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Watching Helicopter heros this morning and an MTBer had lost it on a corner and gone headfirst into a pickup truck. He remained on the bonnet of the truck after impact and I noticed he was wearing SPDs. Just wondering if he might have saved the situation if he hadn't been clipped in. Any thoughts?
Depends how so he 'lost' it. If by not being clipped in he would've fallen off instantly, he could've crashed into a tree or something and caused some kind of internal damage, he was obviously going at a fair rate of knots to lose it so...
Just sometimes "a little dab'll do ya"
I ride clipped in and, as yet (thanks for the jinx) have been able to dab if I have needed to without issue...
I think the fact that he was riding a mountain bike quickly was probably a greater factor than his pedals. But if we are speculating, he may have been saved from an earlier, but bigger, crash by virtue of not being spat off his pedals, thanks to being clipped in. Maybe... Possibly...
Once you're used to riding clipped in unclipping is pretty automatic, you'd have to be riding at your limits for it to make that much difference. I can't think of many offs I've had that I could have saved (or lessened the impact of) with flat pedals.
I dunno, perhaps he was just shit.
If he'd been on flats he'd have been going 14% slower due to the efficiency loss.
I'm going to move to clips, apparently it's all about riding over the front more these days (which I have been doing for a while) but clips help in this regard.
Maybe, but so might have riding slower, taking more care as he approached the bend, perhaps taking a different line or riding with different tyres. There's lots of things that could have contributed. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Don't think we can specifically look at his SPDs and decide they're a make-or-break factor.
I just hope he was ok.
Maybe, maybe not. I reckon it was speed, tyres, wet road, bad cornering. Pedals nothing to do with it.
Crash helmet did a good job though didn't it.