[Closed] My Daftest Bike Accident

Battled with a stubborn tyre and tyre lever. Lever sprang off and somehow smacked me of the bridge of my nose, drawing much blood.

200 metres after leaving my maw's hoose, heading through the wee lane as I've done a million times before, a wee kitten jumps right in front of my wheel, sharp endo... just. about. held. it. Nup, wallop! Straight into the concrete!

The cat was fine. 😆

So was I too mind you, just wasn't expecting it!

I tried to turn off the lock on my hydration bladder so I could have a drink, and it was a bit stiff so used two hands. It wasn't until I dramatically jumped off my bike on a really tame bit of trail that I remembered I couldn't ride very long with ho hands on the bars...

I was accelerating out of Glentress car park at the start of a coaching course.
I have no idea what happened, I just went over the bars. Going uphill. Clipped in. On a bike I had owned for 4 years.

Prize plum.

Similar to Seosamh above, but off-road. Epping Forest, autumn, a smooth sea of golden-brown leaves. And a ditch hidden beneath.

Front wheel went into the ditch and stopped dead. Instant unplanned endo. Came to a stop at the exact balance point... Held it for what seemed like forever, unable to figure out how to dismount, then slowly toppled forwards OTB.

At least it was a soft landing, but unfortunately there were lots of amused witnesses.

Cleaning my bike, I decided to put my ring finger in the front brake rotor with the wheel spinning. If anyone is thinking of doing the same I can confirm it is rather sharp. Much hurt and a couple of stitches..

Spent the evening fettling the full suss before a day trip to France for a group ride, along came the obligatory 'test ride' which took me down an alleyway with a small pile of rubble which I launched myself off sent it used to perform a tiny little jump. Landed the front wheel perfectly on the edge of a brick. OTB. Fractured wrist.

Coming down an Atlas mountain pass in Morocco, steep, fast rocky descent - saw my mates camera lying on the trail ahead. For some inexplicable reason decided to try and scoop it up as I went past without stopping, like some sort of bike-rodeo trick. It didn’t end well, (although he did get his camera back and the blood wiped off easily enough).

Also managed to go over the bars on a steep rocky climb, to the point where I scraped my chin on the front wheel.

Not exactly sure how I did that, but I think I hit a small rock which stopped my momentum and I was leaning too far forward...

early 90's was riding back from trowbridge collegue. was wearing one of those ear!y foam bike helmets with a cover. thought i recognised some people i had known at school. didn't want them to see me wraring said helmet so looked away as i was riding towards them.

didn't see the car trailer that i promptly rode into the back off and rolled off the top of it and onto the main road colt seavers stylee.

got back up and said people were bent over double laughing (i didn't know them at all it turned out lol).

straightened my bars on my dawes ascent and went on my way sheepishly.

Just remembered a worse one... Dropped my son at daycare, it was an in-home place by the estuary and we used to ride along a nice off-road path by the water and then go up their steep-ish garden path. I always rode up the path to a hairpin, where I could leave the bike out of sight of the estuary path.

Riding back down this steep path one day I failed to spot a low tree branch which was pointing straight towards me at head height. The end was about the thickness of a finger, hit me square on the forehead then slid under my helmet. My reaction was to try to pull my head back to unhook it, but due to moving forward I couldn't, so got slowly dragged off the bike backwards and fell on my arse.

Glentress 7 as a pair.

Right on the gravel bit before transition i thought to my self.

"Take the dibber off now for edficient speed"

So i took my right hand off the bars and reached for the dibber on my left wrist. As my fingers gripped the dibber I pulled hard. Predictable result is predictable. Managed to flip myself over the bars and under the bike. Like sack of spuds i hit the deck. The crowd went WILD.

Riding around that epic black route at Centre Parcs near Penrith, 🙄 I decided to roll over a nicely graded pile of road stone. Except they'd dug out the back of it.

Damaged knee, wrist, glasses derailleur and much hilarity from the in-laws, which was frankly the worst thing.

Stopped on roadbike at bottom of hill to investigate creaking (BB knackered) got back on failed to clip in, foot slipped off pedal back of leg went down chainring slicing it open, hospital, kept in over night, surgery to clean and stitch then in plaster for a month.

thorpey0

Subscriber
Cleaning my bike, I decided to put my ring finger in the front brake rotor with the wheel spinning. If anyone is thinking of doing the same I can confirm it is rather sharp. Much hurt and a couple of stitches..

i did that.
it yanked the nail bed out tho, that bit wasnt too sore.
getting it pushed back in at stornoway A&E though, THAT was painful.

In my local park where i used to walk the dog

Practising bunny hops, can manage about an inch now, tired you do one from side to side while riding. Turns out I couldn't, big crash. While someone was watching. Idiot

Practising wheelies, still can't, using a 29er with a 26er fork and a front tyre that was too flat, came down with the wheel at an angle, tyre dug in and I went OTB. Idiot. Not wearing gloves either so hands quite bloody. Idiot

Daftest one for me was many years ago.

Riding over t' North Yorkshire moors on a rather blustery day when my mate and I stopped at the crest of a hill in open space. It was so windy that we were angled over quite far just to stay balanced against the side wind.

Laughing like schoolboys, the wind suddenly stopped and we both fell slap bang onto the rocky path. I kept laughing, my mate not so much. He'd broken 2 ribs and bruised a few more. oops. And he was going on holiday the week after. oops 2

Very nearly had an embarrasing and expensive stupid moment this weekend. Riding the new ish Stegosaurus rocky bit at Cannock, got the front wheel held up over the second bit and bike stopped dead. Endo time and just managed to clip out and come to a rest with little drama. Couldn't get going again and flapped about slipping before deciding to walk a few yards and then recompose myself.

Wouldn't be a problem normally and I've done it countless times yet, this time when there was a group of riders being coached about 10 seconds behind me - I managed to look a complete tit ...

Went to Bedgebury to test ride a Whyte from Quench. Threw leg over and bounced about to see if suspension was anywhere near right, tapped front brake and went straight OTB. Had ridden it a total of 30 feet. Front fork was a touch soft...

another Centreparcs one, this one at Longleat. I had my bike with the kids bike seat on the back rather than a hire and I had been dispatched to pick up a takeaway, but as it was quiet in the evening and I had a bit of time I thought I'd see how good the little switchback descent with the humpback bridges was. Pretty good, as it turns out, you can get quite a bit of air off the bridges.....unfortunately as I was using the bike as transport, I'd fitted crap flats for the week, and after 20-odd years of spds the feeling of feet disconnecting from the pedals, and then trying and failing to reconnect, was still as nothing compared to the feeling of balls disconnecting and then reconnecting with saddle.

Caught front wheel on a pebble ( tiny) just after first wooden bridge at cwmcarn & fell in the river.

Canonmills in Edinburgh. Pulled up as light turned red, track stand through full light cycle. Fell over as they turned green. Guy in car behind almost wet himself laughing.

I used to ride up the Lea Valley from Canary Wharf, there are a number of canal bridges that were built back in the early Victorian era... all of them built with horses in mind so are fairly shallow in gradient but have brick ridges so the horses could get a little purchase with their hoofs... and over the years have become well worn and very slippery and shiny.

So you’d expect you’d take it easy heading up and over them wouldn’t you..? Well normal people do... except i’d be riding it pretty much flat chat all along there..

At the Hackney Marshes area it’s fairly busy with families and folks walking along the river, so I’d alway slow down and ease past those playing poo sticks on the bridges... anyway I approached one particular shiny surfaced bridge at less than walking pace and both wheels went from under me and sideways leaving me flailing like a falling squirrel with arms and legs frantically trying to unclip and BAM!

Landed flat on my face onto a flagstone and broke my nose.

An audience arrived to see me frantically trying to unclip lying on my back with the CXer still firmly attached to my feet..

Time passed very very slowly on that ride.

🤷‍♂️

As a student in Birmingham I once went up to North Wales for a weekend camping and riding. I went by train with a huge rucksack on my back with all my kit in.

On the way home and knackered I was spinning up Broad Street when I had to stop at a pedestrian crossing. I didn’t unclip. Cue slow fall to my left, leaving me lying on the pavement.  I lay on my side with the bike pinned between my legs, the weight of the rucksack meaning I struggled to move. Had to ask a passer by to help pull the bike from between my legs so I could get back up again.

Bomb-hole drop in Beverley Westwood. Screwed the line, over over the bars somersault into bramble thicket, landing flat on my back. I was alright . . . until I moved. Had to be cut out by mates. Once they’d stopped laughing.

It's always stupid low speed stuff for me. Once I failed to un-clip my shoe... From a flat pedal... The shoe rubber was stuck in pedal pins and I toppled over.

Gently pottering along a canal tow-path. Lost concentration, front wheel hit a rut, I went over the bars and into the canal. The positive was the canal was only waist deep, the negative was that there was a group of runners behind me who saw it all and couldn't contain their laughter.

My personal daftest moment was rolling out of garage on my newly built Stooge, i had gone over it i thought making sure everything was right and was going for the usual up and down the road test to get saddle and bars right. Didn't realise i had fitted the brakes.....just not the brake pads.. so went to brake and nothing happened, hit the curb at speed and went over the bars and rolled into a neighbours garden, just as she and her kids were stepping out the front door, but it did give her kids a good laugh!

But mate surpassed me, he rolled out of the very same garage at mine on this lovely brand spanking new Specialized Shiv TT bike, where he had borrowed some of my tools (the type that can afford a £7k bike but not a set of decent allen keys), turned onto main road and out of my sight....then came back about 4 minutes later carrying two halves of the bike and a bloody face, he had got into TT position, cranked up the speed and rode straight into the back of a parked Tesco delivery van with enough force to snap the frame!!

I was riding alongside my mate on a wide, smooth path, cruising along, chatting away. Next thing I knew we had drifted too close together and my handlebar had somehow got stuck under the end of my mate's bars.
We were stuck together riding along for what felt like ages, but was probably about 20 metres and then my bars were violently spun round (think my mate must have touched the brakes) and I was catapulted over the front. No major injuries, but lots of cuts and scrapes.

First ever MTB with hydraulic brakes - had already described to girlfriend of the time and her parents how amazing they were and then promptly did a textbook OTB onto their tarmac drive......

Managed to end up going in reverse down steep grassy bank at Dovestones reservoir on a summer evening with a decent audience many calls for an encore.

Valley Trail in Whistler. I was riding to the park. The valley trail is literally a tarmac 2 way cycle path that meanders its way around the valley, linking up areas.

It has HUGE yellow metal barriers interspersed along it, to stop vehicles driving down there.

To this day, I don't know what I was thinking, but I managed to ride into one, have a massive crash & break my wrist spectacularly, 6 weeks into a 4 months season. To compound my stupidity, I carried on riding for the summer. It hurt, a lot.

I used to regularly break new wheels on their first ride through stupidity mostly. This led to an unreasonable apprehension about getting new wheels. Anyway, with another new wheelset I did a ride in the snow around the peak. All went fine on the trails.
On a road descent nearing home I noticed the front mech was frozen and not shifting, so I thought I would 'ease' it into movement with my foot. Obviously the inevitable happened and I hit a bump and my foot shot into the rear wheel. I was thrown forward and off to one side of the bike, sliding whilst the bike was still upright with my foot still jammed. 5 spokes snapped over my foot before the wheel locked up. Ooof, very sore, but mostly I felt like an idiot and had broken yet another new wheel.

I've still not managed to beat a frame falling off my garage wall and smacking me in the eyebrow, causing a boxer-style cut.
All other crashes are from pushing the limits. Well, my limits, which are pretty low 🙂

First time at Mallards, first trail, right at the bottom where it opened out onto a fireroad. I didn’t like the look of the last off camber, washed out, been so decided to huck off it onto the fireroad. It was only as my front wheel touched down that I saw the wire fence...

Graceful OTB onto a fortunately soft landing to much applause from my new riding mates.

I'll leave this one here.....

Newest daftest: showing off by doing a trackstand halfway across a narrow single-log bridge. Lost balance, put foot down, nothing to put foot on, toppled over.

Stupidest daftest: as a youngster (in the days of Raleigh Grifters) my bar was coming loose so lots of fun was had by my mates kicking the front wheel to the side so I'd have to stop and re-straighten the bar. Until the time I thought I'd just kick the wheel back in line myself. Leaned forward, kicked the wheel, missed the tyre and put my foot through the spokes instead. OTB. My pals burst out laughing, then stopped and went white when they saw the blood spurting out of me.

Took Mrs M out for her first night ride (halogen lamps were the cutting edge back then.....).  Rolling at walking pace down the Eastbourne Mile into Jevington at walking pace looked back over my shoulder to see how she was getting on and hit a large flint and stopped, failed to unclip, toppled over and as I was holding onto the bar ends at this point I landed still attached to the bike by four points, snapping my brand new Maxm carbon bars imported from America at exorbitant cost and landing on another large flint with my hip and bruising it badly.

I hadn't ridden my PRST-1 for a few years and dragged it out the shed for a check over.  All seemed OK so took it for a quick spin down the road in flip flops and shorts.  Tapped the front brake forgetting the PRST-1 likes to nose dive, straight over the bars onto the road.  I bashed my head hard enough to see stars and badly scuffed myself.  PRST-1 stuck in the shed and only ever gets looked at now.

A trackstand fail whilst using spds resulted in me landing chest first on top of my own handlebars.

I fractured my sternum and spent the night in Rhyl A & E hooked up to an ECG as they thought I might have done something to my heart with the accidental chest compression.

I still have a nice circular dent on my sternum to remind me of my folly...

An enduro event at Glentress. Start of the stage was narrow natural single track across some moorland above Spooky Wood, not remotely technical. About halfway through this section there was a big patch of rutted peaty mud.

I figure I'm going so quick I'll just lean back and skim through like a hero and set an epic time.

Cue the front wheel digging in and me flying over the bars, doing a passable impression of a ballistic object. I went a pretty long way, thankfully the ground was pretty soft and the impact was pretty mild.

The same can't be said for the clobbering I got off my bike a fraction of a second later!

In the early days of SPD, I went on my first club ride, with my new SPD pedals and shoes to show I was serious.

While stopped waiting for something or another, chatting to a person behind me, I managed to clip my left foot into the left pedal but facing BACKWARDS. At that point, two things happened: the ride was ready to roll on again, and I was unable to unclip my left shoe with my foot in it pointing at the back wheel.

So they all had to wait and watch while I tried to find a way of unclipping an SPD shoe from a pedal, backwards.

Not an accident exactly, but I felt stupid.

Ha ha! So many of these bring back memories of stupid crashes.

Most stupid was probably while cycling down a busy wet road in West London with my girlfriend at the time. Somehow a drawstring bit on the coat she had on got caught between the brakes and shifter on my bars.
As soon as I realised I told her to just maintain the same speed and position next to me so I could get the string free...of course she didn't and managed to start turning my bars while I was holding on one handed and grabbing at the string. I ended up sprawled in the road with a car stopped about 3 feet from my head.

Similar bar entanglement while having a grassy hill roll-off with a mate where we both aimed for the 'fastest line' and I came off worse.

I was climbing up the switchback-y climb at Stainburn years ago and looked back down the trail to see where my mate was. At that exact moment, I hit what can only be described as a pebble, went OTB and landed really hard on one hand. My wrist was sore for weeks and has never been quite the same since.

Several OTB incidents while out with Ciclo Montana - normally into a prickly bush that I couldn't get myself back out of. The best one being where I fell off the edge of the trail about 3ft down, but to an observer it looked like a sheer drop; cue a friend heading over in clear panic thinking I'd basically nose dived off a cliff....

We used to live close to a wetland nature reserve, with boardwalks that were great fun to ride when the place was closed. One winter night ride, flat out on the boardwalks and they disappeared beneath me - a section had been removed and was being repaired. Head first into the lake. Only found the bike 'cos the lights were still working under the water.

Years ago took my bike (GT I-drive) over to Lanzarote and was a riding god! I was on fire slinging the poor bike down the steepest old volcanoes I could find. Words like gnarly were created based on some of my riding.

After one fantastic long downhill terminating in the town we were staying I was riding along the last road to the hotel and decide one last jump off the kerb would be nice. There was then a tyre gravel moment closely followed by a leg gravel moment. I finished the ride limping into the hotel with shredded lycra shorts, blood dripping down my leg and multiple cuts full of sharp volcanic stones.

Wife and kids who I had left at the hotel found it hilarious 😐

Riding home nursing a sprained thumb from an earlier off, taking it easy because I couldn't hold the bars properly with that hand. Heading down a steep hill towards some speed bumps I liked trying to jump off, for some reason I thought I'd be able to do this one handed.

Stayed upright after the first bump but clipped my bars on the wall and went sliding across the road. Luckily no one around to see, or run me over.

Three spring to mind-
> Riding down a staircase I'd ridden a million times. Student walks around the corner into the middle of the stairs without looking. I panick and pull a hand full of front brake. I go over bars and fall about 3 metres onto my face with clipped bike following me. I brake arm in 2 places and have massive bruising. I don't ride stairs anymore.

> First week of owning my first commuter with woeful brakes, I decide it's a good idea to try and manual the speed bump at work. Didn't realise how light the front gets with loaded panniers at the back. Rear brake couldn't bring me back and when flat on my back/arm still clipped in. Winded and grazed with some of the worst bruising I've ever experienced. The hair still hasn't grown back where the bruising was 5 years later.

> New bike and eager to ride i start ripping the reflectors off. I pull a wheel deflector off and it send plastic shards everywhere. One goes directly into my eye. Hospital visit and eye dye stuff show a scratched lense or something. Took a while to recover and felt like sand constantly was in your eye. Horrible experience.

Riding home after a couple of pints, pretty much at the door when I crossed the road and popped (not) my front wheel up the kerb to get on to the pavement. Except I didn't quite manage it and my front wheel came down too soon and got stopped dead by the kerb, straight OTB and head plant in to the wall. Broken helmet, grazed face but laid there laughing at the stupidity of it 🙂

Slightly less funny was the bar end caught in the chain link fence - took me down like a sack of spuds. That one hurt - another broken helmet and a smashed up elbow and hip.

Loads of slow motion sideways falls when clippedin and gone to put foot down.

Otherwise a few spring to mind. Including:

Riding down some singletrack which had an 8-9 foot drop to a rocky stream on the left. As it bent to the right I glanced at the stream, thinking something along the lines of "Don't ride in there sunshine". I'd never heard of target acquisition and before I knew it the bike was launching itself off the side. Fortunately there was a tree growing out of the bank with a handily placed branch and I was able to grab that and remain there suspended whilst my mates had a right laugh.

Near Hebden, at end of descent, padded up and wearing a full face that I'd bought for Alps, crossing road and the chain slipped, sending me over the bars in front of a couple of bemused cars that were waiting.

Front wheel slip when climbing wet flagstones somewhere up above Lee Quarry, straight over bars by way of nuts on stem. That hurt

And on behalf of an old work colleague. Famously allergic to wearing helmets and whilst happy to extol the benefits of having your hair run free whilst on the bike, famously acerbic if challenged in his beliefs.

He came into work one Monday morning bruised and with a big scar on his forehead. Turned out he'd collided with a bridge on a canal towpath (helmetless naturally) and come off somewhat worse for wear.

Honourable mention for my mate Dave who went past Ed Oxley giving a lesson on the Peckett Well descent in Hebden. As they all watched he approached one of the larger, rockier step-downs, adopted the position and promptly went OTB

Warm sunny day in summer stopped on Staverton bridge over the Dart to see if there was any trout about. Decided to move off only to discover too high a gear so now upright with no forward movement and feet strapped in. Slow fall to the right arm out - wrist broken.

Warm sunny afternoon summer in Germany riding Heidelberg to Mannheim. Crossed the Neckar and stopped for a break. Setting off in too low a gear back wheel flew off sideways on the gravel. My mate said the whole bike went sideways about three feet in the air. My right shoulder still hurts some days.

Seems to be a bit of a pattern there.

First day with SPD pedals I fell off 7 times, partly through forgetting I needed to twist off in good time, partly cos they were new and stiff. The most amusing of these falls was on the coastal path past Old Harry's rocks. I was heads down going uphill on some narrow single track when I spotted that I was about to run over a beetle. Stopped dead to save the wee feller, and of course keeled straight over, landing in a gorse bush that was lower than the path. Shoes were still clipped in to the pedals so it was really awkward getting back up again, what with the bike being higher up the slope than me, and every time I wriggled the gorse needles did their worst. After a while I managed to get back on my feet, and looked around to see where the beetle was. I had felt a bit of a crunch under my shoe as I got to my feet so lifted it and saw a very sorry looking beetle. Don't know if he made it.

Went to see the Tour of Britain (Milk Race?) in 1993 going up Ilkley Moor. Clipped in, slow speed wobble on a tiny bit of singletrack heading towards the cow and calf resulted in me falling sideways into the heather, still clipped in. Must have been 200 ish people there.
Had to get a mate to twist my feet out of the spuds while I lay there entangled in the bike.

Felt phone ringing in my pocket while riding home, started fiddling in my pocket for my phone, whilst pulling onto the pavement. Didn't see this, formerly vertical, bit of street furniture, front wheel went between the slats and sent me over the bars, into the fence, onto the pavement.

Note the spikes at the top, facing outward, are at head/eye height. Could have been a LOT worse...

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/8513/8566837748_972b9ee2b1_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/8513/8566837748_972b9ee2b1_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/e42hp7 ]Oops...[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/92694523@N06/ ]tom.howard.562[/url], on Flickr

I used to sometimes take the long way home which involved a pedestrian & cycle path clipped onto the side of a rail bridge over the harbour. The clip-on was old, maybe 1.5m wide, 1.2m chain link fence on the outside. Every 15m or so there is a massive vertical steel girder forming part of the rail bridge, creating a pinch point about 800mm wide...

When you first ride over this bridge you go slowly, so as not to catch the chain link or a girder with your bars. However, familiarity breeds contempt, so naturally I clipped a very solid girder with my bars while doing about 25km/h. Bars did an instant 90° turn, bike stopped dead against they girder,I kept going at 25 km/h. Luckily in a straight line ahead, as a fall to the right would have sent me over the low fence and into the water 10m below!

After a long ride of bridal way/single track with no incident, I ended up in a town i'll not name.

Spotted a pub with a crowded beer garden. Traversed a road in persuit of a cold beer and attempted to bunny hop over a curb.

Completely miss timed it and at the wrong angle and ended up on my back.

I got a standing ovation from the people in the beer garden, so that's an achievement I guess, lol,

Bought myself some new shoes, fitted the spd cleats and went for a ride. Tried to unclip at a junction. Shoes won't unclip so fall over to side. Force of falling causes one shoe to unclip. Resolve not to clip that shoe in for rest of ride - of course shoe clips in. Get to cafe stop. Lean on lamp post. Struggle to get one shoe unclipped. No way is the other one unclipping. Leave shoe on bike and Walk into cafe in my socks - get strange looks.investigate when back home - shoe that won't unclip will spin through 360° on the pedal without unclipping. Eventually get shoe unclipped and tighten cleats fully before riding again. Always check I can unclip before riding now - especially after changing shoes, cleats or pedals.

thrown myself over the bars once depressing the forks for a climb 🙂