Since I never had many dramatic falls I'll report all of them...
11 y.o. As a child I never really had any incidents,but for once when I challenged a girl in my class when I was about 11 y.o. that I could ride faster than she did.. I crashed (nothing hurt except bruises and pride) and that was the end of my trial to go fast...
During my secondary school period, my commute was even shorter than to primary school.. nothing happened.
1997: My first crash came when I had just acquired a new bicycle (custom fit!) and was trying out the bar end commanders.. I looked down and failed to see that I was going off the bike path . As you all know, trying to get back on the road with the front wheel while the rear is still on the path, is not a good idea.
This happened to me twice and both times I was sent flying forwards.. nothing damaged..
June 1999 : light touch from a car's mirror, caused me to crash.. touched frame with left knee and hit road with right knee. This damaged the cranks beyond repair. The tricky part was that it happened during a qualifying brevet of 600K in France and I still had to ride 400K more.. I managed to buy new cranks and finish in time.. whew.. knees hurt when sitting on them for another year. Bad news was that police refused to take statement AFTER the ride and the insurance refused to pay claiming it had been a road race.. (which it was not).
July 1999: when cycling calmly in Sweden, a piece of road was separated with concrete blocks to make it into a bike path. well, when these disappeared I moved to the left and consulted the map on my bar bag.. next moment I had crashed into a perpendicular concrete block which sent me flying in a somersault over the bars and I landed on my back. I lost my consciousness for half an hour.. luckily I wasn't alone and a passing motorist brought me to the hospital for observation... it had the interesting side effect of having my heart rate recorded every hour, so I finally knew my minimum HR really was an amazing 32bpm.
April 2002: got off the railway station and eager to get home, crossed a road that is normally not very busy, to turn left, and failed to see a car coming from the right.. nothing bad, except that the car driver hadn't indicated he was turning left, into my path... I flew onto the hood... but nothing was hurt, or so it seems, though perhaps my ankle was hurt. Hard to say, as I managed to trip off a kerb 2 weeks later and had a bone bruise on the same foot.
Part of the right pedal broke off though. I've received this guy's business card and sent him a note telling him he should pay 12,5 euro (costs for replacing the pedal)... he still hasn't done this.. though he had promised to visit this week.. I've spent another 3 euro just to call him :-( .
Nothing really amazing ... I must say that one of the reason for DNFing Paris-Brest-Paris in 1999 was a fear to crash on one of the many steep hills.. a few people broke a collar bone, and one guy even a hip.. the former DNFed , the latter finished!! Amazing, no?
Fietser Ivana