Had a fairly sizable fall last nite about 5 mins into the ride. following a guy in our group down a gently decending 'fireroad' kind of track and decided since he was SS i would acellerate and go past him, plenty of room. Started putting power down and got about 2 pedal strokes in before the chain completly dropped of to the inside (i was middle ring)
que me having a complete loss of balance and control, hitting aforementioned ss rider and then going down pretty hard on my right side. couple of bits of road rash on my arm and leg and some bruising 🙁
To chris, sorry for ploughing into you.

Last big crash was a high speed front tyre snakebite leaving me unable to make a corner.
Do you ride with a knowledge that your bike could let you down and back off accordingly??
i kind of cant bring myself to do that but it really gets to me that the crashes i end up having are not directly my mistakes 🙁
(no further point to my post just interest in your experiances/attitudes)

Drivetrain not in best shape or "one of those things".

I would say a crash where you did not make a mistake was very rare.

Why did the chain drop and why did that make you crash?

As for the snakebite – clearly you hit something too hard to cause the snakebite.

So – to me almost every crash has a cause that is caused by an error. Every time I do fall I look for the error and try to learn from it to avoid that error again.

Depending what mood I am in when riding I often do ride with very large safety margins.

dunno, but whilst dragging myself up jaggers clough I managed to come to a complete standstill and wobble over into a fellow STW'er and take him out 🙂 I blame my 38t single ring rather than any fault of myself!

Whoever you were, sincere appologies!

but it really gets to me that the crashes i end up having are not directly my mistakes

I would beg to differ – snakebite = not enough tyre pressure.

chain falling off ? check drivechain set up and your gear changes.

all my accidents are my own fault, usually a case of either bad driving /not looking where I'm going properly.

Kev

I'm struggling to think of any examples where I fell off and it wasn't due to my own incompetence.

I would beg to differ – snakebite = not enough tyre pressure.

chain falling off ? check drivechain set up and your gear changes.

+1

It sounds like 'Chris' could've got badly hurt through no fault of his own, merely your incompetence 🙂

Do you ride with a knowledge that your bike could let you down and back off accordingly??
i kind of cant bring myself to do that but it really gets to me that the crashes i end up having are not directly my mistakes

I look after my bikes and look where I'm going, and if I crash it's my own stupid fault.

Both crashes you mention are your fault.

The reason I ride singlespeed is that I fear a chain snap whenever I get out of the saddle and honk on a geared bike.

The reason I ride singlespeed is that I fear a chain snap whenever I get out of the saddle and honk on a geared bike.

Huh? Surely that's just as bad, if not worse on a SS due to the fact you're likely to be at a lower cadence/higher force.

The reason I ride singlespeed is that I fear a chain snap whenever I get out of the saddle and honk on a geared bike.

I've had this happen once in almost 20 years of mountain biking.

epicsteve – Member
I'm struggling to think of any examples where I fell off and it wasn't due to my own incompetence.

+1 > pretty much exactly what I was going to say!

where there is blame there is a claim.

I think the lesson is simple here. The geared rider fell off. 😉

I'm with epicsteve though, I'm struggling to think off any offroad fall I've ever had which wasn't all my fault. You could even argue that any falls I've had through mechanical failings, have also been my own fault.

2 things, GaryM

1) I didn't say it was a rational fear
2) I bet you ain't as fat as me.

Fair enough BigJohn, seems an extreme solution to an unlikely problem though.

I'm struggling to think of any examples where I fell off and it wasn't due to my own incompetence.

i have one. was once riding along a very innocuous, flat section of bridleway with some mates. 3 abreast, having a chat. there was no danger anwhere, no massive boulders to watch out for, no corners, no ditches. the next thing i completely flipped the bike landing painfully on my ass, snapping a rail on my saddle in the process. had no idea what happened at the time until i noticed a chunk of dirt in the pedal – must have just caught the verge, which also looked to pose no danger. i accept no responsibility for this at all. there was nothing i could have done. it was hilarious at the time though, and must have been even more funny for the chaps i was riding with as it must have looked like i hit the ejector seat button or something!

I had a small twig get flicked up into the front disc rotor. It stopped my front wheel dead and I went over the bars. But on here that probably counts as my fault, for being stupid enough to ride over a small twig.

must have just caught the verge, which also looked to pose no danger. i accept no responsibility for this at all. there was nothing i could have done

eh? Could you not have just avoided the verge??

While on the subject of bizarre crashes, I once managed to get a bit of protruding but tough tree root wedged right in the leading edge of the cage on an old style DMR V12. I saw I was about to clip the root, knew something bad was going to happen, so got ready for an interface with the floor. What actually happened is the bike came to a complete standstill, upright, with me still on it, stood on the pedals in riding pose as if someone had just hit the pause button on the video of my life.

Have you ever kicked a football at a fence and instead of bouncing back it gets wedged in between the bars and just stops dead? It was like that. Freaky, and very funny. My mate following me hit the floor shrieking with laughter.

The next ride I broke a crank arm on the same section of trail.

eh? Could you not have just avoided the verge??

no…the verge didn't look to pose any threat at all – it seemed way to low. oh, i didn't mention it was dark at the time too…

it really wasn't my fault, honest 🙂

jackthedog – Member

I had a small twig get flicked up into the front disc rotor. It stopped my front wheel dead and I went over the bars. But on here that probably counts as my fault, for being stupid enough to ride over a small twig.

One of the few example where it probably is not your fault.

Peaches who hit the verge clearly made two mistakes – 1) not paying attention 2) hitting the verge

Peachos, catching the pedal in the verge is your own fault too ya know !

2) I bet you ain't as fat as me.

So you're stressing your chain even more than if you could just change down and spin an easier gear? Certainly not rational!

njee there's more tension on the chain in a granny gear than a middle, not sure if that makes up the difference to SS though.

about the only crash ive had that wasnt entirely my fault….

riding home, with a few mates, down a road through woods. One mate was evidently bored and proceeded to lift and lock up his front wheel. He did this several times till he got his timing wrong and the locked front wheel made good contact with the floor, he disappeared from my peripheral vision then reappeared just as quickly swerving straight under my front wheel. I slammed on the anchors and went down, he ploughed straight through the hedge

With hindsight i could have
ridden faster in the first place
ridden over him as he went down

njee there's more tension on the chain in a granny gear than a middle

That assumes the same cadence though, if he's spinning an easier gear he's less likely to break the chain.

nah, anyone who says it was my fault is wrong. i stand fim on this. it wasn't that i wasn't paying attention – who said i wasn't paying attention? i can ride along a flat piece of bridleway and chat whilst assessing any approaching obsticles.

it was a freak bit of verge with a vengeance!

njee20 – Member

That assumes the same cadence though, if he's spinning an easier gear he's less likely to break the chain.

I disagree! But don't care.

Singlespeeding uses a chain that is always run straight so it never gets the risk of a sideplate getting bent and twisting off the pin. That's what has caused a chainsnap for me in the past, along with the issue of ghost shifts.

I was riding at night down a narrow trail when a badger ran out from one side, through my front wheel and off the other side of the trail.

As I lay there bleeding I am sure I heard the badger laughing.

Badgers fault not mine.

I thought I might find a less than sympathetic response!!
I can see that both the crashes i mentioned 'might' have been avoided. I am trying to eak the last bits of life out of the drivechain that slipped, but it was correctly adjusted.
Snakebites are a fact of riding but yes maybe more tyre pressure would have helped, always a balancing act against grip though.
I actually agree with big john that having ridden SS i am fearfull to put that much pressure through my geared drivechain – the BMX style chain on the SS is built like a brick ****house 🙂

Last Sunday's high-speed wipeout thankfully had no lasting damage, except to my bike! But I was stiff and braking a lot on yesterday evening's outing. It will be a few more rides to get back in full flow.

While I accept that mechanicals happen and no bike can be 100% free from failure it is sort of your responsibility to minimise the risks, check your tyres, brakes and drivetrain before rides, it does sound odd thet your chain would just plough off the bottom after 2 pedal strokes, you must also have been throwing some serious weight into it to find yourself thrown off balance by a derailed chain…

Last ride I was on not one but two fellow riders were complaining of “skipping gears” it wasn’t until we stopped after a big climb that I volunteered to have a look and discovered that BOTH of them had loose rear QRs, one of those bikes had just done 140 odd mile on the roof of the car down the M4! I’d have checked it before and after it went on the roof myself…

It is sometimes stunning how little attention people pay to their bikes, and assume that the fella in the shop will have sorted everything…

Is it your fault? Perhaps a bit in part, should you have it at the back of your mind that your bike might fail? Only if you haven’t been looking after it…

I once saw Peachos ride my bike down a hill to rescue a be-punctured rider, half way down he did one of his somersaults and landed un-helmeted head-first in a mud/shit mix. There was no reason for this, though it was incredibly funny! That wasn't his fault either.

Cookaa i take your point about looking after the bike if you expect to avoid these but i really do. I had just had the bike on the workstand and got the gears super sweet a couple of days before. I knew that they were worn but i thought they would be fine and appeared fine in the workstand- just the real world showing up that workstand tuning is not the same as riding
If you see a guy at mayhem with a grey/blue mojo and a messed up arm come say hi!!!

Will do. Likewise if you spot me (will be on a White solid with far too short stem) gimmie a shout, best of luck by the way….

I can sort of see both arguments, if you're riding along in the gutter and a car comes from nowhere and mows you down, it's not really your fault. On the other hand… if you'd not been on the road or taken a different route it wouldn't have happened. Can apply that logic to any crash, it's just a bit lame!

I've had a proper just riding along crash, halfway down camber in the wyre on the flat section I eased off ready to give it some on the final off camber bit, speed approx 10mph, nothing on the trail and bang, thought I'd been shot as I went down like a sack of spuds, when I got up front wheel was taco'd due to the rim failing at the join, one of the connecting pins had pulled out of one side which trashed the tyre and tube. Cannot find any reason for this being my fault but hey ho, let's see what the 'experts' think 😀

That's what I mean though, you could just say that had you been going slower, you wouldn't have been on the cambered section and it wouldn't have mattered. That would be stupid though.

A lot of crashes caused by 'spontaneous' component failures are not the fault of the rider though IMO.