!Worst Bike Crashes!

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In June of last year I snapped this crank :shock: I was standing up power pedaling going though a intersection I came down

Real Hard! hit my sternum really hard think I fractured it (never got Xrays :roll: wife not happy :roll: )

I rode to work two days later.......but did not ride this Schwinn till Nov. or Dec. (Was mad a it :roll: )

Oh and put a three pc crank on :wink:
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Bendix,
The bottom image looks pretty bad. Hate to see the ending of that one.

Skipton
Ouch! I always have wondered if that had happen before. Well I guess I know now. Well nice job getting back on a bike again and then repairing and the bike you crashed on and riding it again.
 
It was 1964, and my family had just moved to California. One thing that La Habra California had that Trenton Michigan lacked was hills. Our shabby old rental house sat at the very foot of the well to do Heights. It was uphill to school, uphill to my friends' houses, and very very uphill to the top of Sierra Vista Drive. The street was steep enough for the first maybe half a mile or so, then it made a sharp right turn, and went ski slope vertical in a long sweeping left until it straightened out again for several hundred yards to the dead end at the top. It was just too cool to be believed- like having your own private roller coaster within walking distance. With great effort I could pedal the heavy old Evans tanker most of the way up the straight part, but once you hit the turn you had to get off and push. My brothers, and I used to see how far up we'd dare push before hopping on for the thrill ride to the bottom.


One October evening after dinner, I decided I'd try to make it all the way from the top of Sierra Vista with no brakes. That was the year I went as an accident victim for Halloween. I pushed up to the house which marked the highest point from which I'd run the hill, hopped on, whizzed around the turn and out onto the gentler slope of the straight section. Feeling confident, I slammed on the coaster brake, skidded the back tire around in a 'brodie', got off, and started for the top of Sierra Vista. This was going to be great. I could tell everyone I'd made it. Dare other kids to try, and then show them how it was done. I was ready. Sort of. When I actually got all the way up there I had second thoughts. This was considerably farther up the hill than I'd ever tried it before. But it had to be done. And I wasn't going to fudge it by using the brake. No way.


But I wasn't going to push my luck and pedal for extra speed either. I backed the rear wheel up against the cul de sac curb, lifted my feet, and as the bike began to roll I put them on the pedals. No brakes. It had to be no brakes or it was cheating. I was accelerating like a motorcycle when I entered the long sweeping right. I had never gone so fast on anything in my life. This was faster than a car. As fast as a plane. I held to the middle of the left side of the street for fear of an approaching car. I straightened up to make the ninety degree left hander that would shoot me out onto the straight part of the street. But centrifugal force did me in. The curb got close, and then closer, and then grabbed my front wheel. The last thing I saw was someone's black mailbox atop a four by four in the parkway. *WHOKKK* a huge flash of light, and the next thing I was aware of was someone running across their front lawn. I saw the mailbox some yards down from me on the sidewalk. I sat up, then pulled myself to my feet. Then both nostrils turned into blood faucets. I remember, with some detachment that I painted an entire square of sidewalk red with the blood that gushed out of my face. I was pretty disoriented too, but I knew what had happened. And I hadn't broken any bones, except for my nose. The mailbox absorbed much of the impact when my face knocked it off the top of the four by four. Who needs a helmet?


No one called an ambulance. The people who owned the mailbox called my folks who came and got me, and drove me over to La Mirada Hospital. The doctors gave me a quick once over, and sent me home. I had two black eyes that earned me some serious status in the seventh grade, and it was a long time before I could breathe through my nose again. The septum is still just a tiny bit crooked but not enough to notice. My face was so black and blue, that, as I said I just added a couple extra bandages, and used it for Halloween that year. The bike was ruined.

JWM
 
One time I had the front brake handle of my 10 speed fall into the spokes and lock the front brake on, sending me over the bars. Another time someone pulled out of a driveway without looking at the bottom of a hill. I pegged the front fender, bounced off the windshield and rolled in front of the now luckily stopped car. I was in my teens at the time of both accidents, and still made of rubber. Somehow there were no injuries.
Now that I think about it, bicycling has probably injured me less than any other sport. Even golf ended up getting me stitches in the head! :D
 
Wildcat said:
My brothers? They would have been guilty by association, so they were sitting at home like nothing had happened. They knew my arm was broken, they were trying to avoid a beating. As for that bike, it survived unscathed, to be involved in another horrific crash a couple years later, but involving my younger brother that time.

This isn't my crash, but it was on the same 3 speed Hercules bike that me and all of my brothers crashed on many times. After I broke my arm, the "Herc" wound up under a pile of wood in the garage for a long time. It would be resurrected every now and then and ridden until another injury occurred or it was in such disrepair it wouldn't ride. Then it would be found again and we would get it going again. Then another big crash would happen. My younger brother had pulled it out from under the woodpile when his Sears 3 speed shimano hub gave out. We worked on it, swapping the tires from his bike and getting everything else back in shape. We couldn't find the right nuts and bolts for the brake levers, so I went out back to see if I could scavenge some from one of our junk bikes in the back yard. I finally found some and went back to finish the bike, but my brother had taken off already. I figured he had found some nuts and bolts and went riding with our friend Doug who had showed up earlier on his Spyder bike. Nothing could keep up with the Herc in the neighborhood, even the 10 speed Varsity down the street couldn't catch it. When you hit 3rd gear, it left them all in the dust. That's why we kept bringing it back to life after crashes.

I almost had my bike ready to ride when Doug came running up out of breath. He was shouting something we couldn't understand, he couldn't catch his breath. Then it became understandable: "He broke his neck! He broke his neck! He broke his neck!". I ran out to the road and didn't see anything. Doug was in a state of shock, My other brothers had come out and were trying to get info from Doug. My younger brother had crashed about 1/2 mile away. Doug was so shaken up, he parked his bike there on the spot and ran all the way to our house. So, we went in and got Dad, then we all loaded up in the van and went to get him.

The nice lady who lived on the corner was way out of her comfort zone. She had a glass pitcher of water and was trying to give my brother a drink. He was out of it, flopping around like a fish out of water. She was only pouring water on his face, then backing away shrieking, then sneaking up and pouring more water. His face was beet red from the contact with the concrete street. We got the whole story from Doug, because my brother never remembered what happened. They were racing down the street and my brother had just wound out second gear and shifted into third and was pulling away from Doug, who was going as fast as his Spyder could go. Then the brake lever fell from the handlebars into the spokes of the front wheel, flipping the bike on the spot. He didn't break his neck, but he had the road rash on his face for a couple weeks. The cause of the crash was duct tape used to hold the brake lever on the handlebar.

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Mine happened in July 1974 at Lakehurst campground in Vermont. The site had an entry road that was not steep but a quarter mile long. Going down that hill was quite a thrill going as fast as you could and trying not to kill yourself at the bottom. That's because the road ended in a T and you had to turn left or right. That summer I was the coolest kid on the campground with my old/new 10 speed Raleigh Chopper. Me and my buddies figured that since I had 7 more speeds than all the other bikes, I should be hitting the sound barrier by the time I got to the bottom.

The ride down was a blast until I got to the end of the road. For those of you who rode a Raleigh Chopper, you know that the rear brake is quite useless and even more so when the handle is squeezed by the tiny hands of a 9 year old. Quite useless indeed. I hit both brakes hard once at the bottom of the road and sure enough that 16 inch dwarf of a front wheel locked up hard! The result was the same as pulling an ejection seat handle, I was catapulted in the air in a 20 feet long dive, landing on my hands in those small Vermont white pebbles. I only remember pulling those pebbles out of my skin and worrying about the condition of the Chopper. I guess I wasn't too badly injured despite the fact that we didn't have any helmets back then.

I miss that death machine. :(
 
it wasnt till after i posted my worst crash that i realized i didnt even know what a bicycle helmet was then, if they even existed then.
 
X-RAY said:
it wasnt till after i posted my worst crash that i realized i didnt even know what a bicycle helmet was then, if they even existed then.
Sure, man, with "secret writing" tinted visor, battery operated (4 C :lol: ) siren and lights, and neck wrenching weight! :lol:
 
i havent wore a helmet since they took my crayons away :mrgreen:
 

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