martymc

Anyone seen stats on the wrecks, hospital visits, etc. at this year's HH100 in Wichita Falls?

I've never seen so many people bleeding, being loaded into ambulances, wrecking before my eyes. 'Am very interested in the stats. (I did see on the event's medical symposium literature that 4-7% of riders historically receive medical care during the event.)

I personally saw at least a dozen significant wrecks. However, the one that haunts me was the one 10' in front of me. We were towards the front of a paceline around mile 50, holding around 24-25mph. The rider in front of me rotated through the line and pulled many times with the rest of us. By all appearances he looked like a seasoned rider. Then, all of a sudden, he face-planted right into the ultra-rough chip-and-seal at 25+ mph. 'Beats the hell out of me what happened. No wheel rubbing, did not hit the reflectors in the road, didn't hit a bottle, was not a pothole in sight, nothing. My only wild guess was that he was reaching for a bottle and had both hands slip off the bars; however, that seems unlikely for such a rider.

That and the people being loaded on spine-boards in the first 40 miles was pretty attention-getting.

Any other wild wrecks witnessed?

blindvelcro

Before the start of the ride, a guy next to me clipped in his left foot, and was talking to his buddy while sitting on the toptube of his bike. He started leaning to the right and fell over crashing into 3 people. After I saw that, I knew that it was going to be a long dangerous ride.

Creakyknees

let's see, 8% of 14,000 = 1,120.... yow!

figure a typical rider would see at least 1000 people on the day... 80 injuries....

Creakyknees

and yeah, 8% does seem awfully high to me, too.

I assume that includes heat-related treatments which I bet were way-down this year.

Creakyknees

slide 29 here:
https://www.hh100.org/images/stories/...tureonline.ppt

looks like trauma injuries avg a bit under 1.5%, so 210 this year, give or take?

StephenH

Yeah, I'm thinking 98% of that statistic is heat-related stuff, and heat's been down the last two years.

I'm slowly seeing stories of individual crashes surface here and there. They get blamed on beginners, but seems that's not always the case. I can say that in the 13.7 mph portion of the ride, there were zero crashes and zero trips to the hospital. I did not see a single wreck happen.

Closest I came to seeing a crash was that three guys in matching green jerseys zipped by in a paceline with one or two other people. A half-hour later, I saw an ambulance beside the road, and one of the green jersey guys was laying on the grass. A half-hour after that, here come two green jersey guys and a couple of other guys in a paceline again. Don't know what happened in the meantime. That was past the crowds.

martymc

I looked up the med literature again to double-check.

4-7% receive medical attention, not 7-8%. 50-60% are heat related. Half of the heat related are cramps. Historically, 7-13 go to the ER and 1-2 are admitted.

I'm just curious what the actual stats this year worked out to be.

It's just anecdotal; however, from what I directly saw, the number and severity of wrecks pushed the medical attention numbers (at least the ER numbers) above the historical averages. The attention this year was just more trauma than heat, most likely requiring more ER visits than normal.

Adding to the numbers was a huge influx of last minute registrations (presumably once people saw the temps were going to be mild). It's just an assumption, but I'd guess many of those were 1st time century riders, novices -- contributing to the wrecks in a very tight field of 14,200 riders.

jay0k

Yes, in the first 50 miles there were emergency vehicles racing up and down every direction. Saw people go down and people on the side of the road holding their arms, faces, etc.

For the life of me I can't figure it out. It's about as straight and flat as it gets. Some folks are just incredibly spooky on a bike.

You have to be very attentive on this ride with over 14,000 people.

martymc

Excellent point. The low temps probably pushed good riders to try for PRs on such a big event -- causing way more crashes than beginners.