Unfortunately, last weekend we had our towns annual Spring Guacamole Festival. There is a Guacamole Grande Cycling event held at the same time.
One cyclist was killed and another paralyzed in two seperate accidents. The one who was parlyzed lost control on a down hill descent, probably when she hit some rought pavement.
The other was killed when she traveled up a steep grade, wobbled, lost control and fell into oncoming traffic. The later was reported to be a less experienced rider.
What do you think of rides with masses of riders. I saw people pulling out in front of others without looking to see who was behind. This ride resulted in 1200 riders.
Do you think such large group rides are safe?

I think you are right to be concerned.
Everybody thinks they can ride a bike, but few have experience of riding in a group. Incidents like this just confirm the idea that cycling is a dangerous sport.
Was the newbie who toppled over using clipless pedals?

I take part in our local 100k ride, which is almost exclusively a club event. The local concil re-routed the ride away fromt he town centre because they were afraid riders would fall off.
I refuse to have anything to do with the London to Brighton ride in which 10,000 riders do the 60miles. Most of the riders have never done a group ride and many can't ride a bike.

That's awful. It really does sound like problems associated with inexperience. Was it particularly hot or anything? Stupidity in group rides often rises as the square of the number of male riders (it's a testosterone thing), but that doesn't sound like the case here. In my opinion, most problems with large group rides are tied to traffic trying to get through.

Tyhere are group rides and there are group rides. The kind of ride you describe is what oe of my training buddies calls a "mass ride." We have something like that in Montreal called le Tour de l'Ile, and it's usually utter chaos.

A group ride, proper, generally involves cyclists of varying strength and experience, but generally enough experience to know the etiquette of the ride. If there are novices, they are the minority and are usually carefully shepherded. A proper group ride has an agreed pace and format [steady, attacks, inermediate sprints, whatever], and agreement on whether the group keeps together, and whether there are points to meet up with drops.

Mass rides are usually just a bunch of pedestrians on bikes.

I agree with velocipedio. There is a difference between mass rides and group rides. Mass rides usually consist of a lot of inexperienced riders. Those riders should try a group ride to learn skills and common sense on a bike before going out, all together, and taking over roads as pedestrians on bikes.

It's a shame what happended in this instance.

I used to participate in the group rides with the Los Angeles Wheelmen and with Velo Club LaGrange, and still ride occasionally with one of the two local vintage bicycle clubs. These riders know what they are doing. I actually feel a bit safer in a group such as this, simply because of the enhanced visibility.

Apparently, the rider who was killed in the Fallbrook group ride was struggling up a hill and fell over into traffic because she was unable to extricate her foot from the (clipless?) pedal. (I took a similar spill several years ago when I snapped a crank, but fortunately traffic was very light during my incident.) Wider bike lanes and slower traffic speeds would probably save lives in (fortunately rare) incidents of this type.

Ra! I agree totally. If a mass ride is going to work, there must be different formats in which the ride can be done (the Brissie to the Bay has 10km, 35km and 55km options) and it should be made clear before the start how much experience riders of each options should ideally have. Of course, this doesn't always work, but it goes some way toward eliminating the problem of pedestrians taking on a bike ride that is simply beyond them.

I've never really been a fan of large group rides myself. This is largely because if you have people charging through Surfers Paradise at 45km/h, watching nothing but the wheel infront of them, trouble is more than likely. Mainly due to tourists walking across the road without looking (I have imposed a speed limit on myself of 25km/h in Surfers for this very reason).

Depends a lot on the ride.

The Elephant Rock Century south of Denver has about 6-7,000 participants, and, IMHO, is a mess and very dangerous. There is (was??) one section of narrow two lane road where cars, very irritated about being held up for hours by hordes of bike riders would take chances beyond belief. There was one death the year I rode. Very little police patrol and protection. A real zoo. Never again.

The Ride the Rockies (2,000 folks over 350-450 miles) has a permanent police motorcycle patrol of 6 officers who accompany the trip full-time in addition to police support from each county and town. Much better organized. There have been some deaths over the years, but, to my knowledge, all of them were rider error (too fast downhill, riding right into a truck going the opposite way while on the wrong side of the road). The most dangerous part of this is out-of-state riders who, despite multiple warnings, have no concept that it can snow and blizzard in Colorado in late June on the high passes, and come totally unprepared, and the multitude of accompanying sag wagons, RV's, etc., which forms a retinue over the distance of the ride.

The Santa Fe Century has about 1,500 riders spread over vast, little traveled New Mexico roads. Well organized, some police support. I feel the safest on this ride.

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I think we should point out that there are rides and there are rides! The Tour de L'Ile often consists of about 30 thousand participants and I can assure you, there aren't that many experienced cyclists in Montreal. Most of them are bascially pedestrians with bikes, who never ride more than once a week and don't go more than a mile an hour. I've thought of doing it, it does look kind of fun and only 50k, but apparently it's rather chaotic. And needless to say, you can't really go very fast. The only person I know who actually enjoyed it was my **** brother in law. It's the kind of thing he'd go for because it's like "activities", like in summer camp. On the advice of people whose opinions I respect, I've avoided the Tour de L'Ile.

Agreed, though I think you'll find that a well-organized group ride with experienced riders will always ease up when entering a built up area -- at least that's my experience. On one of my main routes, we almost always come through Pointe Claire village to the West of Montreal. This is a mainly light-commercial area, with little shops [including Montreal's unfriendliest bike shop], restaurants, etc. This is one of the places where we always, without exception, ease up to 20-25 km/h. No one wants to get killed.

One of the things I really appreciated about
the Ride for the Roses is the start is staggered
so you have the fast semi pros going out for the
100 miler, and so on down to the 10 mile ride.
They stagger the starts by how long you expect
to take for a given distance.
I think one of the really dangerous things about
mass rides is the mix of experienced cyclists
and pedestrians who are totally unpredictable.
If I'm riding with someone who knows what they're
doing (to any extent) I know what they'll do unless
something is drastically wrong. With pedestrian types
you have no idea.
I've participated in 2 R4Rs and yeah there were
accidents, but as far as I know no fatalities
(including heart attacks etc.)

Michael W - Where are you ? Somewhere close to me ? Greenwhich SE10 ?

Re London/Brighton and similar where you have vast amounts of very inexperinced riders

I personally would have something to do with this, as a few of these riders will become experienced riders 10-20 years from now

I started out, like many English kids, riding my bike in the woods and doing wheelies along the streets (waaaaay before BMX) and taking part once a year (if that) in 'long distance ' (ie +10 miles) rides

I progressed into a regular, if Summer only, commuter from SE London to the City, and from there into a tourer, and still have a way to go.

So don't knock the mass rides, 10,000 occcasional riders are worth more than 100 regular ones.

At leat that's 9,900 extra people who are 'cycle aware' than before.

That was just my own personal opinion for my own riding.
I know people who ride the London to Brighton, and who enjoy doing it, but for me, putting lots of inexperienced people on bikes together does not make for a safe and relaxing experience.

On the Hastings 1066 (106.6km) there are plenty of new riders, but they dont overwhelm the experienced riders. New riders are alongside experienced people and can watch and learn from them, as I used to do on CTC weekend rides.

I dont think big "event" rides or even charity rides do anything to help normalise cycling. I sometimes wonder how many of the participants will keep up their riding after the experience.