The one time I flew off and rolled, I did so into a busy intersection. Now I try to hold on to the bike for an anchor. Second choce Is arms out. I'd rather snap a collarbone than roll safely into oncoming traffic.
Though ,before imact, I try to make it a glancing blow, preferably unclipped, to minimize the imact.

Land on your bike and sled like grandma luge!

http://gallery.phillyburbs.com/photos/404/1.aspx

What about toe clips? I've always thought they'd make for a much uglier crash than clipless. Not that its stopped me from using toe clips.

i meant put your hands out against the object your gunna hit. if your going down its tuck and roll time. im really good at falling. i'v had my right shoulder slide on the white line of the bike lane for what felt like 2 feet before i stopped. it was drunken highsiding though. really though. its hard to roll with a bike between your legs. dont stiff arm the ground. just push away from the bike n roll away. dont be afraid to lose some skin though.

Not blaming crash victims here or anything, but if you crash a lot (more than maybe once or twice say ever, but this will vary I guess), you might want to consider how you're riding your bike. In ten years of daily commuting, recreational riding and training in an urban center where, just like everyone else here, the drivers are worse than anywhere else (though visitors to Montreal are regularly shocked at how careless and aggressive the drivers and infrastructure are here), I've been involved in 2 crashes involving other vehicles, both in cases where I was passing a car on the left with plenty of space and completely visible, and the driver suddenly turned left.

Again, I'm not suggesting that it's always a bikers fault when there's a motor vehicle-involved crash, but it certainly can't never be. It certainly hasn't been in my experience :D

A second on not putting your hands out - I separated my shoulder last year when I went over the bars of my mountain bike going fast when I took my eyes off where I was going for a split second, and in the 3 hours that I was flying over the bars (wow did it ever seem slow) my instinct was to put my hands out in front of me. That wasn't the cause of it, but if I didn't land my shoulder directly on a sharp incline, I would have broken any combo of a hand, wrist, arm or collarbone.

Relaxing is the hardest part and one of the most important parts.

I'm far less worried about crashing into cars than I am about the pedestrian situation...

I had the experience once of swerving my bike while simultaneously tackling a startled woman who had darted accross the street, thereby breaking her fall. She explained it to me after the fact, "I am okay - you hugged me"; this wasn't a .24 seconds conscious decision by any means.

Luckily, everybody was okay in the end. The woman was spooked and I got an adorable barely noticable scar on my right elbow. Still, I was waking up in a cold sweat from that nightmare where I level a pregnant jaywalker for weeks...

Pregnant jay walkers and poor stroller handling skills are two of my worst fears.

But yes. I've been told to tuck and roll many times, not only for biking. It seems like one of the best policies, along with relaxing. Not easy to do, but when in a strange circumstances, it is usually best to relax.

It's been said before, but can't be said enough, tuck those mother-clucking arms.

I done broke a collar bone and a wrist (separate incidents,) because my dumb behind tried to do the whole cat-landing thing. Turns out that cats trump lanky teenagers in the arena of grace.

In my crashing experience with clips (twice), my feet always get yanked free of the pedal without incident. No problems at all. I keep them on the looser side though.

worst thing to ever happen to me was a fishtail that got out of hand during a skid comp. i did the tuck and roll thing with the bike still on my feet, would have been sweet if i could have gotten back on the wheels and continued the skid... like a sweet barrel roll as part of the skid.

Riding with fridgerobot one day... i was way behind so i sprinted to catch up. I look up, and im closing in on him, then i realize that our destination is about two feet in front of me, he is already stopping. A whole lot quicker than i was ready for. I skidded, managed to turn a little bit, not enough. Slam into said robot. Miraculously unclipped from my Cannondale SPDs, slam into fridge *he catches my bike*, i fly over the handle bars and under a car who was trying to exit where we were entering. Hit my head on the back wheel, slammed under her rear bumper, bending it. Reverted to my rugby days and curled up int a little ball grabbing my head. Meanwhile fridge is trying to coax me out from under the car while i am still in the ball saying, " nah man im good, just leave me, I'm ok." Get up dust myself off and we carry on the day as if nothing happened. Luckily the driver didnt see the massive dent i produced on her 1980s camry POS edition.
good times.

I've saved myself some pain by doing this a few times. The grimace of anguish gets extra style points.

dood... that was such an insane day... reflexes like a mongoose though... i totally forgot i caught your bike... the best part though was after you said "im good man." i had to tell you "you sure? cuz you just slid under a car." and it took you a good minute or two to realize you were still under the car.

I'm pretty sure I was born with "tuck and roll" programmed into my brain. When I was 5 I un-buckled myself, opened a car door and fell out on a freeway off ramp. My mom says she remebers looking out the back window and seeing me balled up, bouncing and rolling down the road like a basketball. I jumped up and ran after the car, I remember bieng afraid they were going to leave me. I've been in a number of pretty bad BMX and MTB wrecks, a motorcycle wreck and fell off a 15 foot cliff. Tuck and roll saved my ass every time. I've had tons of lacerations, bumps, bruises and even been knocked out a couple of times (I should practice the arm over the head thing), but I've never had a broken bone.

Depends on your priorities.

If you want to protect your bike at all costs: at the point of impact, jump. This will turn your bike into a catapult, all of the kinetic energy you have will go into pitching you forward. Your bike will have minimal kinetic energy to dissipate. You will most likely be tossed far and hard.

If you want to protect your body at all costs: do what everybody else says, tuck and roll you sissy.

My toe clips really messed me up when I crashed last year. A ped walked right in front of me as I was riding down the bridge, I clipped his shoulder with mine and went flying over the bars. I was still clipped in and landed with the bike on top of me and my knees all bent up and bruised. One of them still hurts from time to time thanks to that incident.

i think i am too. at least to some extent. as a kid we used to do lots of stupid stuff on our bikes, and as a result crashed a lot. if you didn't know how to crash, you'd be screwed. i've never broken a bone in my body either.

I've eaten **** twice, and both times I wasn't able to clip out... I'm not sure how I feel about that. Both times I ended up on my back with my bike on top, and both times my bike made it out safe with handlebars tweaked a bit. I think I'm pretty lucky.

i'd ad a bit more - afterthisnap mentioned this. try to make it a glancing blow. try real hard not to hit something dead on (T = bad), so turn parallel to whatever you're about to hit, if you can. hitting the ground, it seems to me, is gonna be preferable to hitting a solid object at 20mph and coming to a dead stop.

True, if you're going to hit a car aim for the trunk or hood so you can (hopefully) fly or roll over the car instead of hitting it.

Edit: you might want to avoid the front of the car if it's still moving. You don't want to be on the business end of a moving vehicle if you can avoid it.

For sure. Clipless will release before it starts twisting your ankle. It may stay clipped in during a crash, but I think it'll only do that if you manage to fall while keeping your foot aligned with the pedal. Toe clips... it's a tossup.
(Actually, I'v had a couple of "crashes" with clipless when I lost it a slow speed and managed to bail out, lay down the bike and stay on my feet. Some of these cases involved stepping over the handlebars... I still don't know how I did that. That's definitely not doable with toe clips cinched tight.)

Not me, i had to learn it from Chuck Norris....

edit: and the power rangers

I just don't crash that much (knock on wood) - I've had a couple of decent wipeouts, both during scavenger hunts, and I can't think at all, let alone do some fancy maneuvers. Maybe I need to crash more to learn how to fall, it's just not something I'm good at.

So I went to LBS and only needed the spokes tightened (only one of them was bent). The wheel doesn't wobble anymore...

time to crash again. :(