I don’t want to derail the Mike Hall thread, with something that could turn into an argument. As far as I know the root cause of that particular incident is not known or at least has not been released yet.

The issue has been raised over the safety of riders pushing themselves to or maybe beyond the limits of safety, and whether they should be on public roads when they are operating at not just the limits of physical endurance but also sleep deprivation.

One point made was-

I think it’s down to individuals to decide if they want to ride.

I can’t agree with that, these are public roads and people on them have a responsibility to other users as well, we wouldn’t accept such levels of tiredness of other road users.

It’s an interesting point, and one worth making separate from the Mike thread as it could well be irrelevant to that.

I’ve seen pictures of people with their heads strapped up because they’re too tired to keep their heads up, and heard stories of people riding straight off the road because they’ve fallen asleep. It can’t be a good idea to do this sort of thing on open roads, fair enough if the riders want to risk it, but they could cause a big accident without much effort on the bigger roads on RAAM etc. Maybe it’s time for some sort of maximum bike time per day. We’d be up in arms if this sort of thing went on in cars as an organised event on open roads.

Edit

Sorry, can’t be bothered.

I’m an underwriter, things don’t need to have happened to be worth worrying about.

Road deaths happen yes, but this is sport. A pasttime. Is it worth knowingly risking people’s lives that aren’t involved in that sport (or even know it’s going on)?

I don’t think it is.

It’s not the same as danger to participants or even spectators.

Road deaths happen yes, and it sucks, so why risk more?

Edit – me either

It is a genuine point to be raised but I’d me more of a hazard after 100 miles on a bike than a proper cyclist on double that amount.
How about a doctor cycling home after a killer shift in a hospital?
I guess it’s knowing when to step off the bike.

I’ve been to a couple of talks recently about, and hosted by, ultra endurance cyclists. In both of them they gave stories of falling asleep while on the bike and falling off. I consider this to be pushing too hard.

This is not a cyclist vs motorist debate. Just as I would say to any road user, if you are even close to the stage of falling asleep you should not be on the public highway. You are putting yourself, but more importantly others, at risk.

TheGeneralist, you are right cars will kill more people, however quantities are pretty much irrelevant. Most motorists don’t deliberately push themselves to drive for day after day, with only a couple or hours sleep on the side of the road. Ultra athletes do exactly this.

This could easily be solved, by adventure races having enforced 8hrs off the bike per day. Strava would happily act as a tachometer to monitor.

Edit: Might even make the sport more attractive to participants/spectators etc.

I’ve seen pictures of people with their heads strapped up because they’re too tired to keep their heads up

Thats shermers neck, its muscle fatigue not tiredness.

It can’t be a good idea to do this sort of thing on open roads, fair enough if the riders want to risk it, but they could cause a big accident without much effort on the bigger roads on RAAM etc. Maybe it’s time for some sort of maximum bike time per day. We’d be up in arms

RAAM alredy has a time limit and mandatory rest periods. Its still the responsibility of the rider to be safe regardless, just like 24hr solo races, just like everyone who gets in the car after a 12hr shift, or at 5am or 6am to drive to work or 200miles to Bike Park Wales or wherever.

if this sort of thing went on in cars as an organised event on open roads.

It does already, you just dont know about it. Car reliability trials, or rallying have long physical days for the drivers often book ended with long ‘boring’ (relative) road sections.

Aside from the safety merits or otherwise of having time limits, the result would be that these races would become a series of time trails between the periods of sanctioned rest, and would probably change the dynamic of the race quite a lot…nobody could take a risk of a 1 hour rest one night to try and push it.

In a general sense, I do agree that on the road you do have responsibilities to other users, but people cope differently with different levels of tiredness. One person might be OK and pretty safe missing a chunk of sleep one night, whilst others might be less safe having 4 instead of six hours sleep for example. It’s a difficult one for organisers to respond to.

Either way it shouldn’t detract from the fact that too many motorists routinely don’t act safely around cyclists in a way that is far more dangerous than a handful of sleep deprived ultra-cyclists.

I’m still gutted whenever this tragedy comes into my mind again.

My view is that every user of a public road has the same responsibility to ensure they are using it safely, irrespective of what vehicle they are driving.

Sure, a cyclist is unlikely to cause the same damage as a lorry driver by nodding off but if I run over a cyclist because he has swerved in front of me through sleep deprivation then I carry that for the rest of my life.

If these races are going to carry on in similar form then perhaps a bike or car escort would go some way to mitigate that risk.

Either way it shouldn’t detract from the fact that too many motorists routinely don’t act safely around cyclists in a way that is far more dangerous than a handful of sleep deprived ultra-cyclists.

I don’t think it does. But what is being said is that the cyclist / event organiser must take the same level of responsibility as every other user of the road.

RAAM requires a support team, 5 people and two vehicles, and the vehicle has to be following the rider through the night (most will be during the day too).

It’s a very different sort of endurance event, and with those logistics and cost to deal with, I can see the appeal of the solo unsupported ones.

I have no personal knowledge of ultra events but they interest me from an impressed bystanders perspective.

From what I have read the levels of exhaustion experienced by these competitors would mean that it is very difficult to make a rational decision when at the extremities of their endurance so they may end up riding until they fall off. There are bits of car tech that detect drivers awareness and if they are falling asleep, could something like this not be applied to the Ultra event world and remotely monitored by the organisers, then they could intervene before things get out of control?

Problemm with support crew is that it would take away the solitude and soli endurance aspect of the riding for the competitors. I don’t know much as i’ve not ridden it or know any of them, but i’d guess the riding alone is a massive part of it for many.

My view is that every user of a public road has the same responsibility to ensure they are using it safely, irrespective of what vehicle they are driving.

Sure, a cyclist is unlikely to cause the same damage as a lorry driver by nodding off but if I run over a cyclist because he has swerved in front of me through sleep deprivation then I carry that for the rest of my life.

Exactly, really seems the only reasonable view to take to me.

I’d never compete in something like this precisely because my attention wanders when I get very tired but it happens whilst driving or watching TV (one of those is not that dangerous) too. The roads are full of dangers and to date, the majority of injuries have been riders hurting themselves riding off the road or drivers hitting riders through no fault of the riders. To my knowledge this is the first fatal incident in a major ultra-endurance race that happened on the road.

If you force 8 hours rest a day it removes the nature of the race; namely that the competitor balances their pace and rest requirements as they see fit and turns it into a stage race effectively just time based rather than distance based.

I’m not sure I fancy multi-day road events purely for the reasons discussed, knowing how much severe sleep-deprivation reduces motor and cognitive function. I can see event organisers also facing acute difficulties in getting public liability insurance. Whilst such events may continue in the sense of solo or record attempts, I’m not sure that mass-participation is valid without the necessity for forced-breaks and support crews, changing both the spirit and costs for participants.

if I run over a cyclist because he has swerved in front of me through sleep deprivation then I carry that for the rest of my life.

You have that risk every single day with other road users and pedestrians. How many races do you pass like this compared to rank and file cyclists, pedestrians and other less squishy road users? The chances of you killing someone involved in TCR or IPWR are as close to zero as makes no difference.

I do know what you mean about the feelings you’d have if you killed someone but that’s there every day, not just because I hit someone racing.

I can see event organisers also facing acute difficulties in getting public liability insurance.

I don’t know how much insurance they actually have. The entry fee for the IPWR was tiny, I doubt you’d get specialist insurance for racing for 14-28 days for the price so my assumption is people are self-insured and sign a waiver to that end. You’re riding on open public roads with 70 odd other people who happen to be following the same route, nothing more complicated than that. I don’t know how TCR, TransAmerica or Tour Divide work but I’d guess the same?

Would a long Audax count as an Ultra Event? While I completely agree with the notion that all road users should be pulling off when tired, I’m also conscious that we could be over-reacting based on one sad incident when similar concepts have been explored for decades.

@atlaz – there have been two fatalities on the Race across America.

whitestone – didn’t know that. I tend to view that as a little different to IPWR/TCR etc but that’s awful.

That said, to give some perspective, in one year in the USA (2015), over 5000 pedestrians were killed and over 800 cyclists killed by motor vehicles. I’d guess your chance of death per ridden km is probably still much higher commuting a couple of miles to work in London than competing in one of these events. That really is a guess though.

Would a long Audax count as an Ultra Event?

PBP would certainly count I’d guess. The event would change completely if people HAD to be off the bike a lot.

Regarding insurance, on the tcr every rider had to have their own private insurance. I can’t remember the wording but it needed to be pretty comprehensive. You had to show the certificate at sign on and do you couldn’t then you wouldn’t be allowed to start.

Whilst the Tour Aotearoa is a Brevet rather than a Race they do have the mandatory rest rule.

“Between 9am one day and 9am the next, every rider must spend at least one block of at least six hours not travelling. In other words, the maximum time any rider may spend riding each day will be 18 hours (between each 9am-to-9am period).”

Putting aside what happened to Mike (still not got my head around it – has left me properly upset despite only meeting him briefly once), it’s an interesting question.

I’m in two minds – the first being that yes, there are some riders that will just continue even when they should bunk down for the night. Think of it like a boxer who wants to keep fighting but the ref decides he needs to stop. Riding on the road is dangerous enough without adding the attention issues that come with sleep deprivation. On a massively smaller scale, but I know after a week of commuting, the ride home on Friday night is often a lot sketchier than the one on Monday night, mainly because I’m shagged and I’m not really thinking about what I’m doing.

The flip side is that this type of racing was designed to have as few a rules as possible. Enforced lay-offs do go against this to some degree and I also think that for some, doing the distance in the fastest time is more important than overall safety. Even if you do have rules for some races, there will always be others that want the ‘hardest, toughest’ trophy and those will be the ones that do away with such rules.

One thing that does cross my mind when I’m riding, is that if I ride like an idiot and put myself in harms way, it won’t just be me that’s injured/killed – whoever has the misfortune of hitting me/running me over will have that for the rest of their life (note: this is in no way a comment towards what happened with Mike). To me, putting myself deliberately at risk from other road users is (to me) a dick’ish move and I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere that says ‘don’t be a dick’.

A tired ultra-cyclist probably veers and wobbles less than a number of “normal” cyclists/children I see daily on my commute, or cyclists/high sided vehicles on windy days. I make sure I can stop my vehicle in the clear road I can see ahead, and pass any road user using as much of the opposite lane as I can regardless.

Every Ultra Event has a variety of talent, at this years TD there were people like Mike at the business end and people like me following (ahem) in his tyre tracks someway behind. Despite this the number of actual casualties from tiredness are minimal. Without resorting to a thorough Google how many tiredness related incidents can people recall off the top of their head?

Would a long Audax count as an Ultra Event? While I completely agree with the notion that all road users should be pulling off when tired, I’m also conscious that we could be over-reacting based on one sad incident when similar concepts have been explored for decades.

I think it’s all relative, and you could argue that the participants in the more extreme events, including 1,000+km audaxes, are likely to be ‘fitter’ riders, by which I mean fitness in terms of ability to cope relatively safely with mental and physical tiredness and sleep deprivation. So a hardened experienced audax rider completing PBP may be less of a risk to themselves and other road users (including fellow riders), than a less experienced rider with much lower stamina pushing themselves to their limit to complete a 300km or 400km.

Also, there are both maximum (excluding PBP) and minimum speeds for audax, and once the distances get to 600km, it becomes possible for fast riders to ride long days and still get a night’s sleep, while staying within the time limits (something which I think is not possible for a 400km). Slower riders therefore are the ones likely to find themselves suffering from sleep deprivation as they struggle to keep going and reach each control before it closes, never having enough time in hand to sleep and rest sufficiently.

That said, I can recall reading articles in the audax magazine, Arrivee, where riders mentioned taking caffeine tablets and even hallucinating, and thinking at the time that despite the often humorous and self-deprecating tone of the article, this was not something which should be encouraged or condoned*. I suspect such articles could also be used in court against Audax UK and event organisers as evidence of ‘negligence’/prior awareness of unsafe conditions.

EDIT – * I don’t mean that it’s not OK to use caffeine tablets, I mean that riding whilst so tired that one experiences hallucinations should not be encouraged/condoned.

Whilst the Tour Aotearoa is a Brevet rather than a Race they do have the mandatory rest rule.

“Between 9am one day and 9am the next, every rider must spend at least one block of at least six hours not travelling. In other words, the maximum time any rider may spend riding each day will be 18 hours (between each 9am-to-9am period).”

I can see something like this being incorporated into the rules of other events – particularly if it transpires that tiredness/falling asleep on the bike was a major contributing factor to Mike Halls death.

Very difficult area to define; there are so many types of response to tiredness that putting in rules sufficient to make ultra events ‘safe’ will leave much less of a challenge and thereby, make them less appealing.
As an organiser in ultra running, I tend to find that despite the sleep deprivation that comes on my runners after a second night, I have much more in the way of trauma problems with the faster people who make up relay teams than I do with the solos. At truly ultra events, the participants are (generally) a pretty safe, sane and self-regulating bunch. They already are aware of what they can and therefore cannot do… If they weren’t, they’d have already broken themselves and are mostly very experienced as they’ve grown through longer and longer journeys.
I’d like to offer my understanding to those who knew Mike and have been affected by his passing. I feel the pain and have been there, asking these kind of questions.
I still think the couch is a much more dangerous place than the road or the trail..

valid points made by everone

btw there have been lethal accidents @parisbrestparis as well.

but, for me, it boils down to “life isn’t safe”

ultra endurance is an extreme example but if you want to regulate it, aside from the practical issues: where to start,where to draw a line,… it would take away from the heart of the sport.

what about simulclimbing in mountaineering??

you do realise mountainbiking is safer @ moderate speeds

if I do tabata intervals while running my vision ALWAYS get very blurry (if not you’re not doing them right). Should I only be allowed to do them on the track??
etc…

Assorted thoughts:

Along the lines of johnnystorm’s comments above, 99% (fact, obvs) of the time a tired rider won’t veer dramatically, in other words generally and wobbling is minor, such that only a dangerous driver would hit them where they would skim them without a wobble. Careful drivers leaving a good safety margin need not worry.

If we say that riding tired is to be cracked down on, then two logical extensions have to apply to that.

The first is that if you say that a minor wobble is unacceptable then you say that leaving minimal margin for error is fine, and thus you approve of endangering and terrorising everyone on a bike/a horse/foot in the carriageway.

The second is that if you say the highly infrequent case of a more serious loss of control warrants restrictive action, such as regulation or legislation, then it would be wise to look at other sources of comparable risks. For instance, I would suggest that there are far more casualties caused by loss of control in “normal” racing than in ultra events, even if you only look at collisions involving third parties not participating in the event (I can tell you for a fact that UK fatalities bear this out, and I would be extremely surprised if full casualty data didn’t also).

Fundamentally, this isn’t something that will stop. People will challenge themselves, and if the events are excessively neutered then some will do their own thing.

And for every one ultra rider going through the night, there are god knows how many HGV drivers committing log book offences and hauliers condoning or encouraging it.

Wood, trees, as usual when it comes to cycling. Any action to be taken is justified, because it doesn’t impinge in the people who call for it.

Suggest that drivers keep a legally binding record of their sleep, or that cars and lorries should gradually come to a halt after a few hours’ driving, or whatever, and suddenly “if it saves just one life” won’t apply, because, hey, it stops people doing what they want to do, even though in this case it’s a matter of physical risk to multiple parties rather than to a singular first party.

How much sleep do most people get on the Gumball?

All those pointing the finger at other road users getting it wrong I feel are missing the point. Just because other people put themselves and others in danger doesn’t mean it’s ok. It means they have to put theirs houses in order too.

But yes, forced rests in these sorts of events would change them; but why does this have to be considered a bad thing? The cream will always rise to the top and the skills and abilities that make you a winner will be just as impressive – who can recover fastest in the rests, who can use geography and weather information to time their rests most effectively.

Until relatively recently fairly enforcing this on unsupported events run on a shoestring would have been impossible opening up competitors to mistrust of each other – now it could be done so easily it would seem to me at least as a reasonable concept.

All those pointing the finger at other road users getting it wrong I feel are missing the point.

There is a reciprocal point being missed, though, which is that people are happy to pile restrictions onto minorities who voluntarily subject themselves to real or perceived danger with little or no risk to others, but are very resistant to restricting the majority who subject others to very real danger with relatively little risk to themselves.

As the first post notes, the current discussion is happening with no knowledge of what exactly happened. People are suddenly realising that ultra events exist and are going, “oh, that seems irresponsible and dangerous and it’s no wonder someone got killed”. Well, hey, it might seem all sorts of things, but let’s look at the facts before we just go “shut it down because it seems irresponsible to me, it’s no skin off my nose”.

At the end of the day this correlates with all the nonsense like the foisting if hi-viz crap onto anyone riding a bike or walking, instead of seriously tackling the behaviour of people with the lethal machines. Because when you actually look at the evidence, guess what you find?

This business of going “yeah, we all know that there are much worse things of a similar nature, but let’s park those for a while until we sort out this teeny tiny issue that looks weird to us” has to stop, because it just propagates the problems.

If you ran a bank and you parked the issue of people never repaying huge loans because you were busy trying to stop people nicking the little pens on chains from your branches, you’d go under. No-one would say, yeah, I know we’re losing millions every month, but we really need to talk about plastic ballpoints. Not unless they were either incredibly inept or had a vested interest in the loan funds being lost by the bank.

The cream will always rise to the top and the skills and abilities that make you a winner will be just as impressive – who can recover fastest in the rests, who can use geography and weather information to time their rests most effectively.

Except that rest is a personal thing. People might push harder knowing they will get some rest. I know from bikepacking that i can end up a bit wobbly if ive pushed myself too hard, and that might only be a 12hr day not 16hr.

I might not even get any rest if im forced to stop somewhere inappropriate, so i end up starting riding more sleep deprived then if id carried on for another hour the night before.

It would satisfy the saftey lobby though, the organiser would be seen to be ‘doing something’ even if it was pointless and worthless.

Maybe this is a bit of a distillation of some of Bez’s thoughts, but you could make lots of rule changes but not (or hardly) affect any of the actual risks. It’s addressing risk at the wrong end of the process – the most vulnerable/the potential victim and not the root cause. A standard rest period wouldn’t stop a tired reckless driver hitting a well rested, well-lit cyclist in the dark, if they didn’t leave enough room and passed with too much speed. There is only so much mitigation the victim can do before simply not doing said activity. For events to continue in the spirit of being self supported, i’m not sure how much more can be usefully done.

It would satisfy the saftey lobby though, the organiser would be seen to be ‘doing something’ even if it was pointless and worthless.

Most “road safety” initiatives in a nutshell.

I might not even get any rest if im forced to stop somewhere inappropriate, so i end up starting riding more sleep deprived then if id carried on for another hour the night before.

This is why I said about using geography and weather to your advantage being a skill to be rewarded. e.g. take 1 hour of your daily rest tagged onto the end of the day before to have a ‘nice’ lie in then stop geographically earlier away from the unsuitable spot and get going sooner to leap frog the dodgy area. It would be better to have a system where the rider had a minimum of x hours enforced stationary per 24hr period and an average of x+y hours over the whole event to give some flexibility back.

This is why I said about using geography and weather to your advantage being a skill to be rewarded.

That does nothing to stop me riding tired if i cock it up though? You’ve just changed the race type but left the problem exactly the same.

My example. It was 10pm and i found a good spot, but wanted to get past the crap bit that came next so i didnt have to do it in the morning. Turns out the crap bit was really crap so i was stuck in a bog at midnight and slept on a slope (ie. didnt sleep) then had to fight out the bog in the morning for an hour still tired.

If that was on a road it could easily be replaced with dodgy part of town where you dare not risk sleeping or are constantly woken by noise etc.

My view is that every user of a public road has the same responsibility to ensure they are using it safely, irrespective of what vehicle they are driving.

My view is that road users’ responsibilities should be proportionate to the risk they pose to others. That’s why, for example, we require drivers of large, heavy vehicles to undertake extra training. Whilst I think that fatigue in ultra-distance cyclists *may* be an issue, the risks to those other than the cyclist are miniscule when compared with the risks we tolerate on the roads every day.

Put another way, I think we can all agree that drink-driving is a Bad Thing. So what about me crossing the road when I’m walking home from the pub?

Quite. And to put it another way, we let children ride bikes and we don’t let them drive cars. Precisely because we don’t hold them to the same level of responsibility: a bicycle simply does not demand the responsibility that a motor vehicle does, and if it did then why the hell aren’t kids on bikes killing hundreds of people a year?

Is there a difference between endurance racers pushing their bodies too hard and crashing, or downhillers pushing themselves too hard and crashing?