CliffordK

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CliffordK

My interpretation is that she went straight over the handlebars.

If she had slipped on some leaves, gravel, or sand, then it would have been one sided.

In this case, her injuries are very central. Both brake hoods are damaged. And, the helmet (which needs replaced) has a central dent.

The first thing I would do is to check if the front wheel is true, check all the spokes, look at the rims for scratches, and carefully inspect the fork for damage, and the front of the frame (top tube/downtube).

As far as the cause...
@downtube42 mentioned a stick. That will likely cause bent spokes and a wheel out of true. Possibly marks on the back of the fork.

I've hit cracks that were large enough to eat my wheel. I went down right near the cracks, but if one was at high speed, it might spit one out down the road a bit. The first one bent my rim. The second one give me a pinch flat.

A few people mentioned animals, again potentially sending one over the bars, especially if it was a mid-sized one.

@Broctoon mentioned braking hard. Also sending someone over the bars.

I'm leaning towards hitting something (animal, stick, crack). Part of the reason is that the bars are twisted forward. That may have happened when the bike hit the ground, but could also have happened when her weight pounded against the bars.

How are her arms, shoulders, and elbows? Collar Bone? That shock of stopping dead could have wrenched the arms.

PeteHski

Ouch!

I'm going to go with the "animal ran out in front of her" theory. Yesterday I was riding down a hill at about 20 mph and a badger ran straight across the road and missed my front wheel by literally inches. Had I hit it I would have gone straight over the bars for sure.

I very much doubt that she passed out before the crash otherwise I think she would have fallen onto her side. This looks like something stopped the front wheel suddenly and flipped her straight over the bars.

Unfortunately, you will probably never know for sure what caused this accident, but since she is a very experienced rider it was unlikely to be anything she did wrong and therefore very unlikely to happen again. Basically a freak accident.

genejockey 

My handlebars did exactly that the time I hit God's Own Pothole at 20 mph, in an area of dappled sunlight. I didn't fall, but I flatted both tires.

GhostRider62

I had a small dog run into my front wheel (20H radial) and was the animal version of the stick. I went over and down quickly but speed was only about 15 mph. I had minor injuries. I continued my ride.

If she went over the bar from an animal or stick, would you see such severe injuries to the face and elbows? I originally blamed the squirrel. Can I switch my vote to the crack? Perplexing

Wishing your wife a quick and complete recovery

sfrider 

The impact damage on the top of the hoods suggest the front wheel got stuck and she endo'ed over the bars. That road crack is a plausible candidate, or some kind of mechanical like a tree branch or something - but you'd probably see damage from it. I vote the front wheel got wedged and she went over the bars.

Koyote

From the photos, it's clear that she endo'd.

If you are really curious, I suggest that you remove the front wheel from her bike and take a drive to the crash site and see if the tire/wheel fits into the crack in the road surface. If that's a negative, and you don't see any damage to the front brake or spokes or fork which would indicate something jammed them, then I have no other ideas.

Running over the sort of animal that might run across a road would not typically cause her to endo so completely, and neither would a medical event which caused her to black out or lose her equilibrium.

Koyote

Since you feel free to critique others' theories so stridently, please explain how fainting would cause a person to endo?

endgrainguy

Some basic answers to some questions: Marilyn had no prior low blood pressure, occasional dizziness, known cardiac issues, --nothing that would suggest she had a pre-fall medical event. I think most of the expert opinions here point decisively away from that possibility. (Surprisingly the hospital doctors didn't look into this as a possibility, --I think more out of incompetence than expertise. A good friend had an unexplained bike fall, and testing after that revealed a dangerous superfluous neural pathway to his heart, -- -fixed with minimally invasive surgery. He's an age record holder (70-75) for the Mount Washington Bicycle Hill Climb, and will try to break his own record this weekend, a few months after his surgery.)

I learned a new word:"endo". Marilyn definitely did an endo. I looked more closely at the bike today. I saw no other scuff, except on the computer screen. All impact on those brake hoods absorbed by the shifted handlebars. And Marilyn's injuries match. After testing fork and frame and bars I gave it a spin today. Rides true. Wheels as good as they were before the fall. Front derailleur still fussy, as it was before. Had she been able to ride, the bike could have made it home.

Cracks in the road are something a cyclist knows to avoid, so I suppose we really don't have a lot of experience riding in/on them, as common as they are. When I try to think of asking a group of cyclists to return to the scene of her fall and see if anyone can reproduce her fall, it resounds of the Tuskegee Study, or worse. So let's assume cracks are hostile to bicycles, and continue to do our best to stay out of them!

Could certainly have been an animal. But we know there was a crack in the road. Might well have been abetted by attention to derailleur and possibly hard front braking. I guess we'll never know for sure. But it feels better, with the input from you all here, that there is some possible explanation, even a couple different possible ones, and that it's best seen as a freak occurrence.

Will Marilyn ride again? Well, I got a new helmet in the mail today, and Marilyn admired it.

Bicycling is so damned fun. We live on a quiet paved road, an 11 mile round trip with 950 vertical feet from a fantastic swimming hole on maybe the cleanest river in the state (a mile from the Vermont line). We ride there, dunk and lounge a bit, before the haul back up home, 1-2X a week all summer, a mini-vacation anytime we feel like it, as good as it's gotten for us in this lifetime.

I read through the "pack it in" thread here, in answer to someone's understandable fear of an additional fall after a bad hip injury in his 70's. So a time to quit cycling awaits us all, or almost all. There's a guy who's run the Mount Washington foot race in 2019 at the age of 99 , his 15th year in a row. COVID cancelled the race in 2020, but word was that he was ready. A medical problem kept him away this year, but he hopes to be back next year, at 102. There's some inspiration for anyone who needs it.

As someone got my photos posted (thanks!) I'm adding one of Marilyn and I up in the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, from a six week trip we took in 2000, so people can see how much better she looks without recent contusions.

cxwrench

I had one of those in '92. Casual solo easy ride. Got to a stop sign and looked at my watch...4:35. Go straight or turn right? Eh..turn right. Slight downhill right/left, then a long straight with a fire dept on the left. Apparently I went down pretty much right in front of the firehouse, but I have zero memory after the stop sign til I became lucid in the ER at about 6:10. No idea what happened. Basically zero damage to the bike besides a nice scrub on my brand new white perforated Flite saddle. Pretty good concussion and a small bit of road rash. I have this weird memory that's like a freeze-frame shot of what I guess is me looking out the back door of the ambulance towards what we in Marin call Christmas Tree Hill and Mt Tam. I wish I knew what happened but don't worry about ever finding out.

CliffordK

As far as road cracks... What were they like? Open crack (say 1" wide)? Closed crack (< 1/2" wide)? Displaced crack (one side higher than the other)? Each situation would be a little different.

You really need a crack wider than 1" to eat a wheel.

A displaced crack might kick the wheel out from under oneself, but generally not send the bike flying end over end.

chaadster

Despite early assertions the crack was nothing, a very experienced touring cyclist with no experience riding over cracks reverses their assessment and determines random people on internet are experts equipped to decisively disregard possible health factors which, which despite being unexamined by incompetent physicians attending the patient, are known to have caused a good friend of said “very experienced cyclist” to crash apparently inexplicably while riding.

It’s all “so much winning, you’re going to be sick of winning” for me, but what kind of slug-in-the-mud would I be if I could not rejoice in someone learning a new word today: endo! For our next troll thread, kids, let’s consider whether a failed stoppie is an endo if no one is there to GoPro it. I can’t wait for our expert panel of trick riders who’ve never trick ridden to reveal the answer!

burnthesheep

The physics of a bike moving at that speed in an assumed straight line are such that you can ride hands free or the bike would even stay up on its own without a rider. So there has to be a correction input to the system or a disturbance from outside the system to upset it.

This crash is an over the bars. So we know that for one reason or another the front wheel slowed faster than the rear or something stopped the front to pivot the bike about the front wheel.

I had a guy swerve in a sprint in a race at 35+ mph and take out my front wheel. I just remember suddenly the front wheel bouncing while the bars whipped left/right then OTB and down and to the hospital.

A stick could do that. Braking hard and then encountering some kind of road debris or bad feature could start a person over the bars also. Maybe the horizontal road issue also had a small bump and braking was occurring during the hit with the bump.

I'm sorry for her pain and wish her a speedy recovery. It's tough to second guess a really seasoned and experienced person.

As for her forgetting, I know that sometimes we may replace our own memories with something not true, but I myself also couldn't remember the last few seconds for a while after my over the bars incident. Then somehow as months passed the incident became more clear again.

Koyote

Since you feel free to critique others' theories so stridently, please explain how fainting would cause a person to endo?

GhostRider62

A fainting rider in the hooks will fall forward, no?

I have had some cardiac issues where the fainting thing had been a concern in the back of my head. I have had tons of testing done but I have never fainted but in my assessment, a clipped in rider in a sporty position is going forward over the bars. I originally thought the horizontal bruise on her brow suggested exactly that. If she was conscious, the hands would have gone out and they would have take much of the abuse rather then the elbows. OTOH, I have a good amount of crashing experience from the old USCF days.

Koyote

Perhaps. But that won't cause the entire bike to flip over itself.

GhostRider62

Of course it would, the rider is clipped in. Down and over onto her head and elbows with brake levers getting trashed.

When the dog took me down, I never came detached from the bike.

Please do tell your experience..........

Koyote

That's not even slightly plausible.

An endo occurs only if something forcibly and abruptly stops the front wheel from rotating.

A rider who faints will just....fall over.

GhostRider62

Some endos with bike flipping over



Cozy Beehive: Analysis Of The Bicycle Endo

Koyote

I guess you don't realize that those videos only prove my point.

The first rider's front wheel abruptly stops after he rides over the edge. The second rider clearly used too much front brake.

In both cases, the rider endo'd because the front wheel stopped turning.

N2deep

Rock or wood chip-fragment in the front brake?

GhostRider62

How do you know that? Have you made any calculations? Have you seen someone fall forward. Depending on frame geometry and the location of the center of mass, it is plausible.

Why do you think a rider who faints is going to fall to the side. That makes no sense to me.

I have had quite a few buddies at the porcelain goddess and when they passed out, they did not fall to the side. They did an endo, so, there's those couple data points

When I faint, I instinctively grab very firmly anything in my hands. What do you do when you faint?

GhostRider62

You said the bike would not flip.

The bikes flipped in each of those videos.

The rear wheel went up and the bars went down. That is an endo. Maybe you have a different definition.

Koyote

If you've seen any of your drunken buddies pass out and launch themselves OVER the toilet tank, I'd like to hear about it.

I'm kind of done with this, because you clearly won't give up on a losing argument.

GhostRider62

Good. Go away because I find you annoying too.

You speak only in hypothetical examples.

I have gone over the bars more than once. I faint fairly often. I see it plausible that she could have fainted. Not likely. But possible.