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Crashes, what can be done?

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Calmejane should have been allowed to punch the idiot without worrying about getting punished.
Also, dunno if the idiot was actually trying to help, just in a rather unhelpful way, but it sure looked to me like he was more concerned with getting his old jerseys off the ground, than with helping the rider he'd just caused to crash untangle the rope from his bike.
Old jerseys might be worth more to him than Calmejane, you don’t strap jerseys to a stick and wave them around in front of a rider unless you value them more than a human life.
 

Finally, after all this years, saying that nothing can be done, they finally did something! And on top of that said it's only the start. So there you have it. Something can be done and they did it. No going back now.

The age of improving safety in pro peloton has started. In my opinion this is the same revolution as the one where doping was a non issue and transitioning to the culture where it was acknowledged it is an issue was rocky.

So in regards to barriers. I remember the common excuse. When we started this debates. That is you can't have 200km of barriers. And people saying that felt rather smart by saying it. Now when we understand the issues involved better. We know that you don't need 200km of barriers. For start a couple of meters at exposed sections will do. The same with holes in the road. You can't have 200km of perfect roads. What you can have is a threshold for liability. When it comes to dangerous sections like demanding descends.

I am glad that governing bodies are finally doing something. It's a shame they opposed such changes in the past. Being involved in such discussions and seeing the culture around safety in pro peloton first hand. I can understand on why.

On top of that riders from pro peloton are more and more demanding things like relegation. And are saying publicly that current system is not good. And they are not any less man because of it. That is what being a man is all about. What we have now is what children would do. Not man.

That i guess leaves the fans. Here the changes will likely take longer. But with proper education we will turn morons into intelligent and well informed participants. I know some of you are a bit skeptical about this last part. As people will stand in front of train to make a selfie. But the selfie culture is something you are not born with. It's taught. As such it can indeed change.

And obviously apparel will improve/change in the future. Some will just have to cope with that. Like it was with helmets.
 
Two major things happened this season.

First one being riders realized that this is first and foremost an internal thing. That is they need to stand united in speaking out and demanding for things to improve in regards to safety. They are now able to put their partial interest aside and not only demand but achieve results. This is a huge leap forward. Likely riders will be attacked for it from all sides. Important thing is to not give in and not to attack themself from the inside. Like it worked in the past and UCI, rider syndicates, fans ... Laughing at it.

Second one was seen partially here and there but is best described on what happened on stage 2 at Vuetla 2023. That is riders achieved for the whole format of a (semi) sprinting stage to change. That is GC fight was long over, before the finish line, hence meaningless and stupid GC crashes where prevented, at the end of the stage, due to GC riders not having any real initiative to be there. Simple rules and strong regulation should sort out and reduce the crashes in the remaining bunch sprinting.

Additional minor achievement was UCI formed a task force and result was some innovation in regards to barriers on exposed sections at the Tour. But it now looks like they lost the momentum.

In regards to more protective apparel. Here still nothing was done. And this is the area that will improve things the most. So hopefully some major breakthrough soon.

In regards to the fans. I feel that the very first thing to address is more education provided through popular channels in regards to the selfie culture. Always keep your eyes on the peloton. Not on a camera or cardboard.
 
Two major things happened this season.

First one being riders realized that this is first and foremost an internal thing. That is they need to stand united in speaking out and demanding for things to improve in regards to safety. They are now able to put their partial interest aside and not only demand but achieve results. This is a huge leap forward. Likely riders will be attacked for it from all sides. Important thing is to not give in and not to attack themself from the inside. Like it worked in the past and UCI, rider syndicates, fans ... Laughing at it.

Second one was seen partially here and there but is best described on what happened on stage 2 at Vuetla 2023. That is riders achieved for the whole format of a (semi) sprinting stage to change. That is GC fight was long over, before the finish line, hence meaningless and stupid GC crashes where prevented, at the end of the stage, due to GC riders not having any real initiative to be there. Simple rules and strong regulation should sort out and reduce the crashes in the remaining bunch sprinting.

Additional minor achievement was UCI formed a task force and result was some innovation in regards to barriers on exposed sections at the Tour. But it now looks like they lost the momentum.

In regards to more protective apparel. Here still nothing was done. And this is the area that will improve things the most. So hopefully some major breakthrough soon.

In regards to the fans. I feel that the very first thing to address is more education provided through popular channels in regards to the selfie culture. Always keep your eyes on the peloton. Not on a camera or cardboard.
Two things I want to say-the riders are only reacting to stage 2 because of the atrocity of stage 1. Guarantee if that stars at a normal time stage 2 goes off as normal, as it should, seeing how the finish was. Second-how many times do we need to say protective gear is utterly pointless and is not going to be implemented soon.
 
Two things I want to say-the riders are only reacting to stage 2 because of the atrocity of stage 1. Guarantee if that stars at a normal time stage 2 goes off as normal, as it should, seeing how the finish was.

Still they are doing it this season extensively. They realized the joke was on them and nobody really did anything meaningful, to try to improve their safety. After such realization there is no going back.

Second-how many times do we need to say protective gear is utterly pointless and is not going to be implemented soon.

Yeah. Better to remove the helmet too. So the answer to your question is. It's pointless to fight it. It will happen sooner rather then later.

Lots of things are being done to improve helmets.

For example?
 
The 9 k GC neutralization in the Vuelta worked.
Honestly, it didn't work:
the stretch between km 40-km 9 was full of roundabouts and road furniture, very slippery, and e.g. Roglic and Thomas crashed. They rode it fairly hard (averaging around 50K an hour) as DSM still wanted to chase Piccolo.

So how did it work? Maybe, just maybe it prevented any more crashes in the last 3K, but it seemed pretty OK to ride that part at racing speed.

So to conclude: I don't see how it worked, in this case. It will probably work better in flat stages, but it is much harder to organize / agree in the peloton among GC contenders to let go a peloton on the flat, than it was while going up Montjuic. And the whole thing with neutralizing GC is you want it for the sprint stages, not for the stages where something could happen among GC guys like on Montjuic.
 
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Lots of things are being done to improve helmets.
For example?


 
@RedheadDane

Yesterday i would agree. Today i have seen riders asking questions like who are the people responsible for safety in pro peloton? Nobody seemed to know. Riders putting their partial interests aside and speaking out. Achieving things.

After all we have seen a sprint stage on where GC riders with no real initiative to contest the sprint, due to poor safety, where separated from actual contesters. Now people are claiming it didn't work. And the earth is still flat.

Somebody has actually put some air in the bags and secured the exposed sections with such barriers at the Tour. Things that felt are light years away. All that already happened.

So. Improvements in apparel are in my opinion closer that one might think. As this is what will actually prevent the injury from happening most of the times. Protective apparel. Maybe next season already. We'll see.
 
I'm willing to bet that protective collarbone apparel will not be added to the péloton next season.

There was nothing wrong with stage 2, we've seen races like Gent-Wevelgem 2015 or stage 11 of the 2010 Giro where they had to deal with worse for longer. If stage 1 isn't a complete mess, the riders just suck it up and ride stage 2. But after the complete farce of the TTT, the riders weren't happy and, as usual, the organisers rolled over and played dead. There was nothing stopping them doing something like in stage 1 of the 2020 Tour, and neutralising things until they got to the final few kilometres where the weather was less bad. Then it'd have been infinitely better: the part of the course that was actually dangerous would have been ridden safely, and the part of the course that wasn't would have been raced. Instead they raced the part that was dangerous and then sat up and scratched their butts on the part that was safe.

If you want to make flat stages safe for GC contenders, since in reality that was your original crusade in this thread (seeing as apparently we don't care if sprinters get injured?), then the onus is on the organisers to arrange safer finishes. And stop riders from divebombing corners like absolute morons, because that's not the organisers' fault. If we're pinning that kind of thing on the organisers, then why not just make them set 'liaison' stages where the GC doesn't matter, like in Paris-Dakar, and the GC riders can have a nice cyclotourist stroll like they did on the finishing circuit on Sunday, the sprinters can turn on the jets in the last few kilometres, and you don't have to worry your sweet little head about Primož Roglič falling over.

Or hell, just do the whole thing on Zwift to get rid of that pesky danger factor, that seems to be the way the péloton is leaning.
 
Somebody has actually put some air in the bags and secured the exposed sections with such barriers at the Tour. Things that felt are light years away. All that already happened.

And all that's being done to prevent serious injury. If it prevents a few collarbones from being broken, that's a nice added bonus, but nobody considers preventing collarbones from being broken the number one priority.

Sure, I get that a broken collarbone is probably quite painful, and it's annoying to be out for around 6 weeks, but on the grand scale of things, they're not that serious an injury.
 

I won't link the picture directly but it shows again, that current cycling apparel, regarding protection, is the worst piece of crap ever made in human history. Would be better if the colors would be sprayed on. Then at least the lacquer could offer some minimal protection against road rash.
 
I only skipped through today's stage, but I was rather worried by the very large cuboid block on De Bod's side/back. Obviously more than just the radio: I guess some kind of data monitoring. I see similar (but smaller) on rugby jerseys, which also make me nervous on the players' behalf. Going over on one's side and back in not unheard of (see Plapp today for evidence): how much worse could that be when such a bulky piece of hardware is at the side of the rider's jersey?
(Yes, this is about minimising injury rather than avoiding crashes, but this thread went down that diversion a long time ago)
 
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So theres an article on the main site discussing how the mouthguards they use in Rugby could help cyclists. Apparently they have now have technology in them which tells you if the player has suffered a concussion or not & hence why they might be useful for cycling.

I don't know much about this sort of thing, but in theory it sounds good, it however doesn't seem very useful for cyclists. How are you meant to eat & drink with those things in your mouth?
 
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