Dan The Man

and how long have you been riding

From about 2005

• First bike crash, a driver squeezed me into parked cars, clipped a mirror with handlebars, no real damage, scratch to his paint job, got $40 to fix my bike (old road bike)
• commuter race in the morning, turned off from pavement onto gravel, got some road rash.
• SPD pedals, 0 miles per hour, only some farm animals were witness
• Driver made a left turn onto the highway, I was right in front of him when he gunned it, got sent flying. No harm to me, tacoed rear wheel.
• Changed my tires and forgot to hook up brakes, started off down a big hill, ended up in a heap at the bottom. Lots of gravel in my arm.
• Bombing through downtown, hit a red light, stopped hard, flipped over handlebars, lots of witnesses.
• Drafting and the guy in front of me stood up to look at something at the bottom of a hill. I looked too and caught his wheel. Broken clavicle.
• Similar thing, girl hit the brakes, I went into the ditch, no harm.

Maybe a few that I've forgotten, but they weren't serious or memorable then.

Retro Grouch 

If they gave out those "Crash Test Dummy" jerseys for trophies, I'd qualify.

I've had two rides that ended in the back of an ambulance and one (a loooong time ago) that should have been an ambulance ride insted of a pick up truck. I spent 3 days in the hospital for that one. I've also ridden myself out of the woods with a broken collarbone and drove myself to the ER but I never officially checked in because I didn't have any insurance on that bone and I didn't want to spend the money if they weren't going to do anything.

I don't count them if nobody asks to see my insurance card.

DavidLee

First time clipless I went down, I'm pretty sure someone saw my slow motion asphalt dive. Friday, April 13th (I kid you not) 2007 I successfully avoided a pickup truck that pulled out in front of me. However, I came off the bike & shattered my right elbow which required 2 screws to put back together & almost completely separated my shoulder along with the requisite road rash down my back. Aside from that I came out pretty good & statistically speaking I wont have another severe crash for at least 11 more years.

fishymamba

only one major crash, but many small falls caused by clipless pedals.

Major crash: Had just gotten my bike and did a 1200ft climb(8% grade). Decided to come down the same way. On the way down I used my rear brake while going around a corner at 30+mph. Rear wheel locked sending me into the side of the road where I hit a huge boulder causing me to do a front flip(according to my friend behind me) and bouncing on my hip and then landing on me head

Didn't break anything but my hip hurt for the next few weeks. I could not ride at all and had trouble walking. My helmet($20 walmart helmet) saved my life and it was trashed. Had plenty of road rash.

Looigi

Hmmm. Riding on and off for 40+ years. Lot's of crashes, particularly on mountain bikes. Only one road and one mtb crash in the past year. I don't consider falling over due to failure to unclip a crash.

wabbit

Hit by a car in 2002 at an intersection...no major injuries as the car was going very slowly. Broke a pinky and hurt my back, bike was fine except for one wheel which was trashed.
Fell on gravel 2 years ago and needed stitches in my elbow, plus antibiotics and tetanus shot! it got infected and I had to go back and have a piece of gravel removed. Also a huge hematoma in my hip which left scar tissue under the skin. There's still kind of a lump there.

chipcom 

Been riding in traffic since the late 60s. My only notable crash was when I endo'd head first into a motor home that locked up its brakes in front of me back in the early 80s - I wasn't paying attention due to a jiggly jogger. I walked away from that one with no more than maybe a concussion (never even went to the hospital).

I've had other little whoopsies over the years, but nothing resulting in more than a scratch or some road rash.

Marauder9

Bombing along a road heading out of town and went over a screwdriver left in the road which flipped into my wheel locking it up against the forks. Straight over the handlebars and left sprawling on the floor dazed.

Luckily someone in a nearby house seen the incident and took me inside to sit down and then took me to a nearby doctors. Just a little concussion and bruises but nothing else apart from needing a new set of forks and having a kink in the frame of the downtube just behind the forks.

This is for you Retro

FasterNearGirls

When younger, between 9 and 13 had a few endos resulting in broken elbow on one and 5 stiches on my skull after passing out on the other. Good thing that when these girls on a taxi decided to help me, they saw my insurance card and the emergency room people already knew me and called my mom... several other crashes with lots of road rash on those young rubber-man years.

Nowaday's, 27 yrs old, just a few clipless pedals lame tip overs.

calamarichris

A man without scars is a sad, sorry animal...

1984--nailed by a little old Asian lady in a Cadillac while pedaling furiously to $#it job bagging groceries at Albertson's market. Woke up on the curb and saw my mangled bike wedged under her car, my shoes in the street, and the EMT was loosening my tie. (Can't believe I had to wear a &$#^% tie for a $4.35/hr job.)

1986-1987 - spent most of junior and senior highschool years with huge slabs of beef jerky on my legs. Quickly learned not to wear long pants to school. (Sit for an hour, bell rings, stand up (RIIIP!), bleed into pants on the way to next class to continue the re-scabbing/re-ripping process all over.) My first four USCF criteriums ended in pile-ups and many who signed my highschool yearbook suggested I try something safer than bicycling on the road.

1988 - Crushed into curb by pickup truck just outside of Fort Hood, TX. Idiot Army aviator was making eye contact with me through the whole incident. Destroyed front wheel which was wedged between his truck and the curb, but my '86 Schwinn Peloton was right as rain after a brief session with my LBS's Campy Frame Tool (which was a 2x4.)

1989 - Moved to Holland, where pileups no longer happened, but they were so stinking fast I was usually dropped before the first half of the race anyway. Only crash occurred when left rear drop-out snapped open during a nasty cobbled stretch. (Those cobbles are harrrd, and those stupid leather hairnets didn't have much padding.) Destroyed two mountain bike frames, one during a German-American friendship race which made me the source of much hilarity among the Germans. "Can you do zat again? I did not haff my camera ready."

1992 - Got a motorcycle. Entire crash history seemed suddenly trivial now. Since then, have broken 11 bones and woke up once in the hospital. My (now ex-) wife looked tired at my bedside; I asked her "How did I get here? Is my bike okay?" to which she responded: "You're bike is damaged, but not bad, you had an accident and hit your head and you've been asking me these questions for the last five hours."

Get a motorcycle. Since 1992, I've crashed hard enough on the bicycle to cause flurries of little white styrofoam balls to rain from my helmet, but bicycle crashes become silly, petty things after you've faced the Asphaltosaurus wrecks a few times on a motorcycle.

Chris L

I've been hit by cars on no fewer than seven occasions, and so far that total damage from all of those collisions stands at one broken spoke, although I did damage some teeth in a separate collision with a parked car back in 1996.

I have scars from crashes not involving cars in 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2009 - most of those on wet roads. I should also add at this point that in the crashes of 2005 and 2009, I actually re-opened old scars that healed up better this time around. Maybe I should consider this a legitimate medical treatment.

Oh, and in 2008 I had a run of seven consecutive off-road (MTB) crashes in seven consecutive months. I'm not sure I should count these, however, as I didn't lose any skin in any of them.

Buckeye Jim

Monday a week ago just before daylight I hit something, I never saw what it was, it came out of nowhere. Seperated sholder and several spots of road rash. Not been on the bike yet outside will be back on it tomorrow.

BlazingPedals

Oh, no. You are NOT getting me to antagonize the Crash Fairy(tm).

cyccommute 

Where to start? I don't even count the silly ones anymore like catching a tire edge while mountain biking or sliding on sand while road biking. I've been riding 'seriously' since the late 70s but I did ride in my old home town a lot as a kid. My first significant crash as a kid was while delivering the morning papers. We had to ride down a hill towards the river about a mile out of town. The road crossed over the Farmer's Ditch and was a well of inky darkness at 5 in the morning. There were legends of other newsboys disappearing into the darkness never to be seen again

My bother and I always blasted through those trees as fast as we could on those dark mornings to deliver that one last paper. I remember pedaling like a demon down that hill and watching the last paper bouncing back and forth on the wheel before it turned 90 degrees to the wheel and went right in behind the fork! And it was right at the darkest part of the hill

Fast forward to 1981. Booking along in downtown Denver, I rounded the corner (with the light) on a right turn in a graceful arc. I had just come out of the lean and was standing to accelerate when I caught motion on my right. I saw her raise her arm and yell 'Hey! Wait up!' as she dashed out from between two cars. She caught me in a textbook example of a NHL body check which carried both of us to the ground. I was trapped under her and could feel the skin on my legs and arm grinding off on the pavement. Once the wreck came to a halt, she sprung to her feet. "Are you hurt?", she gasped. "I don't thin..."...Okay. Bye!" and she ran off to join her friends. I was left with gashes and bleeding and a bent Stronglight crank that I had just installed. You know the kind...with drilled chainrings and cool looking. She didn't even have a run in her nylons

Since then it's just be a litany of crashes

-My dog pulled me off a bike because she was afraid of drainage gates.
-Let go of a handlebar on a mountain bike jump and crashed. Saw double for several days afterwards. Was a really cool jump...lots of height...and a cooler crash
-Clipped a pedal while mountain biking and took a handlebar in the chest that left me with a bruise from my collar bone to my waist as it drained under the skin.
-Ran into a curb at 30 mph because I misjudged a corner. I did a Greg Louganis dismount (full layout) and pivoted on my forehead. My mostly new Manitou fork was then going in a direction that is neither good nor desirable.
-Clipped a patch to ice and hit the ground hard. Hard enough to have a very large hematoma on my leg (that still hurts 2 years later) and to form a thin bruise from my wrist to my shoulder caused by the seam in my jacket.

There are far too many other little ones to even list them. The best, worst, most memorable, most damaging, etc. occurred 2 weeks after getting body checked...and getting a new crank A guy turned in front of me at Colfax and Oak in Lakewood, CO. He didn't see me until I slide across his hood. I remember yelling "OH EXCREMENT!" (except more earthy) at the same time as he did. I also remember the world going around in a swirl of colors as I rolled off the car. I distinctly remember my handlebar bag sliding to a stop under the car sitting at the intersection on the cross street. And I remember coming to a halt sitting up and wondering why I didn't have one of my shoes on. (It was smashed in the toeclip)

I also remember the incredible color of green that the woman who first ran up to me and asked "Are you alrig..." and looked at the hamburger that was my former knee. I even had to direct my own first aid..."Get me something to stop the bleeding.", "Call an ambulance.", "Call my wife.", etc.

NCMTBIKER

Well i have wrecked several times mountain biking,even an over the bars wreck.As far as road i have just had one,a lady riding in our group cut in front of me,hit my front tire,the rest is history...

Looigi

Hmmm. Been riding over 40 years and often crashed multiple times per ride on mtbs working out various technical challenges etc., but much less frequently on road bikes. Of course I can only remember the last few more momentous ones. Falling over due to being clipped in doesn't count as a crash, IMO.