You know the ones. Those horrific bum clenching brushes with certain death on the bike that somehow.....didn't quite happen, or maybe they did happen but inexplicably, you got up, dusted yourself off and carried on.
I had one of these at the weekend in a forest in Shropshire. A train of us wanging it into a series of downhill bombholes.
Dropped into the first one which G's you out nicely before the crest of the next, but the next has a big exposed root in the downslope bridging a mini bombhole.
Landed on it front wheel one side, back wheel the other, went into a big tank-slapper while hitting the upslope of the next crest and then.....and then...I was still on my bike.
It's such a weird feeling, crashing... and then not crashing. You sort of accept it and are ready for the impending pain, but then it doesn't happen.
What's yours?
On the road: on a long slightly downhill stretch. Reasonably busy in both directions. An oncoming car wanted to turn right, uphill, across my path. I was going faster than he thought, but he nipped across cheekily with a pretty small safety margin.
I could see it coming...
So far, so commonplace. But there was a second, smaller, car which was tailgating the first and was turning too...
He was tucked in so tight I couldn’t see him at all, he had no idea I was there and was just trusting the chap in front had picked a gap he could charge through that too.
emergency braking with a *LONG terrifying endo* from me, rabbit-in-headlights panicked inaction from him: he swooped across my path with big wide “where the hell did he jump out from” eyes a few feet in front of me.
Then it was all over, and I was fine: he stopped and apologised - oh no, that’s right, he didn’t!
As a kid (maybe early teens) I was riding along the pavement, chain slipped and threw my foot off the pedal (chainring dug into my calf). I ended up in the middle of a 40mph road on a blind bend on the floor. Luckily I managed to get up and get to the side of the road before getting hit by any cars.
Cwmcarn DH, right at the start - steep roll-in, table, flat out right turn, table/sort of double and I’ve got it aallllll wrong - instead of my usual plop on top and jump off, I’ve actually tried to jump the thing, cased it and now I’m humping the bars at speed and accelerating, back wheel is off the ground now, it’s only my speed stopping me going OTB - I’m bright enough not to brake, but daft enough not to try to jump off the bike. It’s only a short, brake bump riddled run to the next berm which I’m about to go straight over and into a tree.
But I didn’t, blind luck, somehow one of the braking bumps pitched me back, just enough to get my arse back over the back wheel and get it down, seems I WAS braking the rear because it landed locked, the bike went sideways immediately, but luckily it turned left, the direction of the trail, I arrived at the berm in a cloud of dust and noise (mostly coming from me) and it just slotted in, let the brake off and it rolled out at walking pace.
All happened in a second or three and NO ONE SAW IT 🤫
"supermaning" out of the saddle at 30 mph on the road bike and landing on my head with no helmet, in and out of consciousness for a day and a lost week of memories.
Worst one I had killed me. Luckily I believe in reincarnation, so I've come back for more.
Ratchet straps on a overtaking lorry caught and grazed my arm. I think if it had been winter with more clothing to catch I would not be here.
Cwmcarn.
On the DH track, tried to do the quarry gap, which is just before the switchbacks before the tunnel.
Jump was big for me back then, with an awkward, fast & narrow run in. I basically death gripped it & pulled up. It's slightly hipped & I clearly was trying something I shouldn't have been considering.
Actually hit the landing, but because of said death grip & terrible jumping skill levels back then, I was off the back of the bike, and got a monsterous pump off the downslope. Trail basically carries straight on and I went off the side, and what felt like about 50mph. I landed inbetween a load of stumps and logs, ragdolled & came to a rest. Totally unharmed.
I actually thought I was going to die on that one. I stopped riding for the day I was so shaken!
I OTB'd off a small cliff in Rivelin Valley once, a year after riding off a bigger cliff/rock in Galloway...
Riding along a sandy and dusty path following my nose on a family holiday in Mallorca. Was out for the day with a German language walking guide as a map. I'm following a coastal path that meanders its way along the top of the cliffs near Cap Formentor. As the path turns again to the ocean I see a natural rise that's begging to be jumped, so I give it a couple of pedal strokes, only the upslope is thick sand which grabs the wheel and I sort of half OTB, low side. I pick myself up, and walk to the top of the path where it promptly disappears off a cliff to the sea (about 30m below) the path taking a dramatic 90deg right. If I'd have made the jump I would've sailed over the cliff to the rocks and sea below
I took a moment to have a sit.
Nearly drifted over the edge of a cliff in Morocco, fast downhill gravel track. Just took the corner too fast, panicked, locked up on braking, released them at the last moment and made the turn.
I had a car pull out in front of me as i was coming down hill at about 28mph on commuter, i went straight into the side of her and flipped on to her bonnet sticking the heel of my foot through her windscreen, got up and apart from being stiff i was absolutely fine, thankfully it was friday and i had rucksack with all my dirty washing and towel from work and i think that protected my spine as a i landed, the only bruising was at top of back where lunch bob had been in bag.
If the same had happened on proper road bike, i probably would of been doing 10-mph more with no protection.
Nearly drifted over the edge of a cliff in Morocco, fast downhill gravel track. Just took the corner too fast, panicked, locked up on braking, released them at the last moment and made the turn.
[pedant] that's a near miss not a crash [/pedant]
lol read the title again, curse my aging eyesight 🙂
what the **** is going on with the edit !!!!!!!!!!!!
Coming down from Les Lindarets in 2001, on a little trail that had lots of warning signs on it. Fantastic trail, tight and technical and exposed, but it was my first time on a full sus bike and as I rolled through one section it all sagged rather more than I was used to.
Chainring was punted into a rock and it duly high-sided me, throwing me over the side of the trail and into the valley.
Fortunately, just at this point there was a rock ledge a few feet down: I fell through the branches of a tree, landed on that (as did the bike, phew!) and I managed to clamber back up, uninjured.
I seem to recall that had I done it ten yards earlier or later I'd have been a meat avalanche.
Glentress, Falla Brae.
Near the bottom there is a left hand kink with a small ditch on the outside. If you get your line wrong its quite easy to get sucked into the ditch, especially if you stare at it while not really turning the corner!
Going at a fair rate of knots I decided I wasn't making the corner and I'd just steer into the shallow ditch rather than slide into it. Trouble is there is a tree at the end of the ditch. A tree that's not very far away and getting rapidly closer.
With thoughts of faceplanting a tree at 20mph and no real plan of escape other than "Shit! Bail" I jumped of the bike to the right and basically sat down on a grass bank. The bike carried on in the ditch for another 5 metres or so and then got its front wheel caught between a root and the trunk of the tree, looking for all the world like it had been placed in a stand.
So after thoughts of a face wrecking collision I ended up sat down on a grass verge with my bike leaning against a tree looking like I was about to start a picnic
Trying to get my knee down in the wet with a new rear tyre. Backend went with such force the front end followed which allowed the back to grip again followed by the front. I pat my shants & bimbled of home with 2 sore knees that got rattled of the tank rather ferociously.
Aged 14 on our first ever cycle tour in the lake district. Bombing down a twisty road on a 10 speed Claude Butler which was far, far too big for me. Couldn't make the turn as a car and caravan came towards me in the middle of the narrow road. Just closed my eyes and waited to die but somehow squeezed past - no idea how.
Was so delighted to be alive I hit the grass covered, low wall into the campsite at about 25 mph and launched my fully laden road bike into the air. My mate did the same on his Raleigh Lizard and landed on some guy's tent. Yes, he was in the tent at the time 🙂
Totally innocuous crash riding with an ex-work colleague in New Jersey, went over a fallen tree that had been built up with logs into a feature and somehow slipped the front wheel down the other side resulting in a half OTB / half low side type fall. Utterly shit.
Except as I was falling my head was going straight towards a very pointy rock on the side of the trail and I was going in to it full on face first. I got my hands down in the text book 'do this if you want a double scaphoid fracture' manoeuvre but in that sudden slow speed prescient moment you sometimes get, thought if I try to arrest my fall with a press up type motion just maybe this might not be too bad.
When I opened my eyes, if I stuck my tongue out I could have touched the rock, I was within mm of smashing my teeth out, and equally the press up buffer had saved my wrists. I still have the scar on my shin from another rock and my arse still knits buttons every time I look at it and remember what might have been. I hate teeth / dentists......
Heading down the steep hill in Penryn, Cornwall as a student. It was a great little hill with features, so giving it my all and making the most of it. Problem was there is a very steep side road with poor visibility joining the main road I was on.
As I come down the high street, a big Jaguar hearse pulls out of said junction. Doesn't see me and carries on his route without accelerating at a snails pace. Que me slamming the brakes and panicking with a 10ft gap rapidly getting smaller, and a coffin getting closer and closer. Naturally target fixating on the coffin . I ended up missing the rear quarter by a small margin and steer onto the footpath to avoid it, still doing a fair speed.
Funny in hindsight, but rather scary at the time.
I've had a couple, but the closest to getting killed without actually getting killed was on the road, when I was riding on Main Road, just north of Gwaelod-Y-Garth. I was going pretty fast, on the basis of never before having encountered a car on that particular stretch, and the fact that at that I was on a short bit of downhill.
Suddenly, a car emerged from around a blind corner. I had less than a split second to put on the brakes - which I did. But I endo-ed past the car, sliding a good number of metres on what felt like only the front tyre.
In any case, if that dear old man in the oncoming car had not reacted the way he did, I would surely have met him in a head-on collision.
I will be eternally grateful that he was so alert, and pulled to one side immediately. And to top it off, his only concern when it was over, was for me and my well-being.
Whoever you are, sir, I salute you!
About 15 years ago on an Orange Dh bike, came over a drop, a set of doubles into a right hand berm followed by a left hand berm as I lifted the bike up between the berms the right hand of my handlebars came away in my hand, managed to some how step over the bike and hit the ground running and fell over the back of the 2nd berm with the bike chasing me.
Car turned right across me without warning. I went into the side of it at 20 mph and a dead stop. Last thoughts were “this is going to hurt!”
i was not wrong. Broke 15 bones, unconscious for half an hour. Air ambulance. A week in hospital and two wrist operations. Driver drove off without stopping. Was caught a few days later, and lucky to avoid a six month prison sentence - sonhle mother with small child
Three months later I was 56th overall in Ride London 100. Still not beaten that time!
EDIT for NEVER had. I was next to my club mate when he hit a massive pothole in Weybridge whilst we were riding through and off. Five seconds earlier it would have been me. That is the closest I have ever come to death.
Commute home from work, taking the long route, single track road, downhill, very blind tight left hand bend, never any traffic, decided to see how quickly I could take said bend...
The Porsche Cayenne (yes the big 4x4 one) didn't expect me coming round the corner quite so quickly. He was decent enough to pull right into the verge/hedge, although this was just after I had already grabbed a handful of brakes, stood the bike up and aimed for said verge he decided he would put the Cayenne in to give me more room. I can remember the rolling stoppie and hitting the front of the car, thinking '**** this is going to be expensive!' Can't remember the trip over the Porsche but remember getting up behind it after travelling the whole length of the vehicle...
Got up, thought, yes, I'm alive! Walked round to the front to hardly see a scratch on the Porsche 🙂 looked for the bike, that was in two pieces after snapped the headtube off the top tube and down tube, not going to be riding that home! You could see where I'd dragged my face up the windscreen using it as a ramp, almost directly in front of the passenger of the car. At this point the driver opened the door, got out and said, "How the *uck did you get up?!?! I thought you were dead!" At this point I noticed my hands were hurting rather a lot and I could see stars 🙁
I sat down on the verge, the driver offered me a lift to hospital, I said nah, take me home, I walk up the hospital later... He refused, I managed to get him to put my bike in the boot and drop me round my parents, good old Mum took me to hospital, one broken left wrist and a broken right thumb. To go with the shagged bike & destroyed cycle helmet.
Two things I've never forget, the drivers words to me, and the pain when the nurse straightened my thumb out, after he strapped it up once and me telling him it hurt worse than when I walked in 🙂
3 days in hospital waiting for the operation to pin my thumb back together, which was actually a bonus as I have private healthcare through work and got £200 per night for being in hospital on the NHS, that paid for the new frame 🙂
Many years ago came round the sweeping bends of the local dual carriageway bypass at err telephone numbers on my ZX-7R. There were rolls of turf all over the road and nowhere to go. Leant over I hit one of the rolls full on (I’m dead I thought). Bike jumped into the air, slammed back down onto the tarmac, wobbled a bit and we carried on. I was home two minutes later and white as a sheet apparently.
On the old World Champs DH track at Pila. There's a big, steep rock-garden near the top. This got re-worked a few years ago and is now much smoother, but back in the day there were a lot of big holes amongst the rocks. In particular, right at the bottom on the left hand side, in a big compression, there was a deep hole which was pretty much a perfect fit for a 26" wheel. The only answer was to avoid it at all costs and stick to the right-hand line.
On one occasion I was having a shot on a mate's old GT DHi downhill bike. A monstrosity of a thing. It had these enormous 10" travel Manitou forks which had serious bushing issues. If you kept the bike sagged into its travel, they worked OK, but if you let it top-out, half the time you'd just get a metal-on-metal clunk and no fork movement at all. I was riding the rock garden and got bucked a bit and ended up on the left-hand line. I'm charging towards the big hole at the bottom and my life is flashing before my eyes. The big old Manitous rolled the dice and decided to work this time, I just charged straight through the hole with a huge squelch of oily goodness from the forks.
Change of underwear, as you were.
at telephone numbers on my ZX-7R. There were rolls of turf all over the road
So you were speeding then - you deserve to be grassed up for that 😉
I usually like to complete a crash, otherwise it's a waste, like. Had a bit of a reputation for this a few years back. A lot more safety conscious these days.
One that made me feel weird, like "I got away with that", was on a group ride, stopped by this fallen tree, set up with a start ramp. Being a show-off, I thought, yeah I'll give that a go. First try, didn't quite get enough speed up the shonky ramp to make the trunk of the tree. Second try, bit more speed, found out how slippery the surface of a tree can be and as soon as my front tyre connected with the trunk, it slipped off to the side and my face made a rapid descent towards the woodwork. It missed by mms and I landed and stood there, thinking how am I not injured?!
Continued with the ride with a weird sense of adrenaline rush, embarrassment and relief combined..!
One that happened, but I ended up inexplicably uninjured.
Coming down a lovely road dropping towards Lake Garda (on a road bike) and overcooked it a bit, lost control and somehow ended up on the left side of the road, coming up to a left hairpin. I'd somehow regained control, but it was too late and too fast to go back to the right of the road, so I had to carry on around the left and hope nothing was coming...
Hit a Nissan Qashqai at a combined speed of about 35mph, completely square on. From what I can remember I stopped dead (not thrown over the top), and sort of flopped onto the front of the car. There was a neatly hemispherical head-sized dent right in the middle of the bonnet, and the bumper was wrecked.
I must have got up quickly because the first bit I remember is limping around trying to walk it off. Somehow I'd gotten away with a concussion and a broken finger, absurdly lucky.
Then got to experience the joy of exchanging insurance details with an angry Italian family who didn't speak any English (and I don't really do Italian), before scraping the many pieces of bike off the road and into the boot, then a very awkward car journey into town. I gather from their conversation I ruined their Sunday lunch, and if they ever read this I'm eternally sorry.
And if anyone ever finds a Cube Litening seatstay next to the road above Garda, that'll be mine.
About 40mph downhill on my road bike. Pitched into a large open roundabout on full lean when the I hit a flattened coke can that had been squashed by many cars etc.
bike disappeared from under me faster that someone pulling a table cloth and leaving the crockery still standing.
after skimming along the ground for a while before nice set of steel railings stopped me dead in my tracks ( and prevented me going into the next lane where the cars were all just moving away from the traffic lights )
I smashed my right knee but could have easily been killed.
Nothing as serious as some on here.
Riding an old Dawes 5 speed racer thing whilst being chased by one of the local meatheads (also on a bike) on the road, took a sharp right and leaning it over, the bike started sliding to the outside of the road towards the kerb, I start thinking, I'm off when it hits the kerb. Both wheel contact the kerb and I obviously had enough lean to stop me being thrown off and just carried on. Meathead couldn't catch me up!
Another time, coming back from QECP heading towards Petersfield via Buriton, theres a track which heads down the side of a little valley, under the railway line and takes you to the duckpond in Buriton. Came hooning down it and theres a fast right hander which tightens as you go round. To your left there is a drop of about 2meters into a tree filled abyss. I hit the bend at a rather optimistic speed and desperately try and scrub some speed off to prevent dropping off the track into the abyss. Just make it by the skin of my teeth and had to have a little sit down for a minute. Walked back up and the tyre track I'd left had been less than an inch from the edge.
Snapped a set of handlebars coming down a grassy descent in the Pentlands, slid along the grass for about 10 yards. 10 yards further on the trail turns into a rather rocky path.
For some reason my bike control seems to inprove in near death situations. Fortunately.
Riding down grassy hill at a fair clip thinking it was a featureless route to the bottom when a drop appeared in my path. I guess it was the hole left by an uprooted tree that had since been cleared.
It was the sort of size that i would have looked at and thought better of it had I the choice but I was going too quick and was too close to do anything other than try and stick the landing, which i did, like it was nothing. Left the ground, sailed through the air, landed it with barely a wobble and carried on to the bottom. It remains probably the longest airtime I've had on a bike. I put the success down to not having time to think about it.
Seeing Stevo from Whiteroom up there has made me remember a good one from La Vada from when the boulder fell and closed off the easy outside line on 'the corner everyone takes a picture of'.
I wasn't having one of my most accomplished riding days and as i tried to ride the tight inside line 'french endo style' endo'd a little too much and went over the bars. At which point i remembered that about 30 feet that way is a pretty big cliff. Somehow how i managed to grab one of the exposed metal posts with one hand (rather than impaling myself) and then catch my cartwheeling bike with my foot.
Sat down for a little while and then rode the rest of the trail much better, almost like i need to get the crash out of my system..
Cragg Quarry; I usually ride alone but was chasing a work colleague who was much faster than me. Steep downslope into a bend, bike slid out from under me and my head ended up in a grassy gap about 10cm bigger than my head between two huge slabs of rock. That’d have been messy.
Worst crash I never had? That would be the one I thankfully didn't have when I made it to 56mph on the road bike in nothing but the thinnest of cheap lycra shorts and jersey. I made it to the bottom, anchored on the brakes and calmed down a bit.
That speed is probably nothing to a pro peloton who do it with inches between each other, but it scared the sh*t out of me. However, something in me had to see just how fast I could get 15st of wide human to travel on 23mm of contact with the road.
A very fast left hander on a local trail, overcooked it, highsided over the bars, bike hit the deck and I carried going straight on. Headbutted a drystone wall at quite some speed. Heard an almighty crack and felt a crunch in my neck, laid there for a few seconds, got up, dusted off - All OK. Crack was my helmet snapping, neck was just a bit of unplanned chiropractic cracking. Did have a slight concussion and a fractured eye socket but I regard that as a win in the circumstances. Carried on back to car about 6 miles away then off to hospital.
Forgot my motorbike one.
Early twenties I was following two mates along the A45 towards Birmingham. We weren't hanging around and I was doing all I could to keep pace with them on their faster bikes.
The dual carriageway was having roadworks and the two lanes were closing into one, in that gradual narrowing way that they do.
There was a line of cars, I made the call and went to overtake them all just before the lane closed down. I successfully made it....Only, the car at the head of the line inexplicably veered right forcing me right too. I clipped a roadwork sign (they weight them down with sandbags) with my right hand, my glove flew off, felt an enormous rush of pain, but still on the bike hobbled to the hard shoulder. The car that had given me nowhere to go drove on presumably oblivious.
I had massive pain in my right arm and I was covered in blood. It took me a while to notice but the little finger on my right hand wasn't there any more. I hadn't noticed at first due to the arm pain.
Another motorist who saw it all happen had stopped, and picked my glove up off the road which still had my little finger in it. Turned out I sustained a compound fracture to my right arm too. No other injuries.
Inspecting the bike later, there was a large vertical dent in the right side of the fuel tank. What that basically meant was that at high speed, the bars had been knocked full lock to the right, then snapped back to centre and the front brake had been fully pulled in to the bar (It was actually the brake lever that had snapped and severed my finger)
The cars were on my left, a long line of them. How I didn't fall off the bike to the left considering my bars had gone full lock right with full front brake applied momentarily I will just never know. I'd be dead if I had I'm quite sure.
All these years later my little finger has still not grown back, and I find it nigh on impossible to hold a handful of M&Ms in my hand without a few falling out where my finger should be. 🙂
Don't know if it's the worst but the one that sticks in my mind is pedal striking and unclipping at the top of a bit of north shore just as it started to go steeply downhill. Managed to ride it out, largely on the front wheel only and with only one food on a pedal. It's probably the most scared I've been on a bike anyway, and my swearing could be heard from some distance away, apparently.
I do also recall sliding along the ground following a crash at Laggan, with my face heading towards a large rock. Thankfully I managed to stop myself so that the rock merely tapped one of my teeth but for a few seconds I was very concerned I was going to make quite a mess of myself.
Flying down a bridleway on the NY moors. Next thing I know is I'm sliding along the floor on my right side. Smashed collarbone, 5 broken ribs, 2 broken bones in my spine and a punctured lung. Helicoptered out of there by the YAA. 2 weeks before going to Morzine for a week with the lads and had to cancel the holiday with the wife and kids as well
Edit: Read that as worst crash you EVER had
I've had three.
First one I got kicked miles out of a drainage ditch, landed on my front wheel, fully compressed the forks, was way past the point of no return, fully resigned to my fate. Then I just rolled on the front wheel for a few metres before slowly descending back to two wheels down. There are pictures somewhere, it looks like certain death.
Messing about in a quarry I ran down a steep screen bank into a pile of scree, up the face expecting to land on the downslope. Going miles too fast, completely missed the downslope and landed to flat on the quarry floor. No idea how high I was, must have been 10 foot or so, again thought that was it. Smashed into the ground and the bike just took it and I rode it out. Madness.
Last one was at Fort William on the longish straight just after the deer fence. Cocked up rolling that drop on the corner - didn't realise it couldn't be rolled on the inside - just avoided going over the bars, but I got thrown off the back of the bike in the aftermath, and couldn't get back to the brakes. Just kept accelerating towards certain death. Then somehow I smashed through various rocks until I recovered and rode it out.
I'm sure i'm doing it all wrong, but I've never managed to do a proper crash on my DH bike.
barrelling down a trail in the Surrey Hills a while back (not racing a friend, honest), bunyyhopping the rain guley that zig-zagged across the trail with increasing boinginess until i got one wrong...
felt the tyre compress
felt the spokes compress
felt the forks compress
felt the stem compress
felt the bars compress
felt the compress
felt all of them uncompress at the same time and fling me and the bike upwards and sideways in one go, had long enough in the air to look at the tree i was going to hit and know it was going to hurt, bounced hard off that tree and into another one and then into the ground to sit in the foetal position for a while making weird noises whilst doing a body systems check
many many things on the bike were bent, i somehow got away with very minor cuts and bruises, i can still see that tree in my mind
either that of fishtailing a road bike between a 4x4 and a flatbed truck going down Ditchling Beacon, or several more...
Motorbike one, CBR400RR chasing a mate on his GSXR750, I was good in the twisty stuff and could keep up with him, got in a straight line and he pulled away (as expected). Hit a bump in the road and got into one almighty tankslapper... composed myself for a split second, thinking right, I need to accelerate out of this, rather difficult when flat out in top, bouncing it off the standard installed speed limiter at about 115mph (I took it off, the limiter, later on). I still have no idea how I did not die that day...
Somehow I managed to gain back some form of control, probably by magic of my heart beating faster than the 14000rpm the engine was doing 😀
Stock car racing one, accelerated off turn three, thinking that throttle feels lighter than it did, getting to corner, releasing throttle pedal, jammed flat out, return spring broke and jammed against the rocker cover causing the throttle to be stuck flat out (you couldn't achieve it even if you tried!) planted the clutch and the brake, i locked the wheels in a moment of panic, it didn't slow down much, I hit the fence (rather hard) going from somewhere between 50 & 60 to zero in about a foot, splitting a crash helmet on the roll cage and punching the front of the cab with my right hand where it couldn't hold onto the steering wheel... The chassis was made of 50mm box, the car didn't give much...
The race finished, I got out, collected as much of the bits of the car as possible, put it on the trailer and went home. Got home, about 1.5hrs away, opened the van door and collapsed in a heap as my hips had seized up 😀 Managed to get myself indoors and sit in the bath for a while (which meant I was able to walk again) but spent 3+ weeks starting my car with my left hand (damn awkward!) due to the bruising on my right hand, that was rather inconvenient 🙁
Won't go into the fighting injuries from my early adult years 😀
Riding down the steep mountain road into Estepona in the south of Spain, following my mate who had a house there - he'd done that descent many times.
We were on it heading down, the rest of the guys were a long way behind, he took a really weird line into a corner so I took the conventional one smuggly thinking I'd carry way more speed...
His line beautifully set him up for the next corner, mine set me up pointing towards a rock face with a drainage ditch in front of it at well over 30mph. Rear wheel locked, sliding across the wrong side of the road, let off the brakes at the last second and lent into the corner as much as I could, very, very close to the drainage ditch which would have launched me into the rock wall.
Riding down a pretty steep off-camber downhill near Eskdale with my usual grace and finesse (think three-legged giraffe on a skateboard). Went over the bars in fairly dramatic fashion, but rather than face-planting, I somehow managed to do a complete summersault and land on my feet, like a gymnast dismounting, with my bike on the floor behind me. I felt it only right to shout TA-DAAAAAAA
I then managed to identically repeat the exercise on a Monday Night Pub Ride, on the Descent from the Coal Road down Waughs Well. Over the bars, disappeared down a ditch, then landed perfectly on my feet at the bottom having completed a full roll.
Quite a few people witnessed it and I got a round of applause 😀
Went round a slippery corner too fast on the road bike, 4x4 coming up the road, ran wide, hit my ribs square across the wing. 9 broken ribs, 5 in 3 bits, 5 titanium plates & 6 weeks later back on trainer, 2 years later came 4th in the National 24hr champs at a biblical pivot 24:12, sure did put my ability to suffer some mild discomfort up a notch
Just remembered one from a few months ago on my commute - first left turn and I'm fling down the back of the hill. Straight for about 150 metres then it goes curvy.. I let the brakes off and dunno I'm around 35mph... Ah! a car is coming up the hill Urgh, this road is narrow. I try to ride on the edge and hit gravel, turning on gravel, can't brake... right on the edge .. I'm gonna flip, either onto the verge or into the road.. tyres are gonna break away any seco... no made it...
That road:
A few days later.. out of that road, left turn onto the next one.. pedal pedal for about 3-400metres, then the right turn.. look around, one car coming a little way back, stick out the arm, glance over the shoulder, ah he's seen my signal and is hanging back, move to the middle of the road...woosh he goes past me on my right! on the wrong side of the road... f me. I had to stop and regroup after that one. Was he intending to "overtake" or was he just heading straight for me and managed to swerve around. Thank christ there was nothing coming the other way.
Come to think of it, commute near misses don't really count, cos there's far too many of them!!
Crikey, I think there's a few on here that are worst EVER, not Never... 🙂
Nothing anywhere near most of these as I tend to have comedy crashes. Worst I can think of is over cooking a right hand bend on a bridleway. Flew off in to the woods and the bike hit a very low wall, bike just stopped dead and flung me through the air superman style.
I remember thinking it was going to hurt. Hit a tree with my left thigh and this knocked me to one side, narrowly missing a big pile of rocks. Tumbled a few times (sky, ground, sky, ground etc) and finally landed on my back. Badly winded, bruised and bleeding I rolled about for a bit making animal noises. Then realised I was rolling around in nettles.
That was a shit ride home. Bent front wheel, bleeding and aching whilst covered in nettle stings. Glad I missed the rick pile though. That would have truly messed me up.
Back in the pre kids days, i was down at uk bikepark/blandford doing an uplift day and decided to do one of the ladder drop/road gaps they had tucked away in the trees. Not in itself massive drop maybe 12 ft if you plop of the end, but fearing coming up short on the track that runs under it i went way to fast which i realised as i sailed of down the steep transition, landing just before the track at the bottom and just in front of a tree. So with huge skill (LUCK) i steered around the tree with the mighty 66's fully compressed my chest on the bars and the visor of my hat buzzing the front tyre and the brakes locked on which wasn't very useful as the rear wheel was way up in the air and the soil there is chalky clag.
Happy days! not for my mate who didn't heed my advice and had a massive stack 🙂
Out on a nightride with my new Light & Motion HID (so around 2006ish), decided to head round the cliffs at Balcary bay nr Auchencairn (sw scotland). all was going well till i made my way down the biggish roughest slope, front wheel dropped at speed into a massive newly dug rabbit hole (that wasn't there two days previous) and my HID light shut off (broken filament), lost control in the darkness and i had no idea of where i was position wise on the cliff but somehow managed to wrestle control back and come to a stop way down the hill within 12" of heading over the edge of the cliff, if i had placed my right foot down i would have tumbled over 200ft to the shore below, I tore all the muscles in both shoulders with the initial impact (took months to heal) and i was so shook up that i thought i was having a heart attack/panic attack, i made it back to the road at Balcary Bay hotel and my legs totally gave up in a fit of the shakes, i couldn't stand up at all so had to call my brother to come and pick me up - was ill with shock for quite a few days afterwards.
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That'd be a crash I'd never have...... because I'd be about 30 yards back inside that fence.
At night too - are you.... y'know..... all there?
Riding from Pointe des Mossettes to I think it's the top of the Swiss National track. Big group racing along the fire road, I was taking some devious overtaking lines at the edge when I'm suddenly faced with a monster +2m wide by 1m deep ditch. Certainly traveling above 20mph at this moment with only a split second to react. Fortunately I can bunny hop reasonably well and I was able to hop over it. But I've no idea how I reacted fast enough to initiate that size hop. If I hadn't been able to hop over it I would have been in an almighty mess... even worse if I'd been catapulted off the near cliff edge!
It never used to faze me when riding round the cliffs as i had rode them so many times over the previous years i found it easy so to speak, it only really hit home when i took my brother and a mate round there a few months later and they refused to ride the cliff path (it's ****ing suicidal - from my bro) and rode in the field instead.
Quite rough in places but there are a few good lines down it, even for a hardtail with 80mm of fork travel
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I was never quite as complacent afterwards though so i guess i learned a valuable lesson
LOL, just typed a reply, submitted, now looked at thread title again... As you were! 😉
^^at least you realised though. I typed three paragraphs describing an actual crash!
Many years ago, I was a teenager and interested in messing with my road bike. It was a kind of heavy tourer with a dynamo on the front tyre for the lights, mudguards, rack, the works. For the holidays I turned into a race bike (or so I thought) by stripping off all the stuff I didn't need and fitting drop handlebars. When school started again, I put it all back. As I rode to school, I suddenly heard a loud "plink plink plink...". Looked down, and it was my dynamo, which hadn't been attached properly, had slipped down the fork, and was popping in and out of the spokes as I rolled along. I remember thinking "that's dangerous" when, of course, the dynamo locked itself into the wheel. My flight over the bars was long and the landing was brutal. But I was 14 or so, so I just picked the grit out of my hands, wiped the blood from my eyes, and walked to school, carrying a bike with a fork that was bent backwards from the impact... I have always tightened my screws properly since then. I just shrugged it off, so it must count as a crash I never really had, right?
When living in the UK , I used to do add a few miles to morning commute . One day the wind was right to try and take a KOM . I had failed previously by few seconds . It was dark and I had a magicshine light with the 4 battery pack strapped to the stem . I was doing in excess of 45km/h when the battery came undone . I can still see it bouncing off the front wheel several times . Luckily it did not jam itself between the forks and the wheel .
About 2011-ish I ran out of talent on the motorway section at the bottom of Cwmcarn, and landed sideways off one of the jumps. Picked myself up and went for a another run of the black which was - thankfully - uneventful.
The next day I dropped the forks out of my bike to send them off for a service, and found that the previous day's crash had very nearly torn the steerer tube in half. There was a long crack running 3/4 of the way around the tube. Probably best not to think about what could have happened on that last run if my bars and bike had decided to part company...
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A road one from me.
We used to live in North Wales and a regular ride was the Snowdon circuit usually going anti-clockwise. This meant riding up from Nant Gwynant to Pen y Gwryd and up to Pen y Pass giving a blast down Llanberis Pass as a finale.
This day I crested the top and began the descent and I was shifting - the Cateye computer was showing 46MPH at the first bend! There's a low wall on the right hand side of the road so you can see cars coming the other way which lets you take the racing line around the bends. Having overtaken a few "careful Mildred, this is a dangerous road" tourists I rounded a left hand bend to see a car looking at pulling out from one of the various parking bays. The driver looked up the road and either didn't see me or thought "Bike? They don't go very fast" and proceeded to pull into the road.
I began to drift to the right hand side of the road and hit the brakes. This was when the problems started as my back wheel hit a cats-eye as I crossed the centre of the road. The back wheel was now in intermittent contact with the road and I was still closing on the car very quickly. I began scanning the hillside on the other side of the low wall for landing spots amongst the boulders. It was then that the driver realised we were on a collision course and stopped - phew! I shot past at about 30MPH and managed to scream "bas***d!" into his open window.
Three miles later he sheepishly overtook me.
I’ve only just lost my thousand yard stare from a ‘not crash’ about 2 hours ago.
Dropped into a new trail, well new to me. Following a mate who knows the trail with Mr. Keen behind me egging me on to chase him. This was my first mistake. If I’d taken the time to assess the situation it would have been clear - all things being equal - rider 1 is riding a trail he knows as quickly as he thinks is safe (it was that kind of night) rider 2 (me) is 10 metres back and traveling slower because I don’t know the trail. Listens to Mr. Keen, but to catch rider 1 I not only have to match his speed, but surpass it...
It started as a quite large rear wheel drift, then it was a two wheel drift, then quite the high speed low-side. I managed to get my foot down and kick myself up, but now I’m pointing on a 45 degree angle to the trail, off into th undergrowth, missed a tree and not a mark on me.
According to Strava it was about a 30kph slide.
At 6 years old I rode into a tree, a neighbor took me to my mom, with me covered in blood.
she asked the neighbor why has she brought this little boy to her, my mom did not recognise me there was so much blood.
Still riding at 49 😁
Oh, good thread, I have two for this:
#1 - Ullapool, when I was a wee nipper. I was on my bike pegging down the hill on the pavement on my way into the village for a fiddle lesson when said fiddle (strapped to my back) swung round and clipped my back wheel. I was sent burling into the main road where not a second after I reached the other side, still out of control, an articulated lorry came speeding round the corner on its way from the ferry. Literally a second or two later and I would have been toast.
#2 North Third, Stirling. This set of trails runs along three clifftops, and at times you are no more than a metre or less from the 70ft+ drop to your left. I went to put in a pedal stroke and struck a root, which sent me humped over the bars and with a sharp left towards the cliff edge. I just managed to get a foot down and the brakes slammed on with the front wheel hanging at the edge. I got of the bike, threw it down at the side of the trail and just sat there in total silence, shaky hands and all, for 5 minutes at what would have been a horrendous and ridiculous way to go. Still gets me to this day that one.
Coming home late after work and a beer more than would have been sensible.
Bottom of a longish but not too steep hill with lights at junction. Queue of traffic ahead and nothing coming in the opposite direction. I pull out to overtake slower moving traffic, winding it up to catch the green, out of saddle in the drops. Clang in to top gear at full whack, chain jumps off top cog and jams solid. Left foot over top of pedal then to the floor, drivetrain locked up with pedal jammed in back of calf and balls deep in the cross bar. Kept upright and observant driver next to me stamped on the brakes and avoiding driving over me too.
2010, coming down a loose footpath/gravelly descent in Wendover at much speed as a part of a group. 30mph according to Garmin. One of the riders decided to come past on my inside with no announcement. Our bars hit. Outsiders say it looked absolute carnage, with bikes, people, gravel and dust piling down the hill.
I was unconscious for a while with my helmet in two pieces. When I awoke, I felt fine other than a few bruises and scrapes, except a dull ache in my shoulder. We concluded I'd probably fractured my collar bone, and I was given a lift to the hospital.
I was scanned. I'd broken my right side collar bone in 5 places, my left elbow and my left thumb. The left side was plastered up and the right out in a sling I was asked to return at 9am the following morning for a follow up.
So I arrived at 9am, expecting the usual wait. However, a pale looking nurse ushered me direct to the Consultant. "You're going to surgery he said, now. Puzzled I asked why and he showed me the X Ray of my shoulder in pieces, with one of those pieces sitting 2mm from my R/H lung. I needed surgery to move that and assemble my shoulder.
I felt OK after waking (Morphine 😀 ) but I has 2 plates and lots of screws to put me together again. The subsequent few weekends were awful - at first cycling between Codiene, Paracetamol and Ibruprofen, then easing off the Codeine, but then returned to have dressing ripped off my sore & hair-growing-again chest every week. Also a bit inconvienenient at home with no arms to use, day time TV wasn't as good then as it is now. £ months off the bike and some permanent neck issues.
I've had a fair few near misses with car drivers doing silly things. So much so that it doesn't phase me any more.
The worst i've had is descending on the road bike at 45-50mph and the bike hitting a vibration frequency where it started to oscillate and weave. That was terrifying.
For those that know the area. As a kid, coming down Cheney Hill heading back towards Newport, I hit a smidge over 45mph according to my Cateye speedo. I get most of the way down then get speed wobbles... I ended up fighting the bike so I didn't fall into the road, and landed on the grass verge and jettisoned the bike. Sliding down the verge, I look up and see a fence post coming towards my head at a rate of knots, I manage to turn my self around, but ended up wrapping my knee around said fence post.
9 months in physio once a week later, and walking doesn't hurt anymore. To this day, I still have knee problems.
Some of these are horrific but sadly don't qualify. 9 months in physio or emergency surgery to stop your collarbone puncturing a lung don't count as crashes you NEVER had!
This thread should be for the ones where you shut your eyes expecting when you opened them again it would be St Peter you see, only for some miracle to occur and you get away scot free.
Riding down the high Street in Edinburgh at about 20mph, in pouring rain one summer day, the lights at south bridge just starting to turn from green to red, and me thinking that i'll make that no problem where i was turning left. A bus, probably setting off on the orange light, starting to cross my path from the right, and as i was a little late on the lights i pushed on...turned in and the front wheel washed out on me (this road is cobbles and wet Edinburgh cobbles don't provide much in the way of grip). Sensing the impending doom, i put a foot down and stepped off the bike, which continued on its path under the front of the bus, which by now wasn't quite as stationary as i would have liked as my bike got stuck under it. I kinda stumbled onto the pavement and was instantly comforted by a very nice Italian lady, which is the start of another story 🙂
Just remembered another one. Riding the Pila-Aosta descent in a wheel-to-wheel train with White Room colleagues Pat & Alex. Alex is up front, Pat's in the middle, I'm at the back. We go off one of the jumps and in the landing, Pat stops dead, like he's grabbed a massive handful of both brakes or run into a brick wall or something. My life flashes before my eyes and I consider a future as Pat's Scottish enema but somehow manage to just clip him and get past safely and stop.
Turned-out his shifter had detached itself from the bars, dropped down and jammed between the tyre and fork arch.