodonn 

This is soooooo familiar, and to this day I still bear the scars from a similar incident. For what ever reason, it was only a matter of weeks after my incident that I started seeing horizontal bars welded on top of the storm grates along the very same route.

Today, I still avoid grates, even if they are the safety versions that a bicycle wheel cannot possibly drop through, along with cracks/expansion joints in the road way.

dcrowell

Yikes. I hope you heal quickly.

It's possible to avoid if you know where they all are (such as bridge expansion joints), but when the pavement just has gap like that, it'll sneak up on you.

over1

"Didn't you see that" is a classic 20/20 hindsight comment: not helpful, and not very compassionate for the injured.
Needless to say, constant corrections to avoid sequential obstacles, while avoiding preoccupied drivers on the road is too common, and, at a minimum, drastically reduces cycling pleasure, skinny tires or not.
Also, don't expect to get very far with the local county to make this kind of pavement repair, until it gets big enough to suck the wheel of a police motorcycle.

Mr. Beanz

Yeah, it's less classic, more helpful, and compassionate to bash and blame drivers for our inadequacies.

Gotta love the "blame the driver" even when they are not mentioned or maybe not even involved.