Worst Crash

BanditBoyDavid said:

I have recently been involved in a crach that I would consider to be my worst crash yet. I was lucky that all I broke was right pinky. Two months, and two surgeries later, I'm almost healed.

Anyway, I was just wonderin' what your worst crash has been.

Thanks

Bicycle or motorcycle?

alienator said:

Bicycle or motorcycle?

Number one reason I look forward to alienators' posts. Just like me... oh, and I can tell you a good one involving me and an original Fiat 500 (the one we totalled was white, not yellow like in the picture)... :o

So, bicycle, motorcycle or car?

alienator said:

Bicycle or motorcycle?

I was talking about bicycle related wrecks, but I guess motorcycle wrecks could apply. 🙄 (not really cars... sorry)

Well, as a teenager (was about 16 or 17, so 20 odd years ago!) I had a close encounter with a Mercedes Benz which stopped suddenly in the middle of the road for no apparent reason.

I hit it perfectly upright in the center of the back bumper. My brand new white look pedals (the originals!) did their job, I flew over the entire car and landed headfirst right in the middle of the bonnet.

That hurt. Taken to hospital by a good samaritan, 6 stitches to replace what had once been a rather handsome Italian eyebrow. It mostly grew back (still looks a bit funny) although it has patches of white hair. A nice scar, actually. Chicks dig it.

Also a very nice and painful light concussion. One night in the hospital, then home. Three more days in a dark room with the most exquisite headache I have ever experienced.

Then I had to start training again...

More importantly, my Atala-Campagnolo jersey had to be binned (too much blood). A new front wheel, but somehow no damage to the frame...

I hit a house once on my bicycle. White house, green Huffy bicycle. I was a about 9 years old at the time. I was knocked unconcious for awhile and put my front teeth through my lower lip.

The worst crash on my road bike was in the Yorktown National Battlefield in Virginia. The 1 lane, 1 way road was tar covered with fine gravel. It was a good surface unless you got too close to the edge of the road, then you hit a bunch of loose gravel. The speed limit was 15 MPH and that is about what I was doing. A car came up behind me and I guess the guy was in a hurry to get to a restroom or something. Anyway, he was doing well over 15 MPH. It was either get run over or "take my chances" in the loose gravel. As many of you already know, there is no such thing as a chance in loose gravel when you are riding on 23X700C tires. There was a scratch on one of my brake handles but the rest of the bike was OK, probably because it landed on me. I was a little worse. One elbow and one knee were scraped raw with embedded gravel, and my palms were badly cut up(now I always wear gloves). My forearm was not scraped, but it hit so hard that it bled through the pores. There were no bones broken or sticking out, so I rode to my car, packed up my bike, and went home to clean myself up. Try doing all this with ripped up palms!

I have been fortunate in my riding not to crash very often. Except for the crash in the Yorktown National Battlefield, I have not had any crashes since I was 18 years old. All of the others were stupid kid crashes, and there were only four of them. As far as automobiles go, I caused one accident and have been run into numerous times, but they were all just minor fender benders.

alienator said:

Bicycle or motorcycle?

To give details about my crash, I was in a crit early Febuary. Throughout the entire race, it had been raining (thank you sparatic Florida weather). Anyway, it was on the last lap and on the last corner. The finish line was no more than 100 meters away. As we were going through the last corner, I was in the perfect position, until another rider cut me off, and due to the wet brick corner, he wiped out, right in front of me. I had no where to go but right over the rider, I took a superman through the air, and landed directly on my chest. However, that didn't hurt, my hand was in a lot of pain, and I couldn't move it. It turned out that the bone in my pinky and not just cracked, but snapped, dislodged itself, and somehow rotated.

for the youtube video, go to youtube, and type "crashin's racin"

BanditBoyDavid said:

To give details about my crash, I was in a crit early Febuary. Throughout the entire race, it had been raining (thank you sparatic Florida weather). Anyway, it was on the last lap and on the last corner. The finish line was no more than 100 meters away. As we were going through the last corner, I was in the perfect position, until another rider cut me off, and due to the wet brick corner, he wiped out, right in front of me. I had no where to go but right over the rider, I took a superman through the air, and landed directly on my chest. However, that didn't hurt, my hand was in a lot of pain, and I couldn't move it. It turned out that the bone in my pinky and not just cracked, but snapped, dislodged itself, and somehow rotated.

for the youtube video, go to youtube, and type "crashin's racin"

OUCH!

Similar thread here...I also bumped it up. Lots of crash discussions.

Makes me think that people that don't wear helmuts are nuts.

cyclingforums.comt237275.htmlOpen ↗

Well, the bicycle crashes......getting dragged by pre-senile Granny, getting hit and flying over the hood of a car, or crashing and breaking my hip......those were all a doddle. My worst get off was in Turn 1 at Road Atlanta. At the end of the 1st lap, I was leading and not pushing it, just letting the slicks come up to temp. However, going into T1, Mr. Itchy decided he had to win the race on that lap by taking up all of the race track. He took up so much, he bumped me off the track. Off track, things weren't so smooth. A week before, cars had raced in the rain and left big ruts in the grass outside of some corners. Oh, and there was this: T1 was a 100 mph corner. So off I went into the grass and toute de suite my front tire dropped into a tire rut and I highsided. At least that's what they told me. Injuries were fracture of C5, damage to the nerve root at C5 leaving me partially paralyzed for a few months, fractured 1st, 2nd, and 4th ribs each in two places, shattered clavicle, and shattered scapula. The ER doc said he stopped counting fractures in my chest and back when he got to 26 'cuz it was just getting silly. His words, not mine. Neither my clavicle nor my scapula could be fixed at the time as the docs didn't want to do further damage to any nerves and cause permanent paralysis. As a result, my right shoulder is 2cm closer to my spine than the right one. Now, any time I get x-rays, the docs and x-rays techs never fail to be entertained by my skeleton.

Does that count?

Good one alienator. I wrecked with my dad's 800cc Suzuki Intruder and suceeded in breaking my leg in two places. Hardly any damage to the motorcycle.

And I did it all alone, went into a tight corner way too fast for that kind of bike, slid out and flew over the handlebars. The last thing I remember was looking down at the bike as I was flying thinking how much it would hurt. And it did. :o

alienator said:

Well, the bicycle crashes......getting dragged by pre-senile Granny, getting hit and flying over the hood of a car, or crashing and breaking my hip......those were all a doddle. My worst get off was in Turn 1 at Road Atlanta. At the end of the 1st lap, I was leading and not pushing it, just letting the slicks come up to temp. However, going into T1, Mr. Itchy decided he had to win the race on that lap by taking up all of the race track. He took up so much, he bumped me off the track. Off track, things weren't so smooth. A week before, cars had raced in the rain and left big ruts in the grass outside of some corners. Oh, and there was this: T1 was a 100 mph corner. So off I went into the grass and toute de suite my front tire dropped into a tire rut and I highsided. At least that's what they told me. Injuries were fracture of C5, damage to the nerve root at C5 leaving me partially paralyzed for a few months, fractured 1st, 2nd, and 4th ribs each in two places, shattered clavicle, and shattered scapula. The ER doc said he stopped counting fractures in my chest and back when he got to 26 'cuz it was just getting silly. His words, not mine. Neither my clavicle nor my scapula could be fixed at the time as the docs didn't want to do further damage to any nerves and cause permanent paralysis. As a result, my right shoulder is 2cm closer to my spine than the right one. Now, any time I get x-rays, the docs and x-rays techs never fail to be entertained by my skeleton.

Does that count?

What kind of racing series was that, Alien?

alienator said:

Well, the bicycle crashes......getting dragged by pre-senile Granny, getting hit and flying over the hood of a car, or crashing and breaking my hip......those were all a doddle. My worst get off was in Turn 1 at Road Atlanta. At the end of the 1st lap, I was leading and not pushing it, just letting the slicks come up to temp. However, going into T1, Mr. Itchy decided he had to win the race on that lap by taking up all of the race track. He took up so much, he bumped me off the track. Off track, things weren't so smooth. A week before, cars had raced in the rain and left big ruts in the grass outside of some corners. Oh, and there was this: T1 was a 100 mph corner. So off I went into the grass and toute de suite my front tire dropped into a tire rut and I highsided. At least that's what they told me. Injuries were fracture of C5, damage to the nerve root at C5 leaving me partially paralyzed for a few months, fractured 1st, 2nd, and 4th ribs each in two places, shattered clavicle, and shattered scapula. The ER doc said he stopped counting fractures in my chest and back when he got to 26 'cuz it was just getting silly. His words, not mine. Neither my clavicle nor my scapula could be fixed at the time as the docs didn't want to do further damage to any nerves and cause permanent paralysis. As a result, my right shoulder is 2cm closer to my spine than the right one. Now, any time I get x-rays, the docs and x-rays techs never fail to be entertained by my skeleton.

Does that count?

Wow, you must have really been messed up to end up with two right shoulders! With all this damage I wouldn't be surprised to find out that your old avatar was your actual photo😄!

alienator said:

Well, the bicycle crashes......getting dragged by pre-senile Granny, getting hit and flying over the hood of a car, or crashing and breaking my hip......those were all a doddle. My worst get off was in Turn 1 at Road Atlanta. At the end of the 1st lap, I was leading and not pushing it, just letting the slicks come up to temp. However, going into T1, Mr. Itchy decided he had to win the race on that lap by taking up all of the race track. He took up so much, he bumped me off the track. Off track, things weren't so smooth. A week before, cars had raced in the rain and left big ruts in the grass outside of some corners. Oh, and there was this: T1 was a 100 mph corner. So off I went into the grass and toute de suite my front tire dropped into a tire rut and I highsided. At least that's what they told me. Injuries were fracture of C5, damage to the nerve root at C5 leaving me partially paralyzed for a few months, fractured 1st, 2nd, and 4th ribs each in two places, shattered clavicle, and shattered scapula. The ER doc said he stopped counting fractures in my chest and back when he got to 26 'cuz it was just getting silly. His words, not mine. Neither my clavicle nor my scapula could be fixed at the time as the docs didn't want to do further damage to any nerves and cause permanent paralysis. As a result, my right shoulder is 2cm closer to my spine than the right one. Now, any time I get x-rays, the docs and x-rays techs never fail to be entertained by my skeleton.

Does that count?

Yep that certainly counts... so are you still doing whatever it is that you were doing back then?

Powerful Pete said:

Good one alienator. I wrecked with my dad's 800cc Suzuki Intruder and suceeded in breaking my leg in two places. Hardly any damage to the motorcycle.

And I did it all alone, went into a tight corner way too fast for that kind of bike, slid out and flew over the handlebars. The last thing I remember was looking down at the bike as I was flying thinking how much it would hurt. And it did. :o

High sides are always ugly. My retirement crash was a high side. The week before the retirement crash, I'd been racing in South Carolina when someone else crashed and put sand on the track. I hit the sand, high sided and broke my wrist. Bike was fine. The next week, I was racing on my hometrack and spun up my rear tire exiting a 120mph corner. I thought I was catching the bike's slide but then the rear hooked up and everything went all pear shaped. The next thing I knew I was sliding down the track at a ridiculous speed on my back. Unlike your crash, I wasn't the one flying through the air, or so I noticed when I looked up: there above me, my racebike was re-entering the atmosphere and headed straight for me. So the bike pounced on me, and as I slid off the track and bounced down an embankment, the bike jumped up and down on me and my leg another 3 or so times. Out of that, I netted a lower leg busted in 14 places.

It's kind of disconcerting to see your foot pointing in a direction opposite from the way it should be according to the owner's manual.

On the upside, I earned a cool titanium rod running the length of right tibia, a few screws, a bone graft, a big lump, and some electrical wiring in my leg. As a result of the Ti rod in my leg, that leg is light yet stiff and gives a lively, compliant ride.

alienator said:

On the upside, I earned a cool titanium rod running the length of right tibia, a few screws, a bone graft, a big lump, and some electrical wiring in my leg. As a result of the Ti rod in my leg, that leg is light yet stiff and gives a lively, compliant ride.

Impressive. Good to see that you are able to be positive about it all (Ti bits are always cool - I was only able to get a metal plate and seven screws in my leg).

From what I remember you are heavily into riding, so I take it that you have recuperated fully. Do you still have a motorcycle?

Powerful Pete said:

Impressive. Good to see that you are able to be positive about it all (Ti bits are always cool - I was only able to get a metal plate and seven screws in my leg).

From what I remember you are heavily into riding, so I take it that you have recuperated fully. Do you still have a motorcycle?

I'm making plans for another motorcycle, although the days of racing 'em are over.....I wont' rule out track days, though.......

Yeah, I heal well and have recupe'd all the way back to my normal, perverse state. 40 some years on Terre and 80+ fractures later, I can still do the things that make my wife and mom wince.

The metal bits are always cool. I've also got a bit pin, plate , and four screws in my hip. I useta have a plate and 5 screws in a wrist, but now those bits are in a cup in my office desk. The signal generator that used to be attached to the wires in my leg is also in a cup in my desk, what with it bein' removed after its battery died. Through all the surgeries, the only thing that has really sucked has been that I've yet to find a surgeon who will give me the custom shaped scar that I want.

Pretty nasty crash in today's Tour of Flanders:

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TheDarkLord said:

Pretty nasty crash in today's Tour of Flanders:

.

Broken arm and leg, from what I heard... 🙁

I've had numerous cuts and abraisions from bike accidents, but no broken bones, those have been reserved for the hockey rink. Put a couple of bikes down in the rain, but tucked and rolled, just bruises and ruined helmets. My wife has been hit by two cars, again, just cuts, abrasions, and deep bruising. Guess I've been lucky.