Most Horrific Failure
A nice, long post about all the horrible failures that have happened to folks (okay some of them are stretches) on fixies (mostly):
(I should note that I'm a pretty big fan of structural failures)
I witnessed it but it didn't happen to me. Carbon fork snapping at the
crown as the criterium racer dug in on a 20-mph, 90-degree left turn.
Steel is real!
--Greg
Broken crank. Vintage Campag Pista sheared through the
pedal threads, as I was climbing. I went over the bars and
got a pretty badly bruised shoulder, cracked my helmet.
The worst part was the 20 km to the finish of the event using
just one leg. I had to put the other up on the rack to
avoid ripping it with the sharp end of the broken crank.
I was with friends, who pushed me up the hills.
I now have the greatest respect for 1-legged cyclists.
I once had an old Airlite hub disintegrate on a 35 mph
descent. Luckily the chain went outboard and I just started
freewheeling.
- Phil
I have snapped a crank arm... crashed.
I have broken a pedal spindle... saved it some how.
I have broken one side off my handelbars... saved it some how.
I replace my forks every 2 years.
I replace my bars pretty much yearly, if I am training.
- Scott
Broken Bottom Bracket. I was in a standing start from a stop light, and the chainring side went SNAP. I did a huge yard sale in downtown traffic, and was bloodied up pretty well. The chainring cut my leg up too.
Several messengers came to my aid, which I appreciated.
-roger
Lockring stripped and popped off, allowing cog to unthead, resulting in
dropped chain. I was on a gentle downhill in the city, coming to a traffic
light in sparse sunday traffic. Front brake brought me to a stop.
Damage: One trashed lockring and several gouges on chainstay.
-eric
I was recently test-riding a track bike being sold by a nice enough
kid -- though admittedly clueless about bike maintenance -- who
happened to live amongst some of the steeper hills I've seen in
Portland. After noting a bit of play in the rear hub due to loose axle
nuts, on the return from said short shakedown ride, the chain popped
off. It wrapped around the BB shell in front, and lodged between the
cog and the spokes in the rear, nearly shearing 3-4 spokes off at the
hub flange. The sideways pull on the axle immediately pulled the rear
wheel sideways into the (non-functional, installed by above newbie)
rear brake capiler, quite effectively locking it.
I managed to control the skid (which thankfully started near the
beginning of a fairly fast descent, rather than the end) and never hit
the ground, probably due largely to my own somewhat ill-advised
experiments since childhood into semi-controlled skidding.
-Lennon
P.S.: I of course went on to buy the bike -- it was a good deal, which
only got cheaper with the sympathy points from the seller due to my
barely-avoided crash.
-Lennon
2 weeks ago, came unclipped from my (goddamn) eggbeaters right before
a turn, couldn't slow down, plowed into curb at 20mph, broke
collarbone, bent the crap out of my Soma frame, slightly dented the
braking surface on my front Velocity Deep-V, lots o' bruises.
Hospital + ambulance bills - bike parts = Still too much money
I'm never street riding again w/out a brake.
-Tony
Hmm...let's see. Offroad fixie I've broken a Candy
pedal (bent the eggbeater cage on a downhill stage at
State College, result was only a hematoma on my
forearm), an Avid Juicy front disc brake lever, and a
carbon handlebar. On the track fixie, I pretty much
only go through handlebar tape like it's my job. But
that's only because it's mostly steel and has nothing
hanging off it.
I'm done with Crank Brothers pedals though, great
customer service, but I still feel it's best not to
need that service in the first place. It's real easy
to pop out at the wrong moment as your cleats wear and
I've seen too many pedals come off their spindle. I'm
digging the Speedplay Frogs now.
So far I think I've been pretty lucky (at least the
guys I ride with think so, ha). I've dropped the
chain a few times, but it's never caused me to wreck
(both on trails or in traffic).
The fixie gods are obviously looking out...
-DT
Just last week:
Coming hot down State St to the office, I pulled into the left-turn
lane as the light ahead of me turned red. I set up to skid, but my
right foot unclipped (eggbeaters). I slammed on the brakes, not
realizing in that moment that I had previously adjusted those brakes
to make them tighter. Can you say "endo"? I was pretty battered; the
fenders and lights got banged up too.
I figure this crash was a failure of threes: first, I lost control of
the pedals because a clip came loose, which I knew about and have had
happen before; this is why I still run brakes. Second, I switched from
having a brake operating as an emergency fail-safe device to a
fully-modulated brake with considerably less tolerance; when I needed
to perform an emergency stop, I grabbed the brake hard the way I had
been for months before, and it locked the front wheel. Third, I had
positioned myself to skid when I grabbed the brake, so I was already
pitched forward; my weight contributed to the endo.
-Michael
No major failures yet, but an uncomfortable moment explaining to my better
half.
For some reason she failed to see the login in two bikes arriving the same
day. One was my long delayed Quickbeam, the other was the family triplet.
-Ted
Does running into a forklift count? I wasn't on a fixed gear bike
when this happened, but it's still a good story. This was in Seattle,
just after Adobe settled into that huge compound in Fremont. They
closed down part of the Burke-Gilman trail for that, but you could still
sneak thru (dodging construction vehicles, of course, which may or
may not have been safer than that intersection by the Fremont bridge,
enough rambling). So one day I was doing just that, slipping between
a semi and some large containers when my front wheel catches the
lowered blades of a forklift. Or so I figured out later; I don't
remember
any of the accident. I was pedaling at about 22 mph, and then I was on
the ground with 4-5 people looking down at me. Took me a couple
seconds to realize that much, another minute or two to realize I was
bleeding (someone's bled all over my hand, wait, I think that's my
blood,
hey, that's supposed to be on the inside), any probably
another 10 minutes or so to piece together what happened. The front rim
snapped and had a 90 degree bend in it, and the spokes all bunched up
around the bend (cut an onion in half-- looked kinda like that).
I think they blocked that passage the next day.
Rubber side down.
- jesse
Terribly simple failure (non fixie though)- a front puncture during a
crit. I was half way through a 90 degree turn at the time, leading the
bunch. I went down like a sack of potatoes. The guy immediately behind
managed to avoid me, but four riders behind him went straight into me.
The result was one frame snapped clean in two, a guy in hospital, and
large quantities of skin left on the ground. Despite being run over by
a couple of people, I wasn't seriously injured - just road rash and some
bruises.
Regards,
-Suzy
Does a serious failure of judgement count? If so, I made a mistake rinsing my tonsils with decent Champagne on New Year's Eve and, shortly thereafter, hopping on my fixie for a quick spin in the 'hood.
When someone launched a Roman candle in a nearby backyard, I panicked, imagining it was aimed at me. I flew over the handlebars upon hitting the curb and crashed headfirst into a muddy snowdrift. Dazed, I rode home to face a spouse who pitilessly shook her head as I tumbled inside.
-Dave
In keeping with the unclipping theme . . .
A couple of weeks ago, on my way to work, I went
pretty hard down Pittsburgh's Cherry Way (or Lane or
something) into a tunnel beneath a department store.
The tunnel is dark, the pavement less than perfect,
but typically it's two lanes wide and over before you
know it.
Recently, they have been doing work on the building
straddling the road; at the exit from the tunnel
(which ends at a fun little blind crosswalk people
tend to meander into against the signal utterly
unaware of the near-silent bike closing on them at 15
or 20 mph), the last twenty feet of the right lane are
now hidden beneath a scaffold that itself is hidden
behind a loose canvas wrap.
Although by then I knew well that the narrowed
single-lane exit was wide enough for only one car,
that morning I somehow persuaded myself that I could
slide between the last couple of cars and the
scaffold. Only as I came right up to what I had
thought to be a wide enough passage did I realize my
folly; it narrowed impossibly and I knew I couldn't
fit. I snapped back hard on the SPD's to lock up, but
my foot pulled before I'd bled any speed and just
before my bike pulled even with the scaffold. This of
course flung my balance right and back, a condition
made even more spectacularly precarious when the right
pedal carried me over the top, which made me feel like
a lush on stilts might feel.
Instantly, I was in the tunnel within the tunnel,
pressed and teetering between cars and scaffold, too
imbalanced to reach my brake (I was holding up by the
stem; brake down in the drops), in a space no wider
than my bars. The cars ignored the signal when it
changed, perhaps sensing my impending tragedy and
hoping to minimize their possible roles in same; hell,
I would have frozen to watch. I was so utterly sure
that my bar would catch a fold in the tarp, yank my
wheel right and fling me into one of the cars I was
almost literally squeaking by, or alternatively catch
a mirror, wrench my wheel left, and catapult me into
the canvas and the unforgiving scaffolding behind, but
somehow I managed to sneak through the bike-wide
opening, without touching anyone, scraping paint, or
otherwise ruining my morning (unless a heartrate
approaching failure counts as ruination).
I'm still half-convinced I suffered some horrible fall
that morning, and the rest of this is Act II of some
movie in which I have entered a coma and have yet to
figure it out. Come to think of it, that would
explain a lot of what's happened in the past two
weeks.
Assuming this isn't the case, I figure I owe a
sizeable debt to the fixie gods; I'll do my best not
to impose on them again any time soon.
Otherwise my relatively short fixie career has been
failure free, unless you count the two recent
occasions when my _balance_ has failed and I've
dropped myself gracelessly to the pavement at rush
hour red lights in front of dozens of car commuters I
can _almost_ hear laughing.
-Joshua
When fault is hovering, it hurts more! Crash: I was passing on the
right, and, yes, that car did a right turn. Swiftly I was on the
ground, front wheel under the car's. To add to my stupid feeling, it
was right in front of a high school's main entrance, and they were just
letting out for the day. I was entertainment!!
-David
(I should note that I'm a pretty big fan of structural failures)
I witnessed it but it didn't happen to me. Carbon fork snapping at the
crown as the criterium racer dug in on a 20-mph, 90-degree left turn.
Steel is real!
--Greg
Broken crank. Vintage Campag Pista sheared through the
pedal threads, as I was climbing. I went over the bars and
got a pretty badly bruised shoulder, cracked my helmet.
The worst part was the 20 km to the finish of the event using
just one leg. I had to put the other up on the rack to
avoid ripping it with the sharp end of the broken crank.
I was with friends, who pushed me up the hills.
I now have the greatest respect for 1-legged cyclists.
I once had an old Airlite hub disintegrate on a 35 mph
descent. Luckily the chain went outboard and I just started
freewheeling.
- Phil
I have snapped a crank arm... crashed.
I have broken a pedal spindle... saved it some how.
I have broken one side off my handelbars... saved it some how.
I replace my forks every 2 years.
I replace my bars pretty much yearly, if I am training.
- Scott
Broken Bottom Bracket. I was in a standing start from a stop light, and the chainring side went SNAP. I did a huge yard sale in downtown traffic, and was bloodied up pretty well. The chainring cut my leg up too.
Several messengers came to my aid, which I appreciated.
-roger
Lockring stripped and popped off, allowing cog to unthead, resulting in
dropped chain. I was on a gentle downhill in the city, coming to a traffic
light in sparse sunday traffic. Front brake brought me to a stop.
Damage: One trashed lockring and several gouges on chainstay.
-eric
I was recently test-riding a track bike being sold by a nice enough
kid -- though admittedly clueless about bike maintenance -- who
happened to live amongst some of the steeper hills I've seen in
Portland. After noting a bit of play in the rear hub due to loose axle
nuts, on the return from said short shakedown ride, the chain popped
off. It wrapped around the BB shell in front, and lodged between the
cog and the spokes in the rear, nearly shearing 3-4 spokes off at the
hub flange. The sideways pull on the axle immediately pulled the rear
wheel sideways into the (non-functional, installed by above newbie)
rear brake capiler, quite effectively locking it.
I managed to control the skid (which thankfully started near the
beginning of a fairly fast descent, rather than the end) and never hit
the ground, probably due largely to my own somewhat ill-advised
experiments since childhood into semi-controlled skidding.
-Lennon
P.S.: I of course went on to buy the bike -- it was a good deal, which
only got cheaper with the sympathy points from the seller due to my
barely-avoided crash.
-Lennon
2 weeks ago, came unclipped from my (goddamn) eggbeaters right before
a turn, couldn't slow down, plowed into curb at 20mph, broke
collarbone, bent the crap out of my Soma frame, slightly dented the
braking surface on my front Velocity Deep-V, lots o' bruises.
Hospital + ambulance bills - bike parts = Still too much money
I'm never street riding again w/out a brake.
-Tony
Hmm...let's see. Offroad fixie I've broken a Candy
pedal (bent the eggbeater cage on a downhill stage at
State College, result was only a hematoma on my
forearm), an Avid Juicy front disc brake lever, and a
carbon handlebar. On the track fixie, I pretty much
only go through handlebar tape like it's my job. But
that's only because it's mostly steel and has nothing
hanging off it.
I'm done with Crank Brothers pedals though, great
customer service, but I still feel it's best not to
need that service in the first place. It's real easy
to pop out at the wrong moment as your cleats wear and
I've seen too many pedals come off their spindle. I'm
digging the Speedplay Frogs now.
So far I think I've been pretty lucky (at least the
guys I ride with think so, ha). I've dropped the
chain a few times, but it's never caused me to wreck
(both on trails or in traffic).
The fixie gods are obviously looking out...
-DT
Just last week:
Coming hot down State St to the office, I pulled into the left-turn
lane as the light ahead of me turned red. I set up to skid, but my
right foot unclipped (eggbeaters). I slammed on the brakes, not
realizing in that moment that I had previously adjusted those brakes
to make them tighter. Can you say "endo"? I was pretty battered; the
fenders and lights got banged up too.
I figure this crash was a failure of threes: first, I lost control of
the pedals because a clip came loose, which I knew about and have had
happen before; this is why I still run brakes. Second, I switched from
having a brake operating as an emergency fail-safe device to a
fully-modulated brake with considerably less tolerance; when I needed
to perform an emergency stop, I grabbed the brake hard the way I had
been for months before, and it locked the front wheel. Third, I had
positioned myself to skid when I grabbed the brake, so I was already
pitched forward; my weight contributed to the endo.
-Michael
No major failures yet, but an uncomfortable moment explaining to my better
half.
For some reason she failed to see the login in two bikes arriving the same
day. One was my long delayed Quickbeam, the other was the family triplet.
-Ted
Does running into a forklift count? I wasn't on a fixed gear bike
when this happened, but it's still a good story. This was in Seattle,
just after Adobe settled into that huge compound in Fremont. They
closed down part of the Burke-Gilman trail for that, but you could still
sneak thru (dodging construction vehicles, of course, which may or
may not have been safer than that intersection by the Fremont bridge,
enough rambling). So one day I was doing just that, slipping between
a semi and some large containers when my front wheel catches the
lowered blades of a forklift. Or so I figured out later; I don't
remember
any of the accident. I was pedaling at about 22 mph, and then I was on
the ground with 4-5 people looking down at me. Took me a couple
seconds to realize that much, another minute or two to realize I was
bleeding (someone's bled all over my hand, wait, I think that's my
blood,
hey, that's supposed to be on the inside), any probably
another 10 minutes or so to piece together what happened. The front rim
snapped and had a 90 degree bend in it, and the spokes all bunched up
around the bend (cut an onion in half-- looked kinda like that).
I think they blocked that passage the next day.
Rubber side down.
- jesse
Terribly simple failure (non fixie though)- a front puncture during a
crit. I was half way through a 90 degree turn at the time, leading the
bunch. I went down like a sack of potatoes. The guy immediately behind
managed to avoid me, but four riders behind him went straight into me.
The result was one frame snapped clean in two, a guy in hospital, and
large quantities of skin left on the ground. Despite being run over by
a couple of people, I wasn't seriously injured - just road rash and some
bruises.
Regards,
-Suzy
Does a serious failure of judgement count? If so, I made a mistake rinsing my tonsils with decent Champagne on New Year's Eve and, shortly thereafter, hopping on my fixie for a quick spin in the 'hood.
When someone launched a Roman candle in a nearby backyard, I panicked, imagining it was aimed at me. I flew over the handlebars upon hitting the curb and crashed headfirst into a muddy snowdrift. Dazed, I rode home to face a spouse who pitilessly shook her head as I tumbled inside.
-Dave
In keeping with the unclipping theme . . .
A couple of weeks ago, on my way to work, I went
pretty hard down Pittsburgh's Cherry Way (or Lane or
something) into a tunnel beneath a department store.
The tunnel is dark, the pavement less than perfect,
but typically it's two lanes wide and over before you
know it.
Recently, they have been doing work on the building
straddling the road; at the exit from the tunnel
(which ends at a fun little blind crosswalk people
tend to meander into against the signal utterly
unaware of the near-silent bike closing on them at 15
or 20 mph), the last twenty feet of the right lane are
now hidden beneath a scaffold that itself is hidden
behind a loose canvas wrap.
Although by then I knew well that the narrowed
single-lane exit was wide enough for only one car,
that morning I somehow persuaded myself that I could
slide between the last couple of cars and the
scaffold. Only as I came right up to what I had
thought to be a wide enough passage did I realize my
folly; it narrowed impossibly and I knew I couldn't
fit. I snapped back hard on the SPD's to lock up, but
my foot pulled before I'd bled any speed and just
before my bike pulled even with the scaffold. This of
course flung my balance right and back, a condition
made even more spectacularly precarious when the right
pedal carried me over the top, which made me feel like
a lush on stilts might feel.
Instantly, I was in the tunnel within the tunnel,
pressed and teetering between cars and scaffold, too
imbalanced to reach my brake (I was holding up by the
stem; brake down in the drops), in a space no wider
than my bars. The cars ignored the signal when it
changed, perhaps sensing my impending tragedy and
hoping to minimize their possible roles in same; hell,
I would have frozen to watch. I was so utterly sure
that my bar would catch a fold in the tarp, yank my
wheel right and fling me into one of the cars I was
almost literally squeaking by, or alternatively catch
a mirror, wrench my wheel left, and catapult me into
the canvas and the unforgiving scaffolding behind, but
somehow I managed to sneak through the bike-wide
opening, without touching anyone, scraping paint, or
otherwise ruining my morning (unless a heartrate
approaching failure counts as ruination).
I'm still half-convinced I suffered some horrible fall
that morning, and the rest of this is Act II of some
movie in which I have entered a coma and have yet to
figure it out. Come to think of it, that would
explain a lot of what's happened in the past two
weeks.
Assuming this isn't the case, I figure I owe a
sizeable debt to the fixie gods; I'll do my best not
to impose on them again any time soon.
Otherwise my relatively short fixie career has been
failure free, unless you count the two recent
occasions when my _balance_ has failed and I've
dropped myself gracelessly to the pavement at rush
hour red lights in front of dozens of car commuters I
can _almost_ hear laughing.
-Joshua
When fault is hovering, it hurts more! Crash: I was passing on the
right, and, yes, that car did a right turn. Swiftly I was on the
ground, front wheel under the car's. To add to my stupid feeling, it
was right in front of a high school's main entrance, and they were just
letting out for the day. I was entertainment!!
-David
