Placing a hand straight out could cause a collar bone damage.

Using hands to "steer" into tuck and roll (bent elbows) helps. This is what I mean:





Have used it countless times when tripped in football (the proper one, played with feet ) and in quite a few bicycle and motorcycle accidents. Whenever I'm thrown to fall face down from a height.

Think about it for a few minutes. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Ftr, not everyone breaks a collarbone while using their hands to avoid or soften the blow to the head.

I have trained myself to tuck and roll as best I'm allowed. Separating from the bike is what I find challenging in completing this successfully.

I'm still off the bike because my last attempt result in a tuck but no roll. The roll wad really a thud that broke my arm.

Accident avoidance is the best approach. ☺

The specific nature of the crash determines your options as well as what is even possible.

I am a huge fan of the tuck and roll and always use it unless circumstances demand something else such as needing to vault yourself to avoid being crushed after an imminent collision with a car.

For most non-impact accidents, I think it is preferable to stay locked in on the bike (elbows in, feet in the pedals, hands on the bars) and think this has prevented me from significantly worse injury in a few crashes.

Folks who advocate tuck and roll have no concept of what that means to many of us: absolutely nothing. I'm not a gymnast. I couldn't tuck and roll from a standing start to save my life. From a 20+ MPH moving bike while still clipped in is pure fantasy.

How one is supposed to do that hanging off the side of bike while still moving forward with the bike coming down of top of you is totally beyond me. And by the way, in all the TdF crashes I have ever seen, I have not ever witnessed any tucking and rolling, just piling up.

I didn't use my hands on my one bad wreck. I was wearing a helmet and I was knocked out. $ years later I'm still suffering the effects of the head inury and will be for the rest of my life. I'll take some broken bones over a head injury if it ever happens again.

++++ a million.

Exactly. One accident I saw where the guy hit his head badly was not knocked out but he was badly shaken. He made it clear he didn't want to use his hands to prevent injury to them which I still can't understand despite all these informative posts.

Well if you're going to stick your head out to break your fall, then yeah, you might as well use your hands instead.

The whole point of the "right" way to fall is to stretch out the timeframe in which you go from whatever-to-zero; trying to actively stop yourself is counter to this goal. Saying that you don't have enough reaction time to tuck is bs if you admit that you have enough time to stick your hands out.

I've seen some in the TDF that looked like pretty good falls, rolls and other break-falls, and others that need some remedial training. They're world class cyclists but that doesn't mean they necessarily know how to tumble.

Maybe it IS a specialized skill but one that I'm convinced that most cyclists are athletic enough to learn. It's better to practice under supervision than to learn from actual crashes though.

BTW a roll is easier and less jarring if you have some forward momentum than when you go straight down. I'm 57, and if I land solidly on the side of my shoulder, with my arm tucked in, I'd have a good chance of breaking something. Probably the collarbone. If I can move into a roll, at 20 mph or whatever, I'll probably get up without a scratch. Don't disparage it.

I plan all of my crashes to occur at low speeds without head injuries. That way I can ride helmetless and feel the breeze between my ears.

I've fallen and/or crashed quite a number of times on bikes in over 60 years of riding. Never broke anything. I never put my hands out. When a road cyclist falls, it's usually a low-side fall. The tires lose traction, a wheel is trapped by a road irregularity, or one simply falls over. When that happens, if you keep your arms in, most of the energy is absorbed by the hip, some by the chest/shoulder.

Somewhere, I think in Bicycling Magazine, I saw an article about teaching bicycle police riding techniques, including falling without getting injured. The instructor had them ride in a circle at a low speed on pavement, then suddenly turn the wheel out and fall. Hands stay on the bars, elbows tucked, take the fall on your whole side. They weren't wearing protective gear other than their helmets. They didn't hit their heads. They didn't break anything. OTOH cops ride MTBs. It's a little different with road bikes where we ride on the hoods most of the time. I know of one high speed fall where the rider lost fingers from having them ground off when his hand was trapped on a hood. That's very unusual though. Usually in a high speed fall, the bike is ripped right off your feet and you're separated from it. See TdF crash videos.

Pros crash a lot. It's a dangerous job. If you look at their injuries, it's usually road rash on hip and leg. A few of my older riding buddies have suffered broken pelvises or femurs from road crashes. OTOH, they didn't do gym work and so were probably more fracture-prone. These things support my own experience which is that mostly we take the hit on our hips if we don't put an arm out and I think a hip is a lot harder to break than a collarbone, given the number of obviously distorted collarbones on my riding buddies.

I think that those of us who grew up playing ball sports do this instinctively.

A slide is another matter. Though I had an about 20 km/h slide in a tight turn - bike just flew below me on an ice patch - i managed to slide on all fours, avoiding to cut my work trousers.

Some motorcycle "low side" slides I've had - exactly that - push bike away and just land on the back (keeping the head tucked - not hit the floor with the back of my head. Or roll sideways.

This is good, 9 seconds into video fall explains it:



This deals with high sides, using arms and legs just enough to get into a tucked, rolling position:
(these people have elbow protectors, on a bicycle, I often put my palms (with gloves) first, instead of elbows, but with bent arms and muscles prepared to just cushion and roll, not hold arms straight at all cost).

I pretty much use any body part of opportunity to break falls. On Friday, I used my forearm.



Disclaimer: This was a mountain biking crash, which I am quickly becoming an expert in.

My self imposed rule in my racing days was to not let go of the handlebars until after I hit the road. Improved the odds that my crash was going to be just road rash and bruises. Other mantra - acres of skin lost was good. The more road rash, the less deep and faster healing each one was. (And a really good reason to be pre-shaved.) Any crash I could ride on from was a good crash.

Collarbones vs hand and wrist injuries. Most here are talking like collarbones are a more serious injury. Really? They usually heal up just fine and 3/4s of the time require no surgery or setting. Usually lead to no consequences at all beyond shirt sleeves getting longer. Complications with hands and fingers can lead to the loss of many professions and lots of routine activities.

How one rides has a lot to do with how they crash. Touching front wheels to anything can bring over-the-bars crashes very fast and real likelihood of head and shoulder injury.. and need for the very serious injury minimizing arm and hand crumple-zone approach. Keep that front wheel clean and most of your crashes will be of the slipped on wet leaves variety to the side where not putting you hand down improves your odds of being able to ride on a lot.

I gave up places in races by passing on the opportunity to put my front wheel in places I didn't consider prudent.

Ben

I used my helmeted head when I crashed That didn't work as I bruised both side of my old brain.

That's been my experience too. It just all happens way too fast.

in 3 of my 4 crashes, one instant I was riding along, the next, on the pavement and bleeding. only one happened at a slow enough speed to be able to tuck and roll...

most recent one, got a concussion and Grade 3 shoulder separation...but, since I'm missing 3 hrs of memory surrounding the event, not sure what positions my head and hand/arm were in...

it's not like I was piloting a plane at 10,000' and had a few moments to figure out where/how to land...

Exactly. Comments about tucking and rolling, etc., remind me of what Mike Tyson said about boxing: "Everybody has plans until they get hit."

This. I've smashed up a few bars, rims, pedals, deraileurs while sliding down the road but staying in the bike. But not my face or skull. Never use your head to break your fall. 12 years of Judo was not a waste.

I just don't understand how you tuck and roll when your feet are attached to a bicycle. It's not like you are flying through the air except in rare cases. Most times the bike is sliding out from under you. If you don't want to use your hands, fine, stay on the bars and protect your head. But continuing to talk about rolling just makes no sense.

My only serious accident, I hit the back of a car stopped in the bike lane at pretty high speed. Somehow I got myself twisted sideways and broke my upper arm in two on the lip of the trunk. I consider it a successful crash as I didn't fly over the car or through the rear window to who knows what damage. Even better, I saved my frame and the only damage to my bike was a toasted rear wheel. Now, if I had had the bike handling skills of Sagan, I probably could have jumped the curb and avoided an accident altogether. The fact that I don't have the skills doesn't mean it makes no sense.

my relatively slow-speed crash (car rolled a stop sign and hit me broadside) punted me about 8-10 feet sideways...

as I was falling over, I had enough time and presence of mind to try and protect the the frame...rolled onto my back and held the bike up off the pavement with arms and legs (feet stayed clipped in).

not sure how it all worked, but there was no frame damage...$1K set of wheels got roached tho. but, easier to buy new wheels than get a frame with a custom paint job repaired.

Here are some opinions from folks who know more than any of us. How to fall off a bike without injuring yourself - Telegraph The gist of it seems to be that at high speed you don't have time to think about what to do. At low speed, keep your arms in and take the blow on the back of you shoulder. Doesn't matter to me, of course, people are free to flail around and land on whatever they prefer.