First 'rack-cident"
 

Finally happened. Did a half and half car/bike commute. Pulling into the garage, thinking about a nice glass of wine to end the day, and Crunch-BOom! Oh crap. The bike is on top of the car. *sigh*

The rear windshield of the car has exploded, and I can only imagine what the bike looks like up top. I pull away from the house and the bike falls off the roof rack, swings down, dents and scratches the rear side of the car and windows. The bike then bounces on the handlebars, and lands on the lawn looking like it is completely undamaged. I Get out. The house has a scuff mark and slight dent in the siding from the front wheel. The Yakima High roller bike mount rear wheel tray is bent and twisted, and its downward deflection is what shattered the rear windshield. And the bike, in the fading light of the day, seems unharmed?!!! I do a quick ride around the block and all seems well.

It would seem that the 2008 Specialized roubaix front wheel hit the house, and began riding up the side of the house until it lodged under the gutter, then the force of the collision pushed the rear wheel and mount down into the rear windshield. Had I not backed up the car, a quick call for a new rear windshield would have been all that was required. But since I did back up the car and let the bike fall off, now some side auto body work is in order. Learn my lesson, don't move the car until you have assessed the situation!

And now that I have been able to give the bike a thourough going over in daylight, all is not well with the bike. Suprisingly, the fork, head tube, top tube, down tube, seat tube, handlebars, shifters and chainstays are without damage. However, the seat stays, near where they join the seat tube, both have dime to penny sized chuncks of missing clearcoat and paint, and exposed carbon. the front wheel is out of true, and the rear wheel slightly. It would seem that the impact flexed the seat stays enough to avulse sizeable chunks of the finish. The local dealer is recommending to trash the frame and thinks the front wheel will never be that good again.

Car damage - $2700 retail
Rack damage- $200 retail
Bike damage- Frame and probably front wheel trashed. Bike damage total just might exceed car damage total.

So, looking on the bright side..... its maybe new bike time!

Wonder what insurance will do for the bike replacement? Insurance might opt to replace whole bike rather than buy frame and wheels, pay to rebuid? Maybe I can keep the ruined bike and use it as a permanent trainer bike.

And I have to go find those orange cones to leave in my garage spot so that next time I can't just pull right in. Used to use a stepstool, till the wife and kids made off with it years ago. I honestly thought that with 5 years of car top transporting without incident, it would not happen to me.

Learn my lesson!

When I used a car-top carrier I purposefully would leave the door opener inside the house to make myself get out of the car and open the garage door. As far as insurance, look into an Inland Marine policy to cover your bikes.

From BustedCarbon.com:

"Yet another victim of the roof carrier system and garage combination and an absent-minded father.

The conversation went as follows:

Father: How was your day?
Son: Pretty rubbish actually.
Father: It’s about to get worse...
Son: Where is my bike??"

Excellent idea.

These are things that make me leery of roof racks. Obviously if you get rear ended with a hitch rack, your bike will be totaled too, but at least somebody else's insurance will have to pay for it. Probably.

This happens all too often and is a reason to avoid roof top carriers.

I "let" my wife take over our garage as storage for her home-based business.

i went into a parking garage, and my body rack pushed my roof down, about 8k in damages... but lesson learned... rear bike rack or bike inside of car from now on.... dont feel bad, so people might give you grief about it, but its happened to many of us on here.

Roof rack only for 20+ years without issue.

Perhaps one of these is in order?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8462/7...275c91db07.jpg

If you can not remember that you put your bike on the roof, then you deserve to do what the OP did!

Sorry. :(

I used to put the garage door opener in the glove box instead of clipped to the visor where it normally lives. That doesn't help for low-overhead situations away from home, though.

A friend of my sister ran his new road bike into his new house on top of his new BMW, damaging all three. So at least you aren't the only one to do this.

As a psa, you should post a pic of the results. Then, much the same as cigarette packaging warnings, we could stick the image on our garage door remotes.

Man, it hurts just to read about it.
A few years ago, the same thing happened to my wife.
Even taking precautions (some clever ones mentioned above), still can happen. I don't use the roof rack anymore.

What a crappy thing to write about someone!

45 seconds into it and I thought of you :(

+1 This could happen to anyone. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Yes, for weeks before this I have been telling my kids that there is nothing funny about that commercial! Now they run and get me everytime it airs

Usually, just being in my cycling clothes as I approach the house is all I need to remember the bike is up there. But alas, mayhem has found me and struck.
Still waiting on the insurance info for the bike. Likely answer is it goes on the home policy, if only to put it through a different deductible. Hopefully get my car back on tuesday.

Roof racks are pretty convenient. No way I can carry all 4 bikes for the family on a trunk rack. Not even one bike fits in the trunk, could put one bike sans front wheel in the back seat I suppose, or in the trunk if I didn't close it. No hitch is available for my model car. Garage opener is buit into the mirror. Not even sure I have a portable one anymore. All I can think of is to block the parking spot physically when I put a bike on top. Sure wish I hadn't gotten complacent all those years ago and stopped doin that.

Think I am elibible for a discount frame under specialized's crash program?

Wow, that really sucks. Sorry to have that happen to you. Nice bike too.

My dad has a nissan altima, so we got a bike rack that attaches to the trunk lid (2 upper and 2 lower points). Holds up to 3 bikes. We normally use it with 2.

Seriously,

Buy one of these and hang it on the mirror when you leave the house with the bikes. A $7.99 investment that only needs to work ONCE to be worth it.

EDIT: I just ordered one for myself. Not that I need it but I think they are pretty cool and I want one. I'll probably gift it to someone down the line.

http://i522.photobucket.com/albums/w.../ToysonTop.jpg

I've had 2500 car damage, destroyed $400 roof rack and $300 bike fork.

Couple of years after this I used hitch rck and I never entered garage driving the car. After the habit "do not go in" was etablished I started to use roof rack again.

My friend entered 2 times the garage and 2 times low clearance parking lot.

You are a truly manly man for writing this up. Good for you, and good for us as it brings the issue home to everyone.

I'm in the "do something with the opener" school. So either I move the opener to the glove box, or put a piece of blue tape over the button if it is built into the car.

But it can happen to anybody.

So thank you again for bringing this up in a positive way; we have all benefitted.

Please post an update when all the dust settles - it'll be interesting to see what your insurance company covers. (or if you get crash assistance from Spec)

Heck, there's a hitch for every car - I've seen hitches on Corvettes!

Of course it all depends on what insurance you have.
We have very high deductble - $1000, and they could cover everything - house damage, property damage, but we had to pay $1000 for every portion of the damage. So, since everything besides the car was not greater than $1000 in loss we went for car coverage only.

They appraised $2500 minus $1000 deductble and we found the place that fixed the car fro $1500 (not bad at all). So we came even on rthe car damage.

So, the loss of roof rack and fork was not recovered.

this is why i could never have a roof rack. I know i would have this happen eventually

yeah I saw that commercial too, and wondered how often that happens in real life.

well good thing I only have a car port.

The other thing against the roof rack is when the force of the wind pulls the front dropouts out of the CF fork, and the bike goes flipping off the top of the car. IIRC, this even happened to Pcad once.