how cold is too cold to commute on the bike?

I’d love to see some of the heroes cycle on this

my last big fall on Ice was Feb last year and I almost broke my hip – 20 odd mph into the tarmac is uncool / not for me.

Would love a snow bike though – (for the 2 days every 5 years the South West gets proper snow)

Black ice you can’t ride, end of. If you stay on its all down to luck.

I found a few patches of black ice last year on backlanes, but you could spot them easily as everything else was covered in crusty ice/snow that was surprisingly grippy with trailrakers, so I just scooted round in the gutter or up the bank.

I won’t go into work if I think the likelyhood of people driving in to me is too high.

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.

Do Snow-Chains exist for bicycle tyres?

But you are at least as likely to crash and when you do you have a tonne of metal out of control into the scenery / pedestrians / cyclists.

A car has 4 large points of contact in each corner. A momentary loss of grip, even on all 4, won’t cause the car to fall over and continue the rest of its journey on its side with a broken handlebar and rips in its expensive high-viz waterproof with onlookers laughing and failing to help me up.

Thats not to say everyone drives appropriately once it gets icy though.

No but the car is a danger to others. How you think ice that affects a bike will not affect a car ?

um I take you don’t live in Shawlands anymore then bob. It was above zero in Glasgow and around zero in Kilmarnock.

Not at 6am it wasn’t 😉

No but the car is a danger to others. How you think ice that affects a bike will not affect a car ?

Easy:

4 by 2 foot patch of ice on the inside of a left hand bend. Car rolls over it with its unloaded left hand tyres one wheel at a time, still having full grip on its right hand tyres makes it round the bend without sliding. Bike comes to same patch of ice, front end washes out and rider lands on the deck

QED

But you are at least as likely to crash and when you do you have a tonne of metal out of control into the scenery / pedestrians / cyclists.

I’m just hoping that you don’t have a driving licence TJ?

if you do, can I suggest that you desist immediately from driving until you’ve had some training on car control, it’ll be for the good of society TBH

It isn’t TJ’s car control you need to worry about, which is his point.

Everyone drives like a tard in icy conditions, hence the carnage. Well everyone apart from you, you’re a car control god, obviously.

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 this

http://www.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. 😉

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 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 FINE 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.