With road biking I haven't fallen over with flats on my bike since I was a small child and I'm in my 30's now.
With clipless I fell once at very low speed when I was first learning but I probably could have avoided that as well had I spent more time practicing before riding. Even there I have not fallen since then. (I've since gone back to flats but the reasons are unrelated to this topic).

If you can't ride a bike without periodically falling over onto the road I would suggest that perhaps biking is not for you, as it is fairly dangerous to fall onto blacktop. My uncle broke his hip doing it (not clipless).

But it's very uncommon for adults riding flat pedals to fall over on their bike. Not sure what else I could add.

How about a modicum of reality? Watch any "Pro" cycling events lately?

I see you're back to what I said earlier "I get this feeling you're just trolling the thread". Not interested in getting into either a trolling or internet argument. Good luck.

The wisdom of youth I'm in my 60s and have "fallen over" more times than I can count. It's not "periodically" but randomly and is usually caused by road conditions or, more specifically, surface conditions. Stuff happens. A bit of gravel on a corner, a patch of soft sand in a corner on a trail, a bit of water on a cross walk, a patch of ice, etc can all cause crashes...and have for me on many occasions. And your uncle breaking his hip on nonclipless pedals would indicate that crashing isn't related to clipless use.

On the other hand, if you never fall over, you'll never learn how to fall over. There is an art to crashing without it resulting in serious (or even moderate) injury. Platform pedals encourage behavior which results in more serious injury than clipless does. Most people ride platforms so that "they can catch themselves" when they fall. Doing that is about as dumb as "bracing for impact". Bits that are stuck out during a crash are bits that get bent at weird angles and get broken. Although I've crashed many times, I've only really "damaged" myself a few times. Most of the time, I come away with minor scrapes and bruises.

I'm not saying to rush right out and practice crashing but it's not a bad idea to learn how to crash by whatever means you can.

If you never fall, you're not riding fast enough.

There was another poster in another thread who I ended up in a debate with because he thought I was saying that falling over on a bike was normal (I wasn't intending to say that). He was saying how nuts it was that some people were trying to push falling over on your bike as "normal" when clearly it's dangerous - smashing into concrete or asphalt is always hazardous. He was totally right...and I was a bit embarrassed that my post could be read that way.

Things are riskier in pro sports no matter what the sport, tour de france riders are taking bigger risks than your average person riding a bike is. But in average riding one shouldn't be falling over pretty much ever. Biking would be a lot more dangerous if it was common and inevitable.

I fall every five years or so. The last few times have been because of a thin layer of sand on the road. These days, I ride about 3,000 miles a year. Never is a long time. It's better to say how many falls per 1,000 miles or something. No one never falls.

I see your point, I probably got pulled into being to black/white about it in response to the other post.

Your topic is whether crashes happen. You are right that like car crashes bike crashes do sometimes happen and we don't seem to be able to eliminate them 100%. It would have to get into a more complicated model just like cars where people new to it are more likely to crash, people racing or doing riskier driving would be more likely to crash, etc.

But the other poster claimed "Don't blame the clipless. Falling is an inevitable part of cycling, clipless or not" and that's heading into both territory I think is so awful I can't use the words I want to use or the mods would delete my post and ban me. There's a guy in my dads senior bike club that tries to convince the elderly biking that they should switch to clipless - these are people who are at an age where their bones have gotten brittle and when accidents do occur a lot of times they can never bike again and sometimes they die. I actually consider the risk of biking in genertal to be an ok tradeoff (as long as you're not being overly aggressive) because there's also a risk to your health as you get older and sit around doing nothing. It's one risk vs another. But telling people in a high risk category if they fall to use clipless because it's fashionable? Horrible.

You mentioned your wife broke her elbow, can you imagine telling her "Honey, I need you to break your elbow so some people on the internet think we're cool" directly? That would be awful right?

That's what I feel the people who are trying to cover up falling with clipless are doing. I wouldn't tell someone with balance problems that they should be biking, I wouldn't tell someone with issues clipping in and out that they should keep falling over.

If you're having issues or think you might have issues with getting clipped in or getting clipped out I think there's 2 ways to go:
1. Take your pedal to somewhere with stationary bikes, put them on the stationary bike, and practice clipping in and out until you find it easy and can do it without thinking.
2. Don't use clipless. If you're not racing clipless is basically fashion. If you're not racing they provide no substantial benefit over flats but they do provide a lot of extra risk if your brain and feet don't adapt to them well. I mentioned specific flat pedals and shoes you can use in an earlier post in this thread that give you good grip on the pedal with flats.

Falling off your bike is dangerous. How dangerous is a matter of debate but it's certainly not safe. There's no way to transport yourself without taking some risks, but some of these posts are like "It's totally normal to hit a tree with your car every week, just don't worry about it" and that to me is crossing way over the line into promoting stupidly dangerous advice.

I hit the ground when I was younger because I rode over a sewer grate the wrong way and caught my front wheel in it. I didn't stop biking, but I did keep a very conscious eye out for sewer grates aligned the wrong way after that.

[MENTION=131376]PaulRivers[/MENTION], I do get your point, but I didn't take offense at the remark because it's OK in the proper context. I agree that I don't think clipless are for everyone, especially the less agile and the brittle-boned. My wife is in her 60s, and there isn't much reason for her to take that risk even if her perception of the risk is greater than the real risk. And yes, a bone break when you're old can be fatal.