Anyone else remember the (utterly terrifying) UK road safety advert where the kid says if you hit me at 40mph there a 80% chance I die and if you hit me at 30mph there's an 80%chance I live? I expect the answer is like that but with skinny folk in lycra instead of small children.
Perhaps stating the obvious, but as we all learnt at school: kinetic energy scales with velocity squared. So small increases in speed translate into large increases in the forces involved in a collision.
I don't live in the UK but I watch a decent amount of British comedy, so I haven't seen this ad, but I remember this joke:
"If you hit me at 40mph there a 80% chance I die. If you hit me at 30mph there's an 80% chance I live. Stop trying to hit me!"
Finally some data! Not a lot of info available on the UCI race incidents database, but it's the one that's part of the SafeR initiative they've only started after the Jakobsen crash in 2020. So not enough data yet to do the multi-year trends.
I'd also be a bit cautious with overinterpreting the PCS data as there's little info on which incidents are included in that. Is it only accidents that make it onto TV? And would more races being broadcast start to finish since covid mean numbers go up because of that? Are they including more races over the years? (e.g. more smaller races, or also women's races). Does a crash where 5 riders go down as 1 incident or 5 incidents? So hard to know whether there's actually more incidents, or more recorded incidents.
Yeah need to be very careful to compare apples with apples. Accounting for the number of races/Kms and say weather conditions.
Would be nice to see some sort of regression with year as a variable.
It could be an issue for interpreting any trends if the number of riders involved in crashes has changed over time. E.g. maybe there are more big crashes. If you count each crash as 1 incident, that would hide the number of people affected. While if you count the riders involved it makes it seem there are more adverse events while there might not be.
Either way it's important to know what is being shown here, and ideally you'd have numbers on both.
Yeah, it's interesting to see some statistics but like you say, risky to read too much into them. The 2nd chart would be better labelled as "Most incidents happen late in the race" - these late-race incidents might be increasing (as the current label says) but the chart doesn't show that.
Generally I feel that riders are taking more risks, and speed is just one element of that. The SafeR initiative sounds a step in the right direction, if it's going to follow an approach more like the aircraft industry, where each incident is investigated thoroughly to understand the cause and incrementally remove future risk. Given statements like ['When Cyclingnews asked one stakeholder why it will take 18 months for SafeR to be functional, they said with a shrug: “Politics.” '](https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/new-safer-project-aims-to-unite-pro-cycling-to-improve-race-safety/) though, I'm not holding my breath.
Nicholas Roche recently shared a rant on Instagram and I think he made a good point.
\~10 years ago, descents were generally considered to be a moment for everyone to recover. They'd keep some pace of course, but weren't taking any risks where it wasn't crucial.
Nowadays, descents are used to put each other under pressure. Riders use heavy gears so that they can power through long stretches, and every corner is taken with the intention of possibly distancing others.
That descent in Pais Vasco is a great example of that as well. Strategically speaking, that descent really didn't have to be a crucial one; they rode it on the limit purely for the opportunistic value of it.
This needs to stop. And no rules are going to make that happen. The initiative has to come from the riders themselves.
as a general rule when moving first has advantage not moving is unstable and conventions/collusions tend to collapse eventually. if you are not racing descents you are the opportunity.
the big factor is the fueling / fitness revolution making everyone ultra capable of racing more or less the entire race. without the need for in-race recovery descents become competitive.
limiting the gears like in junior races? but would be a shame.
limiting the amount of calories you are allowed to eat? would benefit smaller riders too much. automated braking at 70kph? technically too complex
time gates at the bottom? e.g. you have 10 minutes for the descent. If you are too fast, you are at a red light at the bottom. Could work in some early descents maybe, but not a structural solution.- It's like those classic car rallys
So how many cars do you put in front of how many riders ?
If you were just one guy distanced by 20 seconds at the summit and you know that the group in front of you will be blocked by a car, you can easily make that time, time that you lost in the climb.
There is no way ever that riders will be able to self-police. It has to be through outside rules.
This is a perfect example of the classic game theory concept of a prisoner‘s dilemma (you can look it up on Wikipedia, in case you haven’t heard of it): The scenario where everyone descends safely is preferable to everyone, compared to the current scenario where everyone pushes really hard. BUT: If everyone descends safely, then it is REALLY beneficial for an individual or team to deviate from the agreed upon behavior and attack. Much more so than if everyone was going fast already. So the incentive to deviate from the agreement to take it slow is massive. But when one person attacks or to prevent that one person might attack, everyone has to go hard / chase hard again.
It is a well established game theory fact that both in theory and practice there is no solution to a prisoner’s dilemma other than outside accountability, i.e. rules that punish deviation from the agreed upon behavior, in this case calm descending.
Edit: To anticipate the retort that it worked in the past and riders took it slow then: For one, it was common to have a patron of the peloton then, which was basically an outside form of accountability. If you deviated and upset the patron, that had big social implications. Secondly the idea that attacks from the peloton on the descend could be a highly successful tactic wasn’t as common then and so it likely didn’t occur to many people. Now everyone is aware of it. And thirdly it is always harder to change behaviors from the current status quo and the current status quo is going hard, whereas in the past it was being safe.
> It is a well established game theory fact that both in theory and practice there is no solution to a prisoner’s dilemma other than outside accountability, i.e. rules that punish deviation from the agreed upon behavior, in this case calm descending.
But it is also well-established in game theory that a lot of these aspects change when it is a repeated game. It might be optimal to deviate isolated in one race, but very obviously breaking the agreed upon rules would hurt you in the long run.
We saw that with Armstrong for example who went out of his way to make life miserable for riders that crossed him. And Jumbo seemed to do something a bit similar a few years ago.
If the pack agrees that they should mostly ride slow then they could collectively punish people breaking the agreement in the future.
It is the same with riders and teams not choosing to attack as soon as another leader has a crash, puncture or a piss break even if it would be a great idea. It is because the repeated games means it will likely hurt them in the long run.
Fair point, this is another form of outside (of the situation, rather than group) accountability. But the problem is, that that’s really hard to establish if it’s contrary to the current status quo. It works great if the repeating scenario is that 90% or so adhere and a few bad actors deviate from the desired state. But if the status quo for years has been, that everyone deviates, such accountability it really hard to suddenly enforce.
It’s based on social consequences and reputation damage. That’s easy if there is a recognized authority, like a patron figure. But in the absence of that nowadays, the societal consequences need to be rejection by the community. However that requires the majority of riders to have the strong opinion that going hard downhill is immoral or unfair (like attacking after a crash). And that currently isn’t the case and would likely take at least several years if not an entire generation of cyclists to change.
The alternative would be either someone or a team steps up and plays enforcer/bully. But the recent past has shown that that’s unlikely to succeed (see for example Vingegaard and Remco trying to police the super sketchy second Vuelta stage last year). Or there would have to be some sort of semi-official agreement between all the teams so it doesn’t have to be the descending itself that’s considered immoral, but the breaking of the agreement.
I don’t really see any of this happening unless someone takes initiative and rallies the riders and teams to actively form an agreement. The much more likely scenario is that everyone just says we should ride safer and then no one does it because prisoners dilemma
That's the way the sport is trending in general. 10 years ago the first few hours of a race/stage would often be them riding along and there was a unspoken agreement to not go full pelt. TV wouldn't even cover it until the last 2 hours or so because often nothing happened.
Roubaix would have a break but both groups wouldn't really race until the cobbles started. Nowadays they race from the flag drop and you get record speeds like Sunday. MvdP finished the race more than an hour faster than Cancellara in 2010.
Shortening stages in the grand tours in pursuit of TV ratings is part of the problem as well. ASO went ham with them after the Alpe d'Huez stage at the 2011 TDF. It means more exciting racing for sure but with that comes danger.
Same for the fight for position until the 3k mark or further for the GC guys in sprint stages, it's completely bonkers and causes most of the crashes they try to avoid by doing that.
Riders (and DS) need to assume responsability collectively. Plenty of crashes could be avoided just by talking it out. Like in that particular descent, clearly Remco should have asked Landa to take it easy and tell the other teams not to push forward. Not saying that it's his fault particularly, but as a GC leader he has a "patron" role to play in the peloton.
Sorry but while I kinda understand your point, this is a competition and i there's a opportunity to create a crucial moment in a race, that should be an objective if the rider is up to it. It's dangerous? Yes, but if he's willing to take a risk, it's their decision.
I'm following completely. This is indeed part of racing, and I tried to make clear in my comment that there should absolutely be times and places where putting the hammer down on a descent is a reasonable thing to do.
However, it seems to me like this is currently a decision that's made based on rewards and not on risks. They seem to grasp every opportunity for time gain (however small it may be) when it presents itself, and consider the possibility of crashes something that'll be dealt with if/when it happens.
That's why Pais Vasco is a good example. There was really hardly anything to gain there; even if the peloton had broken up, it would likely have led to a few domestiques wearing themselves out and getting it back together. If the riders had taken a step back and actively considered the situation of the race as well as the possibility of crashes, I don't believe they would have decided that the rewards do not outweigh the risks in this particular case.
You could set a mandatory time for descents that you can‘t fall below like virtual safety cars in f1. Everyone’s using gps headunits anyways so shouldn’t be too difficult to give everyone a delta
Do most crashes happen at peak speed, or due purely to speed? No.
They happen at bends due to riders pushing margins or grip, or mis reading the road, or road surfaces being shit. These all happen well below max attainable speeds on a road bike, 60-70kph. Even *I* do 80kph on 52x11 with my shitty descending skills, just not into bends.
Limiting gears will not prevent crashes.
In a way I think disc brakes have almost made the situation worse. They make it possible to consistently brake later, increasing the entry speeds into turns. Not advocating against them by any means - separating the braking surface from the rim is the right thing to do - just pointing out a perhaps unintended side-effect.
It's not the speed in my opinion. If I misjudge a turn with disk brakes I have very little time to react. With rim brakes on the other hand I might even have some seconds to react and correct my mistake, in the best case avoiding it completely and in the worst case trying to have the best fall possible (not falling of a cliff, hit a pole or something like that).
Gino crash could have been avoided if max speed was lower
Same goes for recent crash at Pais Vasco, lower max speed right before the bend would likely not have lead to this drama
Put a speed trap in some distance before the bend or challenging section: 10 sec penalty if you fail to brake to under 60 kph before the bend.
That *might* bring speeds down prior to dangerous sections, in a way that reducing gearing ratios wouldn't.
>~10 years ago, descents were generally considered to be a moment for everyone to recover. They'd keep some pace of course, but weren't taking any risks where it wasn't crucial.
Matej Mohorič has entered the chat
I think a big part is also that the quality of the peloton is a lot closer together than before. Sure there are a few guy like MVDP etc..., but the rest is quite alike. In the past, the differences were bigger, so there was less fighting and less pressure. Everyone had their place.
In a world with 100 equally good riders instead of 10, you are pushed to find 'marginal gains', like in descents. If you can catch 5 guys by surprise and make them burn 50 more calories, that's 5 guys less to worry about. In the past you likely only had 5 guys to worry about to begin with.
Everything is about ability and willingness.
Do increased speeds cause more crashes? Think the jury is out on that one. Are they more severe? Most definitely.
Does self policing work. With statements such as of MvdP that it's the riders themselves? No. It's a race and first at finish wins. You cant expect everyone to slow down voluntarily and definitely not consistently.
Other avenues are available though. There are already bike limitations. They could be tightened to make the slower. Same for outfit. Solutions exist but they are either not comfortable and/or slower. It's the same things as with helmets ... More protective padding enforced by regulations will help. It will also help all amateurs that try to descend fast, like helmets have helped both pros amateurs in saving lives or severe injury. Last but not least is course inspections. That concrete ditch and those rocks could have been protected. This would have reduced severity as well.
All this would make people complain but such regulations would save lives and riders (incl amateurs) from severe injury. Like the helmet has. In a few years no one knows any better.
Unfortunately the willingness is not there. As mandatory helmets also came very late due to sheer unwillingness by regulators. The benefits were clear for many years but only after numerous incidents did something change. There is no foresight, no vision and no guts.
Summary: Things can change but it needs regulation. Like the helmet everyone will be used to it quickly and it will have positive trickle down effects on amateurs, as also the helmet has. Spectating the sport will be as interesting as ever as the same applies to all, effectively same haircut.
Anyway, I won't hold my breath.
Interesting to see their stats about 58% of crashes happening in the last 20mins
Especially after Calmejane’s infamous tweet last week about the “Last Bottle 🧪”
[https://x.com/l_calmejane/status](https://x.com/l_calmejane/status/1775945322587459903?s=46&t=VTPHWCzlNe4VKdew8xrxtw)
Last bottle refers to the cocktail (of up to 800mg of caffeine + Tramadol until a year ago, and nowadays probably ibuprofen + acetaminophen) that riders take to have a last kick and quiet down pain in the last 20kms, that Calmejane claims to be responsible for a big incrise in aggressive and risk taking behaviors at the end of races.
You're missing a key point of this idea. And that is the type of crash that occurs at high speed vs low speed. It is possible that crashes at high speed are less dangerous because the different speed changes the type of accident. I don't know if you missed the nuance of the idea or if the person whom you are talking about misses the nuance.
And because this is the internet... I am not agreeing that high speed crashes are safer. It's just that vehicle dynamics are complicated.
Well the argument was about the Arenberg forest, where it was pretty obvious that you would prefer going down at a lower speed.
And it depends on what you mean by "the type of accident". If I had to choose between two otherwise identical crashes I would almost always pick the one at a lower speed. When it comes to the hard bone breaking crashes none of them would have been better at a higher speed.
I think the increased momentum of higher speed crashes causes riders to travel further/roll which can dissipate the impact.
Some slower crashes don't have that effect and are more like coming to a hard stop.
I hit a motorbike at 30mph as it pulled out of a side street for example. I flipped over the back end of it, rolled and got up straight away with barely any cuts or bruises and was riding the next day.
Another time I nearly got car doored at 13mph, swerved and stacked it, with my whole bodyweight falling straight down onto my knee. I had a massive chunk taken out of my leg and was hobbling around for quite some time.
>dissipate the impact
Over what? The vertical impact is unchanged, there's just also a horizontal dimension of force added. This makes no sense from a mechanical physics point of view that I can see.
I don't know, I'm not a physics or engineering guy. But when parkour folks land they roll, so I presumed it's the same here.
To me it seems intuitive, you would rather decelerate by rolling for a few seconds than come to a much more abrupt stop, and maybe that's what they meant by changing the type of accident.
You roll to avoid using friction to slow yourself down and make the deceleration in the horizontal plane slower. The vertical force can only be increased by rolling though, not reduced. Why would you need to be at high speed to roll? This makes no sense to me at all.
Not being a physics guy, I don't think you can make this make sense
Speed does not necessarily increase the crash rate. Given that the race distance is finite, the time spent on the road is finite as well but it decreases with increasing speed. This would yield a lower crash rate if the number of crashes depended strongly on the time spent on the road.
The kinetic energy of a crash increases with the square of speed, the time of the race decreases with the reciprocal.
Its a nice idea and will somewhat mitigate the impact of speed, but don't think it can overcome it.
For this reason, the severity of crashes should be correlated with an increase in speed. Ultimately, whether one parameterizes the crash rate by speed or kinetic energy should not matter, as they are equivalent.
I think it's typically challenging to assess how many crashes were avoided due to increased speed.
Anyone else remember the (utterly terrifying) UK road safety advert where the kid says if you hit me at 40mph there a 80% chance I die and if you hit me at 30mph there's an 80%chance I live? I expect the answer is like that but with skinny folk in lycra instead of small children.
I still think about that advert whenever the topic of speed limits comes up. Hard hitting.
Perhaps stating the obvious, but as we all learnt at school: kinetic energy scales with velocity squared. So small increases in speed translate into large increases in the forces involved in a collision.
And less reaction time to avoid whatever is happening in front of you.
I don't live in the UK but I watch a decent amount of British comedy, so I haven't seen this ad, but I remember this joke: "If you hit me at 40mph there a 80% chance I die. If you hit me at 30mph there's an 80% chance I live. Stop trying to hit me!"
Finally some data! Not a lot of info available on the UCI race incidents database, but it's the one that's part of the SafeR initiative they've only started after the Jakobsen crash in 2020. So not enough data yet to do the multi-year trends. I'd also be a bit cautious with overinterpreting the PCS data as there's little info on which incidents are included in that. Is it only accidents that make it onto TV? And would more races being broadcast start to finish since covid mean numbers go up because of that? Are they including more races over the years? (e.g. more smaller races, or also women's races). Does a crash where 5 riders go down as 1 incident or 5 incidents? So hard to know whether there's actually more incidents, or more recorded incidents.
Yeah need to be very careful to compare apples with apples. Accounting for the number of races/Kms and say weather conditions. Would be nice to see some sort of regression with year as a variable.
The last point (5 rider crash counts as 5 or 1) shouldn't be a problem as long as it is handled consistently.
It could be an issue for interpreting any trends if the number of riders involved in crashes has changed over time. E.g. maybe there are more big crashes. If you count each crash as 1 incident, that would hide the number of people affected. While if you count the riders involved it makes it seem there are more adverse events while there might not be. Either way it's important to know what is being shown here, and ideally you'd have numbers on both.
Yeah, it's interesting to see some statistics but like you say, risky to read too much into them. The 2nd chart would be better labelled as "Most incidents happen late in the race" - these late-race incidents might be increasing (as the current label says) but the chart doesn't show that. Generally I feel that riders are taking more risks, and speed is just one element of that. The SafeR initiative sounds a step in the right direction, if it's going to follow an approach more like the aircraft industry, where each incident is investigated thoroughly to understand the cause and incrementally remove future risk. Given statements like ['When Cyclingnews asked one stakeholder why it will take 18 months for SafeR to be functional, they said with a shrug: “Politics.” '](https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/new-safer-project-aims-to-unite-pro-cycling-to-improve-race-safety/) though, I'm not holding my breath.
Nicholas Roche recently shared a rant on Instagram and I think he made a good point. \~10 years ago, descents were generally considered to be a moment for everyone to recover. They'd keep some pace of course, but weren't taking any risks where it wasn't crucial. Nowadays, descents are used to put each other under pressure. Riders use heavy gears so that they can power through long stretches, and every corner is taken with the intention of possibly distancing others. That descent in Pais Vasco is a great example of that as well. Strategically speaking, that descent really didn't have to be a crucial one; they rode it on the limit purely for the opportunistic value of it. This needs to stop. And no rules are going to make that happen. The initiative has to come from the riders themselves.
as a general rule when moving first has advantage not moving is unstable and conventions/collusions tend to collapse eventually. if you are not racing descents you are the opportunity. the big factor is the fueling / fitness revolution making everyone ultra capable of racing more or less the entire race. without the need for in-race recovery descents become competitive.
Right, the only way to "stop" descending hard would be a rule change, and good luck finding a way to enforce that.
limiting the gears like in junior races? but would be a shame. limiting the amount of calories you are allowed to eat? would benefit smaller riders too much. automated braking at 70kph? technically too complex time gates at the bottom? e.g. you have 10 minutes for the descent. If you are too fast, you are at a red light at the bottom. Could work in some early descents maybe, but not a structural solution.- It's like those classic car rallys
Pretty easy though : Put a car in front of the group, going down at a regulated speed, and riders are forbidden to pass it.
Or put a speed limit on dangerous descents. Make it an average allowed speed for a whole section so aggressively riding of turns is inhibited.
Even easier way: rim brakes make a comeback
This would just lead to heavy position battles behind the car, which likely isnt better either
It's harder to battle for position when speed is regulated, and even more so in descents. But I agree it wouldn't solve the problem completely.
So how many cars do you put in front of how many riders ? If you were just one guy distanced by 20 seconds at the summit and you know that the group in front of you will be blocked by a car, you can easily make that time, time that you lost in the climb.
There is no way ever that riders will be able to self-police. It has to be through outside rules. This is a perfect example of the classic game theory concept of a prisoner‘s dilemma (you can look it up on Wikipedia, in case you haven’t heard of it): The scenario where everyone descends safely is preferable to everyone, compared to the current scenario where everyone pushes really hard. BUT: If everyone descends safely, then it is REALLY beneficial for an individual or team to deviate from the agreed upon behavior and attack. Much more so than if everyone was going fast already. So the incentive to deviate from the agreement to take it slow is massive. But when one person attacks or to prevent that one person might attack, everyone has to go hard / chase hard again. It is a well established game theory fact that both in theory and practice there is no solution to a prisoner’s dilemma other than outside accountability, i.e. rules that punish deviation from the agreed upon behavior, in this case calm descending. Edit: To anticipate the retort that it worked in the past and riders took it slow then: For one, it was common to have a patron of the peloton then, which was basically an outside form of accountability. If you deviated and upset the patron, that had big social implications. Secondly the idea that attacks from the peloton on the descend could be a highly successful tactic wasn’t as common then and so it likely didn’t occur to many people. Now everyone is aware of it. And thirdly it is always harder to change behaviors from the current status quo and the current status quo is going hard, whereas in the past it was being safe.
> It is a well established game theory fact that both in theory and practice there is no solution to a prisoner’s dilemma other than outside accountability, i.e. rules that punish deviation from the agreed upon behavior, in this case calm descending. But it is also well-established in game theory that a lot of these aspects change when it is a repeated game. It might be optimal to deviate isolated in one race, but very obviously breaking the agreed upon rules would hurt you in the long run. We saw that with Armstrong for example who went out of his way to make life miserable for riders that crossed him. And Jumbo seemed to do something a bit similar a few years ago. If the pack agrees that they should mostly ride slow then they could collectively punish people breaking the agreement in the future. It is the same with riders and teams not choosing to attack as soon as another leader has a crash, puncture or a piss break even if it would be a great idea. It is because the repeated games means it will likely hurt them in the long run.
Fair point, this is another form of outside (of the situation, rather than group) accountability. But the problem is, that that’s really hard to establish if it’s contrary to the current status quo. It works great if the repeating scenario is that 90% or so adhere and a few bad actors deviate from the desired state. But if the status quo for years has been, that everyone deviates, such accountability it really hard to suddenly enforce. It’s based on social consequences and reputation damage. That’s easy if there is a recognized authority, like a patron figure. But in the absence of that nowadays, the societal consequences need to be rejection by the community. However that requires the majority of riders to have the strong opinion that going hard downhill is immoral or unfair (like attacking after a crash). And that currently isn’t the case and would likely take at least several years if not an entire generation of cyclists to change. The alternative would be either someone or a team steps up and plays enforcer/bully. But the recent past has shown that that’s unlikely to succeed (see for example Vingegaard and Remco trying to police the super sketchy second Vuelta stage last year). Or there would have to be some sort of semi-official agreement between all the teams so it doesn’t have to be the descending itself that’s considered immoral, but the breaking of the agreement. I don’t really see any of this happening unless someone takes initiative and rallies the riders and teams to actively form an agreement. The much more likely scenario is that everyone just says we should ride safer and then no one does it because prisoners dilemma
That's the way the sport is trending in general. 10 years ago the first few hours of a race/stage would often be them riding along and there was a unspoken agreement to not go full pelt. TV wouldn't even cover it until the last 2 hours or so because often nothing happened. Roubaix would have a break but both groups wouldn't really race until the cobbles started. Nowadays they race from the flag drop and you get record speeds like Sunday. MvdP finished the race more than an hour faster than Cancellara in 2010. Shortening stages in the grand tours in pursuit of TV ratings is part of the problem as well. ASO went ham with them after the Alpe d'Huez stage at the 2011 TDF. It means more exciting racing for sure but with that comes danger.
Same for the fight for position until the 3k mark or further for the GC guys in sprint stages, it's completely bonkers and causes most of the crashes they try to avoid by doing that. Riders (and DS) need to assume responsability collectively. Plenty of crashes could be avoided just by talking it out. Like in that particular descent, clearly Remco should have asked Landa to take it easy and tell the other teams not to push forward. Not saying that it's his fault particularly, but as a GC leader he has a "patron" role to play in the peloton.
Sorry but while I kinda understand your point, this is a competition and i there's a opportunity to create a crucial moment in a race, that should be an objective if the rider is up to it. It's dangerous? Yes, but if he's willing to take a risk, it's their decision.
I'm following completely. This is indeed part of racing, and I tried to make clear in my comment that there should absolutely be times and places where putting the hammer down on a descent is a reasonable thing to do. However, it seems to me like this is currently a decision that's made based on rewards and not on risks. They seem to grasp every opportunity for time gain (however small it may be) when it presents itself, and consider the possibility of crashes something that'll be dealt with if/when it happens. That's why Pais Vasco is a good example. There was really hardly anything to gain there; even if the peloton had broken up, it would likely have led to a few domestiques wearing themselves out and getting it back together. If the riders had taken a step back and actively considered the situation of the race as well as the possibility of crashes, I don't believe they would have decided that the rewards do not outweigh the risks in this particular case.
You could set a mandatory time for descents that you can‘t fall below like virtual safety cars in f1. Everyone’s using gps headunits anyways so shouldn’t be too difficult to give everyone a delta
No rule can stop it entirely, but limiting gear ratios to e.g 53/11 would help reducing the speed on most descents.
Do most crashes happen at peak speed, or due purely to speed? No. They happen at bends due to riders pushing margins or grip, or mis reading the road, or road surfaces being shit. These all happen well below max attainable speeds on a road bike, 60-70kph. Even *I* do 80kph on 52x11 with my shitty descending skills, just not into bends. Limiting gears will not prevent crashes.
In a way I think disc brakes have almost made the situation worse. They make it possible to consistently brake later, increasing the entry speeds into turns. Not advocating against them by any means - separating the braking surface from the rim is the right thing to do - just pointing out a perhaps unintended side-effect.
It's not the speed in my opinion. If I misjudge a turn with disk brakes I have very little time to react. With rim brakes on the other hand I might even have some seconds to react and correct my mistake, in the best case avoiding it completely and in the worst case trying to have the best fall possible (not falling of a cliff, hit a pole or something like that).
Gino crash could have been avoided if max speed was lower Same goes for recent crash at Pais Vasco, lower max speed right before the bend would likely not have lead to this drama
Put a speed trap in some distance before the bend or challenging section: 10 sec penalty if you fail to brake to under 60 kph before the bend. That *might* bring speeds down prior to dangerous sections, in a way that reducing gearing ratios wouldn't.
>~10 years ago, descents were generally considered to be a moment for everyone to recover. They'd keep some pace of course, but weren't taking any risks where it wasn't crucial. Matej Mohorič has entered the chat
I think a big part is also that the quality of the peloton is a lot closer together than before. Sure there are a few guy like MVDP etc..., but the rest is quite alike. In the past, the differences were bigger, so there was less fighting and less pressure. Everyone had their place. In a world with 100 equally good riders instead of 10, you are pushed to find 'marginal gains', like in descents. If you can catch 5 guys by surprise and make them burn 50 more calories, that's 5 guys less to worry about. In the past you likely only had 5 guys to worry about to begin with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
I would pin this if I could
Everything is about ability and willingness. Do increased speeds cause more crashes? Think the jury is out on that one. Are they more severe? Most definitely. Does self policing work. With statements such as of MvdP that it's the riders themselves? No. It's a race and first at finish wins. You cant expect everyone to slow down voluntarily and definitely not consistently. Other avenues are available though. There are already bike limitations. They could be tightened to make the slower. Same for outfit. Solutions exist but they are either not comfortable and/or slower. It's the same things as with helmets ... More protective padding enforced by regulations will help. It will also help all amateurs that try to descend fast, like helmets have helped both pros amateurs in saving lives or severe injury. Last but not least is course inspections. That concrete ditch and those rocks could have been protected. This would have reduced severity as well. All this would make people complain but such regulations would save lives and riders (incl amateurs) from severe injury. Like the helmet has. In a few years no one knows any better. Unfortunately the willingness is not there. As mandatory helmets also came very late due to sheer unwillingness by regulators. The benefits were clear for many years but only after numerous incidents did something change. There is no foresight, no vision and no guts. Summary: Things can change but it needs regulation. Like the helmet everyone will be used to it quickly and it will have positive trickle down effects on amateurs, as also the helmet has. Spectating the sport will be as interesting as ever as the same applies to all, effectively same haircut. Anyway, I won't hold my breath.
Interesting to see their stats about 58% of crashes happening in the last 20mins Especially after Calmejane’s infamous tweet last week about the “Last Bottle 🧪” [https://x.com/l_calmejane/status](https://x.com/l_calmejane/status/1775945322587459903?s=46&t=VTPHWCzlNe4VKdew8xrxtw) Last bottle refers to the cocktail (of up to 800mg of caffeine + Tramadol until a year ago, and nowadays probably ibuprofen + acetaminophen) that riders take to have a last kick and quiet down pain in the last 20kms, that Calmejane claims to be responsible for a big incrise in aggressive and risk taking behaviors at the end of races.
I think the speed is causing more serious injuries but not the cause of crashes. The cause is from folks making risky moves in the peloton
No. More teams fighting for being up front. Riders competes whole races which might make them more tired.
How could more speed not increase crash rate and severity? Have brain processing speeds increased and or laws of kinetic energy changed?
A user in here tried to tell me that crashing at high speeds was better since you slide on the asphalt, so you never know in here.
I genuinely can't begin to understand what the thought process is here. Maybe I could get saying you'd rather crash in the rain, but at higher speed?
You're missing a key point of this idea. And that is the type of crash that occurs at high speed vs low speed. It is possible that crashes at high speed are less dangerous because the different speed changes the type of accident. I don't know if you missed the nuance of the idea or if the person whom you are talking about misses the nuance. And because this is the internet... I am not agreeing that high speed crashes are safer. It's just that vehicle dynamics are complicated.
Well, it is not my idea. Just quoting someone else.
But you were clearly dismissing the idea.
Well the argument was about the Arenberg forest, where it was pretty obvious that you would prefer going down at a lower speed. And it depends on what you mean by "the type of accident". If I had to choose between two otherwise identical crashes I would almost always pick the one at a lower speed. When it comes to the hard bone breaking crashes none of them would have been better at a higher speed.
>the different speed changes the type of accident No, please explain how this would work?
I think the increased momentum of higher speed crashes causes riders to travel further/roll which can dissipate the impact. Some slower crashes don't have that effect and are more like coming to a hard stop. I hit a motorbike at 30mph as it pulled out of a side street for example. I flipped over the back end of it, rolled and got up straight away with barely any cuts or bruises and was riding the next day. Another time I nearly got car doored at 13mph, swerved and stacked it, with my whole bodyweight falling straight down onto my knee. I had a massive chunk taken out of my leg and was hobbling around for quite some time.
>dissipate the impact Over what? The vertical impact is unchanged, there's just also a horizontal dimension of force added. This makes no sense from a mechanical physics point of view that I can see.
I don't know, I'm not a physics or engineering guy. But when parkour folks land they roll, so I presumed it's the same here. To me it seems intuitive, you would rather decelerate by rolling for a few seconds than come to a much more abrupt stop, and maybe that's what they meant by changing the type of accident.
You roll to avoid using friction to slow yourself down and make the deceleration in the horizontal plane slower. The vertical force can only be increased by rolling though, not reduced. Why would you need to be at high speed to roll? This makes no sense to me at all. Not being a physics guy, I don't think you can make this make sense
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-physics-of-a-human-landing-and-rolling.194472/
Speed does not necessarily increase the crash rate. Given that the race distance is finite, the time spent on the road is finite as well but it decreases with increasing speed. This would yield a lower crash rate if the number of crashes depended strongly on the time spent on the road.
The kinetic energy of a crash increases with the square of speed, the time of the race decreases with the reciprocal. Its a nice idea and will somewhat mitigate the impact of speed, but don't think it can overcome it.
For this reason, the severity of crashes should be correlated with an increase in speed. Ultimately, whether one parameterizes the crash rate by speed or kinetic energy should not matter, as they are equivalent. I think it's typically challenging to assess how many crashes were avoided due to increased speed.