Black ice is nearly invisible. That's the common thread between all the various definitions of it. It can form at freezing, it can form at oh-heck-its-cold -- any time there's liquid water on a surface that's below freezing.

There were some interesting bits of it on my ride home today. High today was something like 15F, but it was sunny. Late feburary the sun angle is high enough that the sun will melt ice even in quite cold conditions. The meltwater flows down hill, and when the sun stops hitting it, it freezes. It's particularly bad today, because it's not snowed in some time, so there's very little residual salt around, to keep the ice melted. Fortunately, there's enough auto traffic on the roads I ride to keep the ice to a minimum, by spreading the puddles out.

The other place we see it in Chicago is under railroad bridges. Water drips down, forming nice puddles of ice underneath.

MUP, straight, going up a minor incline. This was at night or I'd have spotted it 50 yards away.

The uptown has 26 inch wheels. I'm thinking it may -just- clear the fenders, which is fine.

It was dark, and I had not noticed the fact that the ice was mid-freeze right as I set out. It doesn't normally get slathered in black ice all over as it did that night. Typically the weather we had means the paved areas plus a bit off the edge is dry or in the process of drying. The areas affected were so affected due to the topography of the area, with a creek nearby and the incline creating a "sink" that the cold air settled into. The ice was right in this sink. The park is always much colder than the surrounding areas, and if you go from swamp rd/bypass through to where I went down, you can feel the temperature drop as you get lower & further toward the creek. Long story short, this rarely happens & I've never gone down due to ice till this weekend.

I'd ride on pond ice with that.

- Andy

Wish I could push a button & get you 100% man, for real.

I feel very fortunate that I seem to have very robust bones compared to other people. I've gone down very hard a few times, once chin needed sewing, once elbow took 50% of a 25 mph curb dive, and one time gap between sidewalk & grass grabbed tire & bike went right while I kept going straight.

I'm here (after riding for so many years) because of good genes and exceptional situational awareness, and a huge barrel of favourable happenstance. I'm so sorry your barrel didn't have the better outcome, but at least you're still here. You never know what life has in store. You can't do anything but try to prepare & mitigate as much risk as you can.

- Andy

He lost his balance because put his unclipped foot down too close to the bike and fell over. Having platforms wouldn't have saved him from falling because his foot on the pedal could have been put down fast enough to catch his balance with any pedal. The natural...and mostly useless...response is to try to lean your body back towards the "high" side, i.e. the side you are falling away from. It usually doesn't work and you are going to land in a heap.

As am I. Pedals make no difference.

And those of us who use clipless could have put our foot down with sufficient warning as well. But I've been in lots of situations where there is no warning. One femtosecond you are on your wheels and the next femtosecond you are on the ground. In those kinds of conditions, putting a foot out to "catch" yourself just results in injury. Standard procedure in mountain biking is to keep all your arms and legs inside the vehicle. Same applies to snow and ice.


My point is that I've had lots of crashes with clipless on snow and ice. I've never tried to "catch" myself if I'm going down. Catching yourself whether by putting out an arm or a leg will usually result in an injury. Crashing is going to hurt and you may still get bruised and battered but at least you won't be broken.

There isn't much in that article that applies to bikes other then don't get on the brakes. Cars have two more wheels and a wider stance than a bicycle. When their front wheels slide then don't fall over. Bicycles do. And the rider, being high up and unprotected is going to hit the ground. Resist the urge to "catch" yourself. You can't.

"Black ice" is an over used excuse. It's only "invisible" to those who don't look. If the road is wet, near the freezing point of water and there is water in some form falling out of the sky, anyone using the roadways should expect slick conditions. I see far too many people who see a wet road at anything less than the freezing point of water, assume that it's just wet and drive at stupid speeds.

Im Ok on my (studded tire fitted) bike when the ice on the ground is hard to walk on.. without studs on the shoe sole too .


Clear sky, no cloud cover, its 31 now but has been dry for a week, so no Ice.


The News is as good at looking out the window and talking about the current weather, as I Am.

when they say or I see Ice, I break out the studded tire MTB ..

Thank you for the well wishes.

But I find the last paragraph a bit insulting and offensive.

One time a few years ago, days after seeing any ice on two of my main routes, I took a third route for variety. I was booking pretty good on my street tires fighting the morning glare when I entered a shady parking lot behind a boat house by a lake. The bike slid out to the right and by left foot somehow came out of the toe clip and I slid about 20 yards like some dirt-track motorcyclist until on the far end, by tires caught dry pavement and my bike righted itself and I braked to a quick stop. I suppose had I been in my 20s or 30s I would have been thrilled. But having reached 50 I was scared, upset from not seeing the danger beforehand and sore from the stretch (!) So now I'm a little more cautious. However..thanks to Bike Forums, I have been able to push my cold weather biking threshhold back down to 12F; and I plan to get studded snow tires for next winter and return to riding in the snow for the first time in 15 years (although this time, smarter, warmer and safer) Thanks BF!

Hah, hah, it does sound like bacon on the griddle! Mmmmmmm......studs and bacon.

Hah, sounds like a new signature line!

By the common definition of black ice, in my video (earlier in this thread), the fall was caused by black ice. However, in places where temps regularly drop below zero Fahrenheit, we get a unique type of ice that we call 'black ice' - this is the ice that forms from exhaust vapor at stop lights.... any thing else is just 'ice'.

Honestly, I think it's a regional thing for those of us living on Hoth, now where did leave my tauntaun.

I’ve been commuting through the park for the purpose practicing cycling in the snow and ice. The trenches dug up by pedestrians give me a 6 to 12inch wide very bumpy pathway. Riding downhill is more nerve-racking than riding uphill. I’ve learned that you need to be in low gear in order to keep your wheels moving. If your wheels run into the snow wall on either side of the trench, you have to keep pedalling to get out. The same if you run into clumps of ice. It feels counter-intuitive because the reaction is to stop pedalling as you try to stable yourself from falling over. But that’s what will happen if you stop pedalling. I’ve almost fell over a few times when my foot slipped off my pedal. Putting them back on the pedal when your instinct was to have your foot on the ground isn’t an easy reaction. That’s why I feel toe clips would have been helpful. It’s the same argument I had 30 years earlier when I stopped wiping out after installing toe clips.

Or popcorn, minus the great smell.

Snapped this outside the shop when my friend stopped by...

http://www.ravingbikefiend.com/bikepics/amandahoth2.jpg

Looks like a lovely day outside, can't wait to ride home!

Some random guy got in the picture of your friend on a horse. Too bad.

That is no horse.....

That's Mr. Ed, of course....

I agree 100%.

That's one of the reasons why a lot of cyclists crash when the road conditions are slick, because they riding their bicycles and taking corners at stupid speeds. I often hear the expression " drive according to road conditions"....The same thing applies to cycling, "ride your bike according to road conditions".

My point was that I'm really fortunate in many respects and I'm sorry fortune wasn't on your side this time regardless of anything else. Not sure how it could be offensive but ok, sorry I'll go hide under a rock now. :(

- Andy

The Secret Life of TransitBiker.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I was driving down Big Cottonwood canyon after skiing one day and the road appeared to be dry and ice free. At one point, down the road I could see multiple cars off the road and one upside down still on the road. I naturally applied the brakes to start slowing down, and then started sliding on what appeared to be a dry road. To make matters worse some moron was standing in the middle of the road with his back to me taking pictures of the carnage. I got on the horn and somehow slid through the mess without hitting anything or going off the road myself. I'm told that was what is referred to in Utah as black ice.

If its shiny or wet looking it's just ice.

Exceptional situational awareness allows you to see invisible black ice.

The reason you can't see black ice is the same reason you can't see Black Holes - no light can escape. In fact, black ice is made up of Dark Matter. When enough of this Dark Matter forms on a trail or road, a "Cold Fusion" reaction occurs - of course everything is opposite of a normal fusion reaction, and instead of emitting light, the Black Ice sucks it in.

Platform pedals, being larger, disrupt this Black Ice / Cold Fusion reaction field, which is why riding platforms is so much safer than riding on those little spds.

Contrary to popular belief, black ice is not any more slippery than normal pavement - what causes the falls is the gravitational vortex at the event horizon.

This is just grade school science - at least it was back on Tatooine.

you left out the part where this won't happen if you clean a new chain before installing it

Sure, but there are lots of situations where the ice has formed where none of your conditions obtain. I know you've said you don't ride when there's ice, so perhaps people with more experience in riding in icing conditions, and who know from experience that there are lots of ice that is invisible in normal lighting conditions, and even more that's hard to see in poor visibility.

I expect ice from November through march, which is why I ride on studs, and it's why I've not had a spill on ice since. I'm fond of my collarbones, I prefer to keep them in one piece.

I think that what you encountered was the phenomenon that grease and oil float on water - all the fresh grease and oil in that fresh asphalt sealing gets floated to the surface after a rainfall and is a surprisingiy effective lubricant.

This is a constant hazard on roads in places that don't get much rain - LA is bad for this. Cars lose bits of oil and grease and it all lands on the roads - mostly in the middle of the lane. With such long periods between rainfalls, there is much time to develop a decent accumulation. When the rain does come things get surprisingly slick - especially if you are on a motorcycle riding down the middle of the lane. Yikes!

This is all at it's worst in desert cities because of the long time between rainfalls. Dessert cities ... and fresh laid (or sealed) ashpalt.

this thread should have ended after your comment.

That is no random guy either... ;)

Hmm..

I just happen to have over-sized bones that -knock on wood- have proven useful in a few of the nastier spills ive been in. I have injured 2 fingers, one right middle due to a desk with me in it landing on finger tip (the kind with ceramic top & bevel edge), and second time due to my left pinky finger striking a shopping cart corral while i wasnt paying attention, the ligament stayed attached to the bone in the tip while yanking a piece of bone off the bone below. It healed really well, but took 5-6 weeks to do so. I've shredded skin all over, split my chin, all kinds of really lovely stuff over the years, but thankfully no breaks.

And i have a very in tune perception of what's going on around me, it may be due to the PTSD i was diagnosed with or some other thing not yet discovered, but it has saved my life dozens of times.

As many times as i've avoided a serious crash, i've really beefed it about 4 times requiring hospital, thankfully just me involved & not another vehicle or ped.

I'm nothing special, just vey very very fortunate in many respects and my comments were only to point out that it could very well have been any one of us in that situation and that's scary to think about because it doesnt matter what you do, no one is immune to the roll of dice that life is. I still feel like a heel but i dodnt mean any malice at all.

Als, yea you cannot see black ice here at night & its not a frequent thing.

- Andy