2 ms·

Sounds like you ride pretty serious distances. Do you also ride them at serious speeds? Most people ride at a very relaxed pace, about 15 kph or so, and don't r

by mcv 4y ago

Sounds like you ride pretty serious distances. Do you also ride them at serious speeds? Most people ride at a very relaxed pace, about 15 kph or so, and don't really fall off their bike except while learning or in traffic accidents. But if you go 30 kph regularly, that significantly increases the speed at which unexpected things happen, reduces your time to react, and increases the speed at which you hit the pavement if you fall. Speed matters a lot. There's a good reason why most bike racers wear helmets, while most regular city bikers or leisurely bikers do not. Mind you, I've fallen a couple of times too (usually in icy or otherwise slippery conditions I wasn't properly accounting for at the time). But never hit my head. Worst I think was when I scraped my hands as a kid.

steelframe 4y ago
> Do you also ride them at serious speeds? There's a hill near my house where I used to regularly hit 70kph. There's a super-sketchy cross street right at the bottom of that hill with motorists always trying to white-knuckle gun it into traffic, so I've stopped doing that. For all of my crashes I was going at or under 15kph. Which is probably why I'm still here to tell you all about it.
- mcv 4y ago
  70 kph definitely sounds like helmet speed to me. Though I admit as a kid I was sometimes clocked (by someone with a speedometer) at 40-50 kph on my city bike on slight downward slopes, and I never wore a helmet. But those were only brief bits under fairly optimal circumstances. The last couple of times I fell (less than a handful over the past 30 years) were all extremely icy road conditions. Almost all, because I just remember one where a car brutally cut me off turning into a side street while I was barreling down the road at pretty extreme speed. I avoided a collision by making an extremely tight turn into the same side street. That was a street that really should have had a separate bike path. (I think it was here [0], though I don't remember crossing that raised sidewalk; maybe they changed that since then, or I misremember.) [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3507984,4.854121,3a,75y,108.03h,58.86t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1stoHknqEWtTOayBsTTgdm6w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DtoHknqEWtTOayBsTTgdm6w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D269.35242%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3507984,4.854121,3a,75y,108....

by mcv 4y ago

steelframe 4y ago

> Do you also ride them at serious speeds? There's a hill near my house where I used to regularly hit 70kph. There's a super-sketchy cross street right at the bottom of that hill with motorists always trying to white-knuckle gun it into traffic, so I've stopped doing that. For all of my crashes I was going at or under 15kph. Which is probably why I'm still here to tell you all about it.

mcv 4y ago
70 kph definitely sounds like helmet speed to me. Though I admit as a kid I was sometimes clocked (by someone with a speedometer) at 40-50 kph on my city bike on slight downward slopes, and I never wore a helmet. But those were only brief bits under fairly optimal circumstances. The last couple of times I fell (less than a handful over the past 30 years) were all extremely icy road conditions. Almost all, because I just remember one where a car brutally cut me off turning into a side street while I was barreling down the road at pretty extreme speed. I avoided a collision by making an extremely tight turn into the same side street. That was a street that really should have had a separate bike path. (I think it was here [0], though I don't remember crossing that raised sidewalk; maybe they changed that since then, or I misremember.) [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3507984,4.854121,3a,75y,108.03h,58.86t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1stoHknqEWtTOayBsTTgdm6w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DtoHknqEWtTOayBsTTgdm6w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D269.35242%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3507984,4.854121,3a,75y,108....