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Thank you ADH.
You're welcome teej old bean. Some of us still miss you over the road you know.
which is his point
It's his point that you were just as likely to crash on ice in a car as you are on a push bike that I disagree with
& if that's how it works out for him, I'm worried
Last winter in the snow and ice on my daily commute I saw, if anything, a greater percentage of motor vehicles out of control than I did fellow nutters on bikes. We all had a few moments, but the standard of driving was laughable.
People down here do not have a clue. Prehaps this is becuase people will happily drive, with a big safe metal box round them, wheras only the confident/follhardy will consider the bike.
Prehaps the word crash is ill advised. Certainly I only saw two dozen or so actual full-on crashes, or their aftermath. 'Incidents' may have been a better word to employ.
A car may not 'fall over', I did only see one bus on its side and one corsa on its roof, with the remains of something else strewn around the carriageways (seperate incidents), but I saw plenty of very near misses, wheels ripped off on kerbs, failure to stops, bumper bangers, and other seriously out of control incidents.
I'd contend it is as likey.
Around -18 over here I found that even having spikes (proper Nokian 300 spikes per tyre jobs too) didn't work cycling over glass like iced over lakes, rivers and streams. The clarity of the ice and water was incredible and incredibly scary in some places, you could see the thickness of the ice you were on but also right to the bottom of some of the shallower streams. Just like being on black ice even with spikes...
uplink - Member
I'd love to see some of the heroes cycle on thiswww.youtube.com/watch?v=7MPRmOUxRMY
It's not about being a hero, it's about using the right equipment.
I'd happily ride that with my Schwalbe Ice Spikers, as I did for the whole last winter over every piece of black ice in my path without a single incident. 😉
[i]Black ice is unrideable. Someone said it earlier, you don't have time to even notice the slip, you're just off, down and bruised in a blink.[/i]
I was just about to add that it's fine to ride over with ice spikers, but i've been beaten to it 🙂
Having said that, ice with a layer of snow on top was a fairly hairy combo 🙂
It wasn't that cold this morning but the untreated parts of my commute had a definite icy tinge, paranoia on the fixie! Will be considering flipping the wheel soonish!
It wasn't too bad in London village last winter, despite the oodles of people failing to get to work due to the weather.
I came off twice on my commute, both times when cornering.
When it's snowy its generally [url= http://www.teamsky.com/profile_photos/0,27294,17594_5870079_5771590,00.html#photo=4 ]FINE[/url] but it's the ice that's dangerous
I pretty much maintained my 2-3 days per week of commuting throughout the previous winter.
To be honest the decision to commute or not didn't really depend on the temperature more on the ground conditions.
Fresh snow and hard frost were great days to be out and about. After a couple of days of freeze / thaw however I found it much more dangerous. The rutted ice was too treacherous for my liking.
Freezing rain (i.e. precipitation as rain but freezing on untreated surfaces) was another condition I avoided as was slushy but cold conditions. As stated above when you hit black ice you're down before you can even think of how to react.
Don't try and put down too much power, keep going in a straight line where possible and remember it's rude to ask for grip from your tyres so do it spareingly.