Originally Posted by Expatriate
Wow. Who did he kill? Because based on the sparse info posted in this thread, one might assume that a cyclist ran into the side of the bus. A witness said the cyclist had his head down and was really moving. He hit the bus on the door side, hard enough to damage the door, and still fly 20ft. Not to make light of the death of this person, but what makes the cyclist always right?
Before getting in to road bikes i was a mtb person. I took the hard trails ran that at speed and yes i had many crashes doing it (no injuries ever though i was knocked silly or out cold for a few secounds once read story)
I was taring up the trail with a friend of mine knew every inch of the trail right down to the very tree root i hit. I was doing about 16 17 miles per hour going down the strait section of trail like i had done 100s of times in the past and hit the stupid root at a bad angle. When i came around a few secounds latter i watched as my friend was heading towards pointing backward from my original direction of travel. I was a solid 20 to 30 feet from the root that got my butt.
I dont remember exactly what happened so the following is seound hand from him.
He told me that he seen me hit the root at a angle. When i did it spun my bike around in a tail whip like fasion and tossed me a full 20+ feet with ease. He was suprised at just how far it launched me as he was only doing 14 to 16 mph and catching up.
This cylist on the road bike who was killed could easly be tossed 20+ feet at evena measly 12 to 15 miles a hour. I read the artical it doesnt say if he was thrown and landed that far away or if he wass thrown and slid that far total. Remember i came to a rest at close to 30 feet from my bike and there was a visable few feet of slide marks on the ground.I was doing maybe 17 at best and made it 20 foot air distance. The crash was slow enough with little enough impact that my bike was undamaged. I slid 8 or 10 feet on uneven dirt with weeds, seedlings etc in my path.
Roads while they will truely screw you up are much slicker than a dirt path you will slide further and faster on a road than on a trail.
Thers a formula csi units use to determin how fast a car or body slid based on the distance it came to rest at.
If you want to do a test your self do this.
Get a milk jug fill it with 10 pounds of sand get going about 10 or 15 mph and then toss it with some force in front of you and see how far it slides.