fietsbob

My last dismounts were in the winter rains, where I crossed the steel rails at a less steep angle..
last one was just a Dab, when my rear wheel slipped out from under me ..

My college days were broken up with a break to my Femur,
loose gravel trench patch ,
landed on the far side pavement on my hip.

neil

How do you mean crashed? I've never run into something. I've fallen 5 times recently...I just switched to clipless pedals, fell once getting used to them, and then 3 times because my touring load was balanced towards the side I have more trouble releasing. One time I hurt myself pretty good, as my shoulder hit the edge of a bench, but the bruise healed in about 2 weeks.

I also had a more spectacular slideout recently. I still haven't figured out the exact cause, but I was turning into the alley behind work. I believe what happened is that I hit the lip on the curb and caused the bike to hop off the ground while turning, so when it made contact again, it was already skidding sideways. I went down, the bike kept going...just a couple light scratches to me and the bike. I now take corners a lot slower.

I often wave angry fists at cars, but I have never crashed into one.

Standalone 

Black ice. Broken Elbow.

EKW in DC

No, not as an adult. Then again, I've probably cycled 4,500 miles since high school (now aged 33), and 4,000+ of those miles have been in the last 18 months. That said, I've ridden in rain, snow, hot, cold, daytime, darkness and just about everything in between. I won't be surprised if I manage to fall down at some point, but I'd be even less surprised if I don't.

Sammyboy

Unless you count clipless moments, which i had a couple of before scrapping the whole stupid idea, I have not crashed since I was 15. I am 38.

mustachiod

to borrow a phrase from skiing... "no falls, no balls" aaaarrr

tsl

I've been averaging one crash a year, and one helmet every two years.

Started cycling in March 2006.

• 2007, March: Knocked off the bike by a rottweiler. Road rash, bled on my brand new shoes, second day riding with clipless.
• 2007, June: Pedal strike. Coming hot out of a corner, I resumed pedaling a little bit too early. Killed a helmet, skidded down the road on my left side, major road rash, broke wrist. Resolved to learn how to fall.
• 2008, March: Took the studded tires off on Friday night, hit black ice going to work Saturday morning. Killed a helmet, remembered to tuck-and-roll instead of skid down the road, no significant injuries.
• 2009, April: T-boned by a Pontiac. Remembered to tuck-and-roll, miraculously did not break a collarbone, deep tissue bruising in shoulder, road rash. Out of work for a week, $1,000 damage to bike.

gerv 

A couple of hard falls due to a road surface covered with mud.

A couple of incidents that made me think I had some kind of ESP... you know... when you suddenly think to yourself, "That lady pulling out of the parking lot didn't see me.... maybe I should slow down real fast."

icedmocha 

Last time i crashed I was riding to a restaurant with my wife and playing around. Down I went.....

LeftinFlint

Once while commuting my bike spontaneously combusted and I crashed, but I didn't get hurt until I tried to climb out of the tree I landed in.

Okay, the only time I've gone down was on a patch of ice. I saw the ice coming but I had to stop before I went into an intersection. I hit the brakes and that was it. I slid probably 30 feet on my bottom, unhurt. I did manage to stop 20 feet before the intersection. More importantly, the bike was unhurt. I scraped off the newly formed snow cone from my frame and was on my way.

degnaw

I went down once after hitting a bump whilst riding 25mph - I wasn't holding onto the handlebars very well, so my bike basically flew out to the right.

Lost a bunch of skin on my torso, shoulder, and the back of my hand, (took about 3-4 days for a scab to form) and I blacked out after standing up, but otherwise I was unhurt.

In other news, I fell once at 0mph onto grass after buying clipless pedals.

Loose Chain

Of course I have crashed, fallen over, been run off the road, raced, crashed some more. Never been hurt other than scrapes, scratches, bruises, bumps, sore etc until on a leisurely ride five weeks ago was attacked by two dogs that knocked me from my bike and I have a broken femur and now cannot walk much less ride a bike.

diff

That is awesome. I always ask myself why I have decided not to drive and only use a bike.

For the question, I'm 30 so not really an adult if you are an old man or something. Feel the same as 18. But have wiped out a few times, because of clipless pedals.

dahut

Sand. Sand washed or collected on to the road edge, more specifically. This is a problem.
I have come close a couple of time because of devil sand. Now I look further ahead and stay closer to the mid-lane position.

trekker pete

crash? IMO, a "crash" is an unintentional dismount at speed, generally accompanied by skin loss or worse.

plenty of those as a kid, but none, knock on wood, as an adult.

i have had 2 cases of unintentional dismount at pretty much zero mph. first was over 20 years ago. i was in the navy and home on leave when i decided to take my bike for a ride. i had bought the bike months earlier and had hundreds of miles on it in the norfolk, va area where they haven't invented hills yet. while on that ride back in hilly ct, my first hill involving a need for the granny ring resulted in me, standing, caged in, thinking i has thrown the chain because low gear on that bike was really, really, low. so i just kind of fell over still strapped in. i looked down and saw that i was infact still i gear and laughed.

second time was last summer. i was riding arouns the empty school parking lot with my osn and his friend. i watched as my son rode up to the curb, dismounted, walked it up the curb and rode off. wtf? i thought. so i decided to teach him the art of bunny hopping.

bad idea for old fat guy clipped in on a roadie.

i attempted a very low speed bunny hop, fast enough to keep from falling over, basically. my timing was off. i pulled early so my full weight came down as thefront wheel was hitting the curb and i proceeded to very slowly go over the bars. i threw out my hands to catch myself and somehow managed to rollover onto my back, still clipped in. the boys just stared. i started laughing and said maybe i'll show you again on a mtb some day.

tsl

There are lots of us in the 50+ Forum who feel the same way. Apparently, if you stay healthy, fit and active, that feeling never goes away.

sudo bike

Never. I made a hard stop once when a driver cut me off, which caused the bike to lean forward and me to slide out of the seat and land with both feet on the ground, straddling the bike (thankfully it was on my wife's cruiser! ). But never crashed, actually.

Rhodabike

My most recent crash was a no-speed tipover while getting off the bike. I'd stopped at the bank on the way home from work and my loose-fitting office pants snagged on the saddle as I dismounted. Very embarrassing. A good reason, i.m.o., to wear cycling shorts or at least snug sports pants while riding to work, even for short commutes.
Prior to that, almost all of my crashes were on bike paths, back in the 80s. One head-on collision with another cyclist who came around a corner on the wrong side, one slide-out on a negatively banked corner at the bottom of a steep hill, one slide-out on wet ice after a Chinook blew in and melted all the snow, which of course re-froze overnight.
Oh, and two crashes on the velodrome, but that doesn't count because track racing is assumed to be an eventually-will-crash sport.

trekker pete

+1

racing or mtb crashes don't really count. they are expected occurences. i look at these activities the same as i do snow skiing- if you aren't crashing, you aren't doing it right!

degnaw

What do you mean by 'tuck and roll'? Is that tucking your neck and rolling over your shoulder, or something else?

In any case, I'd like to take that up before my 'next crash'.

Wanderer

Until last winter, I used to be able to say I never crashed as an adult.....

chasm54

I have never crashed while commuting, if that helps - and I've commuted by bike, on and off, for thirty years, including an extended period during which I cycled through some of the most notorious intersections in central London.

I have crashed a couple of times as an adult. Once when I was young and foolish and hammering downhill in the wet, only to skid on wet leaves when someone did an emergency stop in front of me, and once on a competitive event (not strictly a race, but everyone treated it as such) when someone went down in front of me on some gravel at the bottom of a very fast descent.

If you stay aware, position yourself properly on the road and prioritize your safety over your speed, there's no reason why you shouldn't commute by bicycle for the rest of your life without a crash. Cycling is pretty safe. Here in the UK there's only one cycling fatality per two million miles. How far is your commute?

cab chaser

yes, three times:

-front wheel lost grip due to a sudden and unexpected tube blowout.
-lost traction cornering hard, my own damn fault for going to fast in the rain.
-giant pothole ate my front wheel.

TRaffic Jammer

In the last ten years of daily, all season, commuting I've crashed once a few months ago. Was crossing lanes of core traffic @ speed in the rain and took the streetcar tracks at an ill advised angle. The back tire slid out and ever so gracefully went down, slid across two lanes and into the curb. Lost a fair amount of skin off my shin, but was fine otherwise. It was all me that caused that one, so to the OP if you're not pushing there's a good chance you can go ages and ages without a crash. Don't sweat it.

mercator

I ride through the winter, it gets pretty icy here.
I figure crashing is inevitable, the trick is to avoid injury.
I'm getting better at that part but probably need more practice.