Hacker News Reader

Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

This year I fell off my bike twice.

One time my wheels skidded while trying to get on a sidewalk and I would have hit my head if I didn't wear a helmet.

Another time a girl jumped in front of me on the bike lane and I must've had 30 km/h. I pressed the breaks hard and unfortunately the breaks on my front wheel were stronger than those in the back, and my bike overturned with me falling violently on the ground. My left arm still hurts after one month and I had pain in my spleen area that kept me up at night. It's a good thing I also wear protective gloves as a fall like this can really injure your hands.

I'm not a Dutchman and I'd love to live in a bike friendly city like Amsterdam. But protective gear can really save you from serious injury even with no cars around.

View on HN

If you're braking hard enough with the front brake to send you over the handlebars, whatever is going on with the rear brake is irrelevant because your rear wheel is literally lifting off the road and thus cannot possibly contribute meaningfully to braking or traction. In severe emergency braking, it's the front brake alone that matters (and sounds like you used a little too much of it). More info here: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html

And yeah, I've been there done that going over the handlebars in a situation in which I braked too hard and had my weight too far forward, and it's no fun. Gloves definitely help prevent your hands from getting scratched up in a higher velocity bike collision.

In an unclear situation (i.e. any busy city), doing 30 km/h is way too fast. The sibling post talks about 25 mph = 40 km/h(!), that's racing speed, pretty dangerous if there is other traffic around.

There's a difference between the cycling the Dutch do at 18-20 km/h -- maybe 25 km/h on a dedicated cycle path with no chance of interaction with other traffic -- and race-cycling at 30+ km/h, which is in no way appropriate in a city with pedestrians and cars. I saw it in London too: very busy streets, and the cyclists are in full racing gear on racing bikes where they're hunched over instead of upright (bad for overview of traffic situations), doing 25-30 km/h, that's asking for trouble and it also gives cyclists a bad name.

It also explains why people complain about getting to work sweaty -- they're going way too fast! If you relax and do 18 km/h, it will take only a little bit longer but you won't be soaked when you arrive.

Except for people trying to be fit, your speeds keeps increasing for a while. When I was in good bike shape (am not now), I would need to ride 20 MPH to get a decent workout. Riding 15mph wouldn’t even get my heart rate to 120. High heart rate is important to get the health effects of a workout. The whole reason I commuted on bike was to get a workout as I travel

Either

A) the paths need to be safe up to a reasonable workout speed (25 mph)

B) people wanting a workout need to buy heavier and heavier bikes to go slower. I can get a great workout at 15 MpH if I ride a 49 pound fat bike with huge knobs.

It would seem pretty silly for me to commute to work at 15 mph, get no health benefit, then go spin on a stationary bike at 25 mph.....

There are large portions of the world where you could walk your bike to work ~1km away and still arrive quite sweaty, cycling simply isn’t a viable option in a lot of cases if that’s the concern.

> In an unclear situation (i.e. any busy city), doing 30 km/h is way too fast.

Yet drivers of motor vehicles can go that speed without too many issues between intersections. If one rides a bike in the middle of the general purpose traffic lane, then going 25 mph is safe.

> It also explains why people complain about getting to work sweaty -- they're going way too fast!

Depending on the distance one must cover during the commute, going "fast" is necessary if you want to complete your trip in a reasonable period of time. If I wanted to go at walking speed, then I would just walk.

Your definition of safe must be different than mine, because car drivers are protected by wrinkle zones, roll cages, airbags and seatbelts, whereas a cyclist is less visible, takes up less space and has ~nothing to protect their body.

Yet, motorcyclists ride in the traffic lane at similar speeds on urban streets. The definition of safety is to act in a predictable manner in terms of following the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles. Then you're far less likely to be involved in a collision in the first place.

As I said in another message, the Dutch are lucky to have cities that are mostly flat.

In my city we've got some hills in spite of the region being plain — and riding a bike on a slope you can easily reach 60 km/h without sweating. It's foolish to do so, but you get carried away.

I was driving way too fast on that event and I even told that girl afterwards that she may have stepped on the bike lane, but I was also going too fast.

However not to detract from my main point — when I first fell off my bike this year and hit my helmet-protected head, I wasn't doing more than 10 km/h. And so in both situations I was protected by my gear and the outcome would have been much worse without it.

Can I suggest that you learn to brake effectively? You should not be going over the handlebars when you brake hard.

Under hard braking, the front brake is the only one that matters, because the back wheel will lift off. Find a safe bit of tarmac and practice braking progressively harder and harder until you can feel the point just before you start to lose control & hold it there. Practice until it becomes second nature.

Try Cycling in the Netherlands at 30 km/h near pedestrians (even when on a bike-lane) and you will get no sympathy for going over the handlebars. Heck, cycling at 30 km/h on any kind of bike lane will be disruptive to other cyclists. The norm here is somewhere between 15 and 20. Anything over 20 is seen as putting in effort.

So biking is only a casual way to get between locations? Where does one go if one wants to drop the hammer and get a workout in? Can you ride bikes on streets?

You can bike on the streets for sport, but not in pedestrian areas (i.e. city centers).

Outside of pedestrians, you'll come into some conflict with either other cyclists or cars. You'll get some complaints, but it is generally accepted. If course, it depends on how much consideration you give others. Complaining that other cyclists aren't getting out of your way fast enough won't earn you much sympathy.

In the Netherlands the cities are basically flat and worldwide this is the exception rather then the norm.

Ride your bike on a slope and you can easily reach 60 km/h.

Also 20 km/h or 15 km/h is still enough to produce serious injury. On my first fall this year, when I hit my helmet-protected head, I must've had no more than 10 km/h.

I usually adjust my brakes so that my front brake isn't tight enough to throw me over the handlebars in panic. I used to bike a lot (and quite recklessly) in my teens, so I got kinda paranoid about overly sensitive front brakes.

Anyways, and without knowing the details of your accident, if you were biking 30km/h in an area where you can't see if someone comes from around a corner, then you were biking too fast. Still the girl's fault for jumping in front of you without looking.

This one time a van cut me off turning right across a bike lane while I was cruising at approx. 25mph on 8th St. in SF, probably too fast, and probably poorly positioned in the van's blind spot. I caught the front right wheel of the van and flew across the hood, rolled over it, landed on my back on the street and skidded to a hault on the opposite side just short of the curb. I was not wearing a helmet, but also, I suffered zero injuries–my bike on the other hand had two completely destroyed wheels.

The van driver paid to fix the wheels. I started wearing a helmet after that always while riding (before that I only did while on long distance or competitive rides). I haven't had a crash since, probably because I avoid blind spots and other dangerous positions on the street.

In all the years that I rode and crashed my bike as a kid, I also never suffered any serious head injuries, even this time that I crashed my bike and broke my hand protecting my face when I fell (not wearing a helmet), but today I still wear my helmet and its annoyance. Yet I have zero evidence that it has ever been useful to me. If I lived in a place where I didn't have to worry about cars murdering me all the time, like Holland, I probably would ride like I did as a kid, and not wear a helmet. That being said, I do make my kids wear helmets...

> I have zero evidence that it has ever been useful to me.

This strikes me as an odd statement. Some individuals may go their whole lives without taking antibiotics, but that tells us nothing of interest about antibiotics.

There is a real question about whether it's better to wear a helmet, though. A bike helmet can of course save your brain in case of an impact (which studies have confirmed), but studies have found that drivers leave less distance when they see a cyclist wearing a helmet [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Risk_compensati...

> studies have found that drivers leave less distance when they see a cyclist wearing a helmet

I don't think that's what those studies have found.

First of all the results are disputed and also this can work both ways — as specified in the link you provided, it could be that cyclists wearing a helmet could take more risks than those without a helmet.

And in England you might have motorists leaving more or less distance, depending on whether the cyclist wears a helmet, but I'm pretty sure this is a cultural thing.

In my city car drivers don't give a shit about cyclists. So for example on a narrow street drivers will pass cyclists within only a few centimeters, no matter if you wear a helmet or not. So experimented cyclists actually ride their bike in the middle of the road, to prevent overtaking by cars. Decent road speed is required, or otherwise you get horns and swear words, but it's the safest way to go.

But yes, this is an anecdote, I don't have a reference I could link to.

> This one time a van cut me off turning right across a bike lane while I was cruising at approx. 25mph on 8th St. in SF

When approaching an intersection, it's best to ride in the general traffic lane that corresponds to the direction you plan to go. Trying to overtake traffic that may turn right on the right will almost certainly result in what happened to you. CVC (California Vehicle Code) makes an exception to the requirement to ride in the bike lane where right turns are authorized in 21208 (4) [1].

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com