How will you come off your bike?

[slowmotion]

I ride quite a bit in the middle of London in quite heavy traffic. When I started about six years ago, I was terrified of other vehicles. "Those are the ones that will harm me", I thought. A few years later, my opinion has completely changed. Rubbish road surfaces, random grooves, manhole covers and tarmac craters are the things that scare me now, especially after dark.

What do you reckon about the risks on your commutes?

Thank you.

 

[rdfcyclist]

I think that a misjudgement from me is far more likely to knock me off. Only incident I've had so far was a 'no blame' situation and I stayed on my bike that time. I trust drivers to treat me like a vehicle and in turn I follow the rules of the road. Four years in and no accidents yet

 

[slowmotion]

I think that a misjudgement from me is far more likely to knock me off. Only incident I've had so far was a 'no blame' situation and I stayed on my bike that time. I trust drivers to treat me like a vehicle and in turn I follow the rules of the road. Four years in and no accidents yet

Fair enough. I'm not really seeking to apportion blame. I'm just curious about the cause of a possible "off". Like you, I have been lucky. The road surface scares me more than drivers really.

 

[summerdays]

I have come off far more often through poor surface etc than by a vehicle, though it's the vehicle that worries me more and I always assume it could do far more damage. Ice, leaves, slippy manhole covers, oil have all had me off more than once.

You also missed out another factor in the cause of my falls .... Quite a few have been caused by me, usually mucking around, seeing if I could do something that I didn't need to do!

 

[summerdays]

Thinking about it a little more, on a regular route you can get to know the danger points, or signs in the case of weather. So I know where it's likely to be icy, or can take precautions such as studded tyres, on the whole the traffic isn't so predictable though there are certain areas where I expect potential threats so change my behaviour in anticipation.

 

[Supersuperleeds]

I've been offed on the commute more times by cars than by bad road surfaces.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Another vehicle for me: I don't ride in traffic very often plus I'm slow, a good target for impatient drivers.
For uneven surfaces I've got 1.75 tyres on the bike I ride more often, or 2.00.
In deep winter I'm on 1.95 spiked ice tyres, safer than a tractor

 

[Andrew_P]

How will you come off your bike?

With grace and style..

 

[Scotchlovingcylist]

Everytime ive come off its been my own error

 

[winjim]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The single biggest thing that could be done by government to improve my cycling experience would be to properly maintain the road surface. Take all the money spent on cycling infrastructure and just get some proper tarmac down. They can't of course, because that's not cycling specific enough to count as cycling infrastructure provision.

Sheffield are currently resurfacing the entire city but doing a really shoddy job of it .

 

[Mrs M]

Dodgy surface every time.
Most recently on a mountain bike in Tenerife on gravel/sand, went flying and smashed my iPod but it was fun
iPod still works, have been trying to "kill" it for some time so I can get a nice new one, it's indestructible
When I was younger I always came off cornering when trying to break the world land speed record on a Halfords "racer"

 

[MontyVeda]

for me it's been cornering too quickly in wet or icy conditions, so i can't blame the surface, only myself. Slowing down really works!

 

[Dan B]

Other vehicles, getting in my way as I'm trying to avoid a bad road surface

 

[lee1980sim]

Reasons I've came off are road surface, so I imagine based on past history I deem that's the reason I'll next come off

 

[al78]

I reckon careless drivers are the biggest threat to me on my commute (there aren't many of them thankfully). After that, winter conditions and poor road surfaces on downhill sections of road make me nervous. Very strong crosswinds during which the gusts can feel like I'm going to get blown over or blown into oncoming traffic, thankfully such winds are very rare in inland Sussex.