By John Marsh, Editor & Publisher
A good many readers took the time to comment to our article last week The RBR Crew’s Crashes: Lessons Learned. We wanted to share our own misfortunes, and our take-aways, with readers as a means to provide you with information that you can use to – hopefully – avoid some of the same mistakes we’ve made.
Many more of you weighed in on our related Question of the Week that asked about the types of crashes you’ve had over the years. The full rundown follows, below.
Before we get there, though, I want to spend a minute quickly summarizing the feedback in those reader Comments (which, by the way, you can read in full by clicking the link above and scrolling to the bottom of that article; I urge you to do so, as they’re illuminating and useful lessons, to be sure).
Here’s my bullet-point summary of those reader comments (which, along with the lessons the Crew provided last week, and the answers to the Question of the Week, paint a pretty clear picture about the most common types and causes of crashes):
- Crashes happen everywhere (one commentor was from the south of France; another from Australia) and often for the same reasons
- It’s safe to say that the majority of crashes are what one reader called “self-induced”
- Drivers cannot be trusted to react or behave correctly even if they’re looking right at you (one reader mentioned being “stared through,” while another (the Aussie) mentioned being menaced while the driver was “flipping the bird” (that’s a term that seems to work across all English variants!)
- Awareness of conditions is an absolute key to avoiding many crashes
- Lack of communication and equipment failures were themes repeated through reader comments and among the RBR crew
- Any fall from the seat of a bicycle can be treacherous and dangerous – even while sitting still, as one reader was doing when his bike broke loose and basically flew out from under him, as he took a backward header directly into the pavement
- The best quote among the comments perfectly encapsulates this theme: “Even if you do everything right, it is hostile territory.”
Next week, we’ll start the process of providing some targeted articles that focus on skills, techniques, etc., that can help you avoid crashes.
Dogs are always a menace some aggressive which pepper spray helps. But one lazy afternoon biking with my daughter a big and dumb friendly dog came up and bumped my front tire sending me sliding down the pavement.
Frozen in my mind is my shoulder sliding down the concrete and two thoughts going thru my mind. 1) that has got to hurt (ended up with a separated shoulder . . .grade IV AC shoulder separation), and 2) that is putting a hole in my nice new bright yellow shirt. I still wear the latter and my shoulder anatomy is the reminder of my one major accident.