Your Worst Crash

[Chrisbee]

Doing 40mph downhill through green traffic lights with no traffic in my lane for miles. Idiot driver pulls out of the long queue facing the other way and races down the outside of the traffic queue towards me with nowhere to go. There are no turnings for him to take! Where is he going?
I hit him square on his front bumper and do a complete somersault over his car upside down. Finally landing on my head after flying through the air for probably twenty yards. My bike collapses around me and I have my feet locked tight into toeclips and straps with shoe plates.
A policeman picks the bike off me as I fight through the pain to release my feet and struggle upright. Despite the blood and pain I start to complain about the idiot driver's behaviour. Policeman asks me if I can ride. I check the bike and amazingly it's undamaged. Policeman tells me to go home. He's not interested in my protests. I wobble away on my bike with warm blood in my hair and cuts and grazes to my legs.

The moral? Don't do 40mph through traffic lights downhill on a bike in town and if you do crash always remember to land on your head or you might get badly hurt!

 

[JAPANic]

sue the policeman, then the driver.

 

[Chrisbee]

sue the policeman, then the driver.

Both have probably died of old age by now. It was 40 years ago!

I was also partly responsible since I was riding too fast for the local speed limit.

You have to take responsibilty for your own actions, learn and move on. If you still can.

Chrisbee

 

[velomanct]

My worst crash, was not even that bad, but I have only crashed twice in 35,000miles.
It was in a crit a couple weeks ago. On the last corner, on the last lap, with about 400meters to the finish. I was in 5th spot, and on the wheel of the race favorite. Another big name sprinter decided to push me off his wheel. I went down because I was leaning and not prepared to push back. my bike took out the guy who leaned into me, and he broke his collarbone. I got up and finished the race. just had some minor scrapes and a cracked helmet. too bad, i was heading for my best result in a p/1/2/3 race.

 

[phouston06]

i have two stories, neither were really bad, though one of them could have been awful.

First one, i was in aspen riding with my dad (mnt. bikes) and we were coming down the winding gravel road, a very large, steep hill. Well i just took a turn a little too fast and whiped out, cut up my elbow and bruised my ribs pretty badly. Unfortunatly this was the first ride of a 10 day trip, so i had to ride the rest of the trip with pretty bad pain in my ribs.

My second story turned out with even less injury than my first, although i could have died. I was like 7 or 8(i'm 17 now) and i was mnt. bike riding with my dad. We had both just kinda gotten into the sport, and we were just messing around on a trail we didn't know well. The scary thing is, i came really close to riding without a helmet, since i couldn't find mine. anyways, at the bottom of a hill there was a bit of a swamp, and so there were really long 2x4's just laying there as somewhat of a bridge. I didn't know this when i was descending. Anyways, i came around a blind corner, my tires came out from under me, and i went head first into a 2x4. The wood was so long and heavy and sunken in that it wasn't moving anywear. My helmet had a nice imprint of the corner of the wood, about and inch deep. Had i not been wearing my helmet taht would have been my head instead of my helmet. Well i had a bloody nose but i was fine. Well i will always be wearing a helmet now.

 

[shannons dad]

OK. Here goes. I live in Bolton in the UK. Three weeks after joining the local touring bike club I turned up at the meet with a brand new bike, a Giant Peleton. We'd set off for a 40-50 mile ride into the countryside. About 20 miles into the ride we were in hilly country, long flowing corners and stupidly fast downhills. We were on one such downhill and I was stuck in the middle of the pack going way too slow for my liking, so I figured I'd slide out and overtake everyone to impress them with my cycling skill! Big mistake. I'd hit about 40mph and looked back to see how far in front I was, quite a bit. Next think I saw when I looked back was a blind corner with a bank on the side. Two choices crossed my mind, 1-lock up the back wheel and slide round the bend which could leave me eating tarmac, or 2-head straight for the bank and jump the fence behind it (about 4 foot high) and land on the soft moorland, thus minimising damage to me and the bike. A road bike. Think about this. I took option 2. Amazingly, it didn't work. The bike stopped dead, from 40 to 0 in half a second, and I bounced off the fence back onto the road and landed on the bike. A couple off scratches and bruises later, I checked the bike. It was a wreck. The forks and front wheel were bent to hell, and the top tube had been snapped away from the headtube. Never try to jump a fence on a road bike at 40mph.

 

[996vtwin]

Was doing 25mph and put my hand on my front tyres to clean some glass, I wasnt thinking and instead I put my hand BEFORE the fork.....Needless to say it got sucked in. Guess what kind of wheels?? Mavic Ksyrium (with bladed spokes for those of you who dont know). Anyways it pulled me so hard to the ground I got 7 stiches on my elbow and it still hurts to this day. My fingers luckily were still all there but one of them were pretty fu*cked up.

 

[ouo]

I was probably 9 or 10 and I had a really shitty bike, the kind were the chain falls off constantly. I had gone for a "long" bike ride with my friend and we were almost back to her house and my chain fell off the rings and tangled my foot. I flew off the bike, with the chain attached to my foot and skidded across the pavement. My bones were fine, but I had scabs everywhere but my face.

The worst part was my friend's mom made me take a bath, I was sitting in a pool of bloody water.

A year later my younger friend had a similar crash on the same bike.

 

[yajeflow]

1977. 13 years old. schwinn stingray. dirt jump. one foot space between a phone pole and some cables. 36x22 gearing, so i had to pedal like hell to get some good speed. 15' before the jump, my feet slip off the pedals. 10', i end up with cherries on the frame. 5', my hands slip off the grips. i hit the jump riding on the bar with no hands or feet. when i wake up, there is a bunch of guys in a truck laughing their asses off at me. i consdiered just staying there for a fw days. moving wasn't too fun.

 

[PMThor]

Hmmm, when I was a kid I got two concussions on my bike. Oh and I did a wheelie and my front wheel fell off mid wheelie. That hurt. A lot.

Worst as a "cyclist" though was when I was a bike messenger. I was riding downtown in a downpour, made a left turn with speed and hit a manhole mid turn. Down I went and slid on my side maybe 40 or 50 yards...then the bad part. I slid under a moving garbage truck. I knew I had dislocated my left shoulder right away and thank goodness for my helmet, because it took the brunt of the hit to the undercarriage of truck. When I woke up in the hospital I had some road rash, a dislocated left shoulder and yet another concussion. Workers comp is great though.

 

[astroluc]

worst crash: doing what I can only call cyclocrossing (though it was 1989)
Going off trail, I went up a hill and through a a grove, turned and thought I was coming back down the same path, when I saw a 3 ' drop before me to a hard-packed surface... too fast to stop, I went ass over tea-kettles, bent my frame (old steely), popped my tire. As I landed on my side, my hip bone landed squarely on my wrist, breaking my arm, and pushed the 2" end of my Radius to a place it should not have resided.

My Doctor at the ER said "well, if you had to break it, you did it right! It couldn't be any worse." -sigh-

2 surgeries and 2 pins finally got it to set correctly, and 12 weeks (yes 12) in a cast healed it; almost...

...residual nerve damaged caused a cyst which was very problematic for many years until a 3rd surgery was able to successfully remove it without is growing back; as It had been popped previously, only to reform.

I am still a little gunshy on my bike, as a result; I have 5 scars on my wrist from the various surgeries and the crash itself to remind me... still hurts on cold rainy days

the moral of this story? RIDE SLOW on trails you are not totally familiar with.

 

[lesj1]

15 mph on my shoulder alot of cuts and scratches

 

[wheelist]

Ha ha ha! This thread has made my day! You mental fools!

Right, here are my best two.....

1) A 13 mile commute to work and only about 2 miles in. I'm on my mountain bike with Scott AT4 bars (these are like tri-bars but all one piece) and my hands are on the front parts. I'm looking down at my pedals 'cause it's a really satisfying and mesmerising motion. I look up to see a parked car about 5 yards in front and don't have any time to shift my hands back to the brakes, so I hit the car and go straight through the rear window. I remember lying on the parcel shelf thinking "That's a nice sound" - it was the glass tinkling onto the floor. I climb out and two women stop to ask if I'm okay - I say I'm fine and so they leave. Forunately the bars took the brunt of the impact (slightly after my helmet) so I'm able to continue my journey to work, where the doctors can't stop laughing whilst stitching up my left arm. I had an egg sized swelling on my right shoulder but otherwise was fine. NOTE: ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET.

2) Grab my bike to nip across town to see a mate (no helmet). Ride about a mile before I bunny-hop onto the pavement (at an angle). This is when my front wheel falls out (I haven't tightened the QR after driving back from my last ride ). I watch my forks go sideways through the spokes before my vision is blocked by the pavement. The left half of my face gets smeared all over the tarmac.
The best thing is, I go home, walk into the lounge where my girlfrend is sitting, and sit down next to her. She doesn't notice anything as she's sat on my right and I don't look at her for about 10 minutes. When I finally turn to look at her she just screams! You have to laugh.
NOTE: ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET!

 

[Yojimbo_]

This thread has died out. Time to bring it back to life.


Your worst crash...let's hear about it.

 

[Nate99]

25 mph edge trap. Slapped my head against the concrete hard enough to split my helmet (thanks Giro!) rubbed spots on my hip, knee and elbow as I slid to a stop with one foot still clipped in. One old guy in a pickup truck that didn't speak English (the guy, not the truck) stopped to see if I was ok, he just had this concerned look on his face and kept pointing at my head.

 

[chodadog]

Mine was utterly stupid. In the suburb I live in, the gutters are mostly angled, so you can strafe up them while riding without a problem if you need to get onto a footpath for any reason. Well, i was cycling on a main road after coming down a hill. Was going quite quickly, but a truck in the outter lane was coming up pretty quickly and i decided i'd get up onto the footpath. It was dark, and i could have sworn the curb was like the ones in my neighbourhood. The moment my wheel touched it, i realised it was indeed a regular square curb. I went flying over the handle bars and instinctively put my hand out taking my full weight (250 lbs).

First thing to do of course was check the bike for damage. I thought at most i'd sprained it, but had a pretty good hunch i'd broken it within about 20 minutes. A cyclist that was driving by that saw it happen was nice enough to stop and give me a lift to the hospital nearby.

Shattered the socket in the wrist and had a small split in one of the forearm bones. Ended up getting a plate and 6 or 7 pins.

 

[ScottishDan]

Long downhill, 30mph, crossroads - Right turn ahead -i CAN GET THROUGH THAT GREEN LIGHT IF I CYCLE LIKE A ******* - wet drain cover in middle of crossroads - FXXKING OUCH!!!!!!

One witness, just stood there looking at me, didn't help at all.

Slightly concussed, no helmet, lots of blood, woke up very sore the next day

 

[Shakey]

Three years ago on a half century around a big lake, when all of a sudden it began to rain and I slipped on one corner. My front wheel went up first and I fell on my right shoulder and I was sure I borke the bone. I knew instinctively every other rider on the spot would rush up to help me, I quickly pushed my left forefinger into my right shoulder and it sank deep enough to convince me that it's a fracture. I told the first person who tried to raise me that it's a fracture case and please leave me where I was. There was fortunately a medical doctor of the hospital where I was carried by the ambulance -- what a coincidence!-- and he checked if my spine was all right and assured me on the spot that I can walk again. I just received painkillers and this X-band for restricting my movement and a bunch of X-rays to bring home where I would take more serious treatment (I was 100 km away from Tokyo).

I found the accidnet cost me a collar bone -- V-shaped fracture on the Xray. The doctor of the hospital near my home gave me a choice -- operation or just leave it to heal (the latter means no athletics hereafter!), and of course I chose operation. Under total anaesthesia the operation went smoothly and I was out of the hospital in 3 days with a new thick metal wire in my collar bone.

The WORST came later after a few months when the metal bar had to be removed under LOCAL anaesthesia. During the whole operation, the left side of the doctor's plam touched my right neck and I giggled and giggled unstoppably! It was like torture! The doctor was not amused but I was laughing hysterically! Pain is all right but THAT was a different suffering.



Probably

 

[e-doc]

March 7, 1991. It was a Thursday. I was in medical school. My daughter was 3 months old. I rode alot then , still do. Last thing I remember was leaving home, first thing I remember is going home from hospital.

Apparently I was headed east on River Road , probably with a good tailwind and about 6 miles from home. An older , somewhat drunk, man was headed west. He apparently turned left in front of me. I hit his right front and was launched into his left lower windshield, which I impacted with my head. He thought he killed me (he almost did) and drove off. I was found comatose in the road. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital, 1 week in a coma. I was out of school for 2 months. I spent an extra year in medical school. My brain didn't work right for a year or so. I didn't ride a bike for 2 years.My medical bills were only about $35,000 (no surgery, surgeries are very expensive and run the old hospital bill way up) I'm not sure what my wifes agony was worth. If I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have been pushing up daisies. 1991 was a bad year. End of story.

BTW. A witness ID'd the man. He had no license, too many DWI's. He plead guilty to Felony Hit and Run and DWI. He got 3 years. Funny, his court appointed lawyer, paid with my tax dollars, thought that was a little stiff.

 

[JAPANic]

I've gotten better at crashing. My first one left me with skin missing on every limb, shoulder and a deep cut under my eye...then carted off in the race ambulance...

My 2nd crash was much easier... rode right over the guys back who went down in front of me, cartwheeled and rolled Olympic gymnastics style back up on my feet. Rather than wait to see how much damage I had done to myself grabbed my bike jumped back on and finished the race. This time only 2 limbs were damaged plus a large whole in my shorts... that *****umen's a ***** but not as hard as I imagined....