Crash tips?

hardcore!

yeah, get your hands out. your elbows/shoulders cant absorb an impact and you'll probably pop your collar bone real good:

Depending on how hard you come down on your hands, you're quite likely to break your collarbone anyway. One thing I can say is wear gloves! If you do go down better to have your gloves take the sliding on the tarmac than your palms as hippy said, and, as I found the other day, the one day I chose not to wear gloves as well..

If someone opens the door on ya and there's no chance of swerving out of the way, aim for inside the car and use the person who opened it to cushion the blow. :D

Crash tips?
Ride brakeless, fast and preferably with your eyes closed...

Otherwise +1 to what jim jones said, rugby, judo... or just doing stupid things... practicing falling makes you a lot better at it!

Go climb trees and jump off from the highest branch you can... try cycling through trees with low hanging branches... play polo... maybe bike tag works too...

Don't land with all your weight on your forearm because this is the result:
Apparently your forearm is susceptible to the common boxing injury, if you compress the tissue against the bone, it WILL burst open.

^ for the record, falling on your elbows is a hell of a lot better than landing on your hands (broken wrists likely)

rugby, judo and snowboarding are all good for learning how to fall properly

^+1 also skateboarding - this one gets you used to taking falls on tarmac/concrete which the above lack.

Although it all happens so fast, if you fall down a lot doing it right becomes instinctual... or you break a lot of bones. One of those.

We should have a blood and guts thread....scars, staples, compound fractures...all that good shit.

My business partner came off his bike last night, turning from Haymarket onto Jermyn street load of kids messing in street, brakes and the back end spins out and down onto his arm, he has broke 16 bones in his hand a wrist... Had surgery last night, pins and plates holding it all together!
Sometime, the smallest incident, can have major consequences?

We should have a blood and guts thread....scars, staples, compound fractures...all that good shit.

Show us your scars..
http://www.londonfgss.com/thread600.html

Crazy™ tips?
Ride brakeless Yep fast Yep and preferably with your eyes closed... always.

.

I fell the other day after slicing along a curb (again, just not concentrating) and I somehow managed to sort of hop off and ended up sliding along on my left knee. I must have the strongest trousers cus they didn't rip and I didn't even graze my knee! I definitiely felt it though and a few days later the back of my left leg rather hurts from a deep bruise.

I would say that the best thing you can do is try to ditch the bike. Who cares what happens to the bike as long as you don't hurt yourself too much. I've fallen before and it happened so quickly that I was out before I knew I'd hit the floor. I was still holding onto the bars when I was down, so I'd obviously failed to 'bail and let go'!

tomiskinky

    My business partner came off his bike last night

That must have been an interesting sight

1. Don't land with your chest on your barend.
   
2. If you know things are going wrong, abandon ship.
   
3. Try to get your hands in front of your face.
   
4. Do some press-ups so your arms are able to stop your head hitting the floor.
   
5. Roll.
   
6. Watch some BMX'ers, the most underrated BMXing skill is the ability to fall off without hurting yourself.
   
7. Practice on grass.
   

1. Don't land with your chest on your barend.
   
2. If you know things are going wrong, abandon ship.
   
3. Try to get your hands in front of your face.
   
4. Do some press-ups so your arms are able to stop your head hitting the floor.
   
5. Roll.
   
6. Watch some BMX'ers, the most underrated BMXing skill is the ability to fall off without hurting yourself.
   
7. Practice on grass.
   
   

Coulnd't agree more I bmxed for years before riding fixed, and I think knowing how to fall properly was the only thing that stopped me from smashing my head/face when I went over the bars a month or so ago thanks to a major lockring/cog slip (which then re-engaged!), I also do a fair amount of snowboarding each season which helps to a degree, but no where near as much as the 7-8 years of bmxing probably has.

tomiskinky

    My business partner came off his bike last night

That must have been an interesting sight

Must be a joke in there I'm missing fella?

To prevent crashing:Don't look where you don't want to go!

Sounds stupid and simple; if you focus on what you're trying to avoid you'll hit it, if you focus on where you wanna go, thats where you'll go.

Sorry, very juvenile attempt at humor.

I haven't had any major stacks since I was a kid. But the I don't ride like a psycho turbo nutter bastard with flames coming out of his arse either. I've dropped the bike a couple of times as an adult but came out without much of a scratch really. The funniest of the two was depths of winter couple of years ago, aiming to stop at the Chinese near my mate's house on the way to the station, so I could chom some dinner on the train. Looking around for where he's told me the shop is - look left, right, left, scanning the dark street intently. Suddnly, I see it! Slap on both brakes and there's either oil or ice on the road because the bike locks up, no scraping skid noise, just both wheels decide to move independently of me and the bike calmly turns sideways like I'm on glass before I can let go of the brakes (or maybe I froze a bit!). And then the tyres suddenly decide to bite whilst I'm almost sideways and the bike stopped dead pitching me straight off (but not at massive speed). I landed on my hands and rolled, then slid to a halt on my back. I do remember seeing the bike cartwheel over my head as I was on my back and that was that. No real damage, thanks to having gloves and helmet looking after me as I hit the floor. Wouldn't have been major damage without a lid though I don't think (I have a pretty thick skull) but better to have no headache at all I reckon. The waterproof over-jacket did a lot of the sliding for me too, it got a minor tear. Apart from that, scott-free. The worst bit was seeing the bumber of a 4x4 heading towards me as I was on the floor, worrying it hadn't seen me.

DON'T stack it right in front of a large group of teenagers!

make sure you are going fast so you slide
the slower you fall the more abrupt the slowing process the more bones you break, higher g's
i think

Massive +1 to that

my favourite mantra is: "speed is your friend" its always better to slide or roll/tumble, than to have a sudden crushing impact with the ground/object where you stop dead.

Especially when you've got over 16 stone of bodyweight hitting the ground!

doing a superman down the tarmac is the only way to crash

I fell the other day after slicing along a curb (again, just not concentrating) and I somehow managed to sort of hop off and ended up sliding along on my left knee. I must have the strongest trousers cus they didn't rip and I didn't even graze my knee! I definitiely felt it though and a few days later the back of my left leg rather hurts from a deep bruise.

I would say that the best thing you can do is try to ditch the bike. Who cares what happens to the bike as long as you don't hurt yourself too much. I've fallen before and it happened so quickly that I was out before I knew I'd hit the floor. I was still holding onto the bars when I was down, so I'd obviously failed to 'bail and let go'!

I both agree and disagree with this statement, I think it depends on the situation you find yourself in, i'm never one to give a shit about damaging my bike in a crash situation, but sometimes I find it benefical to either stay in contact with the bike or try and stay on it to rescue the situation. For instance when i've had to bail out of reasonably high wallrides, I will attempt to get both feet out of the clips (this doesn't always work!) but keep one hand on the bars to steady my self as I jump down to the ground, and then let go of the bike and roll, this has generally worked out quite well for me in these situations and the worst i've had to suffer is a small bruise on my arm or something. Thankfully I have only ever had 2 crashes on the roads over the years, one was (on my fixed) due to mechanical failure where I went over the bars, managed to roll with the fall, messed my arm up a bit with some road rash and really hurt my finger, but other than that most of the damage was just to the bike. The other was on my bmx and a car reversed out on me, I stayed on the bike until the last conceivable moment, bunnyhopping over someones garden wall, anticipating him continuing to reverse, but he stopped, so I laid the bike down and slid on the concrete to avoid hitting the car and supermanning over it, it left me with a few bruises and nothing more. I've lost count of the amount of times i've crashed on my snowboard though!