Crashes, what can be done?

Page 40 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
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?
Does it check concussion based on impact?
 
Does it check concussion based on impact?
"The smart mouthguards will work in real time to send alerts of high forces to the independent matchday doctor. This will, for the first time, enable players who have experienced a high acceleration event, but not shown symptoms or been seen by broadcast cameras, to be taken off and assessed."


With so many useless tech that cycling industry tries to put forward, no reason to not have this kind of technology implemented on helmets.
 
"The smart mouthguards will work in real time to send alerts of high forces to the independent matchday doctor. This will, for the first time, enable players who have experienced a high acceleration event, but not shown symptoms or been seen by broadcast cameras, to be taken off and assessed."


With so many useless tech that cycling industry tries to put forward, no reason to not have this kind of technology implemented on helmets.
Cool tech, but for a cycling race of 5-7 hours... Seems a long time to keep a mouthguard in.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
Cool tech, but for a cycling race of 5-7 hours... Seems a long time to keep a mouthguard in.
No need for mouthguards as there is already tech on the market designed for bicycle helmets.


Of course it wouldn't be a good option if it sends an alert for all kinds of crashes, but from the information provided in that article, it is only activated in crashes that generates forces high enough that are susceptible of causing brain injuries.
 
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?

Could be. One detail i see here is rugby is a contact sport on where cycling is not. When a cyclist crashes usually a doctor is there to asses. So as a gadget to tell the severity and based on that to maybe put some protocol in place, that might make sense for cycling. Beyond that the impact likely to be low in terms of preventing the damages.

So yeah, why not. At this point i would support just about anything that seems to make at least some sesne, contrary to doing nothing.
 
So today i tuned in to watch PN on Eurosport and what happened is instead of commercial break an educational video was presented, targeted toward cycling fans visiting cycling races, mostly on what behaviour should be avoided. I must admit i was overwhelmed.

Keep up the good work.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pastronef
How can the UCI and the riders union or whatever they call themselves justify TTs the way they are being ridden today?
Look at the close ups of the riders, NO WAY they can see where they are going.
They must just be getting instructions on the radio and looking up every few seconds to see - like a open water swimmer.

I'd love to get a rider's eye view of a TT - 75% of the footage would be the fork and front wheel.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cookster15
I disagree really, it's just morbid and insensitive. It's not really a matter of free expression.

There must have been something tricky in that section because Burgaudeau also went off-roading in the exact same spot out of the break.
They just took the corner way too fast and everyone dominoes it looks like. It was hardly abnormal or something about the road. These are also guys with a reputation for pushing the pace on the downhills. Hell some guys are celebrated for using their descending skills as an advantage.

Personally I hate descent finishes in general because they invite crashes or worse, but then everyone celebrates it until their preferred rider ends up on the wrong end of it.

EDIT: Didnt mean to quote Brullnux
 
  • Like
Reactions: saunaking
Will the UCI FINALLY take rider safety seriously? What else would it take? How hard can it be to drive the route and mark obviously dangerous obstacles or traffic furniture?
But these weren’t obstacles in the road, they were solid objects immediately off the side. They should have had some barrier or padding at that arc of the turn, but riders still could have hit the concrete ditch, trees, and big boulders. How many alpine descents have boulders, jagged rocks, and 200 meter drop offs just off the apex of the corner?
 
What I take from this crash (major causes + possible solutions):

1. Landa went in that curve full of (homeroads) confidence, but he rode too hard for a whole peloton wide over the road to be able to go through that curve at that speed.
--> Landa cannot be blamed for going that curve at his speed, but he is supposed to shepherd Evenepoel and it's clear it didn't work well. A bit more caution with such a big peloton in downhills is never a bad thing.

2. There was padding in the curve, but like in many cases, the padding is NOT there were you expect people to go out of the curve (which is at the very end = the zone with the ditch and rocks)!
--> Organisers should be more aware of how racing works and where riders are most likely to crash.

3. I think it's a kind of freak curve, in the way that it's off-chamber + some bumps / roots. If the parcours doesn't go there often, it's likely such corners aren't detected as possibly risky.
--> organisers should always have good riders (amateurs / semi-pros) riding the whole thing at speed so those can point out dangers that you won't see or feel when doing the parcours in a car or riding slowly.
 
The explanation of Mikel Bizkarra on Twitter is interesting. He refers to the roots of the trees causing minor bumps on the road. If we're going to exclude all roads that contain these 'obstacles', I wish the organizers of any road race in contental Europe good luck in finding a route that is secure enough to have a peloton racing over it.
It’s not the roads, it’s the unprotected rocks and concrete ditch that were the issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sandisfan
Not sure you can call it 'no unnecessary risk' when you miss a corner in a high speed decent.

But this crash is mostly down to riders racing like maniacs in a location where they really shouldn't have.
There are a lot of ways to miss a corner that involve neither taking unnecessary risks to maintain speed nor someone directly causing you to crash. A momentary lapse in focus, following a bad line by the rider in front of you, bike issues, and so on.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SHAD0W93 and noob
Set in the backdrop of the discussions about the chicane at the Trouée d'Arenberg, the previous crashes we've had in the last week and a half and the complete mess that we've seen elsewise in the race, it's easy to see tempers get inflamed, but ultimately this is a racing incident, and there are various factors adding culpability on both sides.

It's clear from the debates that raged about the chicane at Roubaix that for a lot of riders, they would like to be able to go full send if they so wish at any time without having to think about risk other than their own power/tactics etc., but passing the responsibility on to the organisers for managing risk to the point where that would be possible is simply unmanageable in an outdoor sport. This was a relatively nondescript corner which admittedly had some obstacles off-road on the outside, but the actual corner itself was not remarkable compared to hundreds of others in this part of the world, it was on a decently wide two-way road and the Itzulia routinely descends worse.

At the same time, the péloton was far larger than it usually would be on those worse descents in this race, because usually this race is more selective. This was then exacerbated by the péloton going slower on the climb side of this ascent (and it being one of those lopsided climbs from the coastal mountains to the higher Alavan plateau) meaning the pace was higher on the descent, meaning that if somebody did make a mistake, more riders would be at risk, and would be going faster at the same time.

The rapid and aggressive apportioning of blame is a product of the accumulation of incidents in the last few weeks and an emotive response to just how big the accident was and the apparent severity of the injuries that resulted. But the péloton can't lay the blame entirely at the foot of the race organisers every time and absolve themselves of any responsibility for their own bike handling skills - however, the race organisers can't use rider error as an excuse not to learn lessons either.
 
Set in the backdrop of the discussions about the chicane at the Trouée d'Arenberg, the previous crashes we've had in the last week and a half and the complete mess that we've seen elsewise in the race, it's easy to see tempers get inflamed, but ultimately this is a racing incident, and there are various factors adding culpability on both sides.

It's clear from the debates that raged about the chicane at Roubaix that for a lot of riders, they would like to be able to go full send if they so wish at any time without having to think about risk other than their own power/tactics etc., but passing the responsibility on to the organisers for managing risk to the point where that would be possible is simply unmanageable in an outdoor sport. This was a relatively nondescript corner which admittedly had some obstacles off-road on the outside, but the actual corner itself was not remarkable compared to hundreds of others in this part of the world, it was on a decently wide two-way road and the Itzulia routinely descends worse.

At the same time, the péloton was far larger than it usually would be on those worse descents in this race, because usually this race is more selective. This was then exacerbated by the péloton going slower on the climb side of this ascent (and it being one of those lopsided climbs from the coastal mountains to the higher Alavan plateau) meaning the pace was higher on the descent, meaning that if somebody did make a mistake, more riders would be at risk, and would be going faster at the same time.

The rapid and aggressive apportioning of blame is a product of the accumulation of incidents in the last few weeks and an emotive response to just how big the accident was and the apparent severity of the injuries that resulted. But the péloton can't lay the blame entirely at the foot of the race organisers every time and absolve themselves of any responsibility for their own bike handling skills - however, the race organisers can't use rider error as an excuse not to learn lessons either.
Yes, and in addition: improvement of equipment increases the speed, so riders have to be more careful just to maintain the same levels of risks.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: SHAD0W93 and noob
Guégan lifting the lid on the levels of cafeine usage in the peloton is actually a pretty important insight both inside and outside the context of this crash. The logic of the omertà dictates that he may come to regret bringing it up, but even without that it's a good reminder of how riders and teams are also responsible for safety issues...
 
Guégan lifting the lid on the levels of cafeine usage in the peloton is actually a pretty important insight both inside and outside the context of this crash. The logic of the omertà dictates that he may come to regret bringing it up, but even without that it's a good reminder of how riders and teams are also responsible for safety issues...
Is caffeine use in modern sport under a kind of omertá? It's open knowledge that it's a very highly used legal PED, and we know that in football it's like 400mg before matches.
 

TRENDING THREADS