Indian Pacific Wheel Race - IndyPac - IPWR

Facebook post says he was airlifted.

Do they say what happened?

Nothing I can see yet. Hope he's ok.

Bugger. Hope he mends well.

Just had a look at the Facebook group.
No explanation yet but its most likely he got hit by a car. My experience of the Eyre highway was that 99% of drivers were fine but a handful were not. I had three very, and unecessarily, close passes in an hour one morning in the area he was.

A kangaroo or wombat can have you off, but I didn't see many of them near the roads round there, they're more an issue in the East, especially where there are hedgerows. And riders can just lose control, whether drowsy or not.

Need to see what happened but a car / hit and run is by far the most likely cause. Bad enough to hit and run anywhere but it takes a real cunt to do it in a desert.

Rowan came in yesterday. Super consistent riding. Congratulations to him. Sadly it appears (from the Facebook group) another cyclist riding the Nullarbor was involved in a fatal accident on Tuesday. Only 21 years old. Just for clarity, he was not riding as part of this year's unofficial race.

Lots of victim blaming bullshit but the trucker is arrested for dangerous driving. Uh huh.

Oh God, no.

Not only that, but he has been charged with 'dangerous driving occasioning death'. I guess that means there must be evidence, e.g. camera footage?

have we learnt nothing from Mike.

It's terrible.

More awful news.

The linked article illustrates why cycling in Australia is dangerous. It simply doesn't occur to anyone that a truck following a cyclist should slow down until it is clear to pass.
the truck driver interviewed doesn't think that, the journalist commenting on it doesn't, and neither do most Australian cyclists I have met. Jesse and Sarah did a video on how to ride in Australia. I thought it was a bit overblown at the time but it is actually spot on. You need to have mirrors, look at them whenever you hear anything behind you and, if that thing doesn't have room to pass, get off the road because it won't have any plans to stop or slow down.

Ironically I found the Eyre Highway just about the safest road to cycle on in the whole country.

Did we ever find out what had happened to the indypac rider who is in hospital?

Nothing on JJ that I could see other than he's recovering.

Friend who I met on TCR has just scratched on Indypac due to safety concerns.
Is it only semi official now? Seems to be loosing its profile, maybe due to the safety and unofficial status?

Did they say what their concerns were? Drivers being cunts is the obvious one.
Trying to get off the road before the road trains get to you is perhaps less obvious.

Indypac is also tricky to get to - other side of the world innit and they've only just opened up the borders again so it's not like people overseas would have it high up their list if it wasn't possible to book flights for it. Also, you'd think the whole carbon emissions thing might stop non-Aussies riding. I certainly wouldn't fly there just to ride it.

He’s an Aussie. It was the road trains, has a pretty young kid too so double whammy.
All the cool kids are in Rwanda.

It's funny, literally minutes after writing that someone not on here sent me comments screengrabs from FB. Assume it's the same guy - Lloyd?

You don't really share the road with road trains. It's ok if there's only one and nothing else around, but if there's another car coming or something you need to get off the road. Mostly the truck drivers are fine but the road trains just can't stop/swerve around riders if there's oncoming stuff. Aussie car drivers are all arseholes though.

Also, if he's running out of water in Oz and getting to the point of delirium it doesn't sound like he's prepared enough to be doing this kind of thing anyway.

Yeah. Doesn’t strike me as the sort to be unprepared. I’ve never really looked in to Indypac as I’ve no interest in riding it, so can’t really comment on road and water situ.

I certainly wouldn't want to fuck up the resupply logistics out there. It's not like Europe with a town every 20k.

Why would you do this route? Why!

I wouldn't advise anyone to ride it because I don't think the roads are safe. But that story doesn't stack up, not against my experience, anyway.

Firstly the road trains aren't the problem, it's all the other drivers. The road trains are professional drivers who might be in a hurry but they're not crazy. If he's an aussie, has he never seen road trains before? They have them on other roads as well as the nullarbor. Maybe he's only ever been in the densely populated bits of the east.

Secondly, the road across the Nullarbor has very light traffic, so it's comparatively ok. Like a hundred or so vehicles per day. I would be happy to ride that bit again. The scary bit is when you leave the uninhabited desert and enter normal Ausralian roads after you've passed Port Augusta. That's the bit that is dangerous and which I woudn't ride. It gets worse the further east you get.

Seems odd.

The event is much more low key now. Jesse isn't involved, theere's no official orgniser, its just a Dunwich Dynamo type ride. I think Jesse couldn't get organisers liability insurance after Mike was killed so had to close it down as an official thing.

He shouldn't run out of water, there are roadhouses about every 100-200km. Need to carry enough to get between.

If you do run out you stand by side of road, wave your bottle, and a car will stop because it's an emergency situation. Obviously that's asking for support, but better than dehydrating.

I've just seen his post on Facebook. He hadn't actually made it to the nullarbor, was still in the Goldfields area. Traffic is pretty light on the road he is on, but it's busier than the main desert stretch. There's basically one large town which needs everything to come from Perth.

The road there is wide and smooth, but I got one close pass from a truck along that bit. There was another one coming the other way and the idea of waiting if it's (just) a bike is an alien concept - cars at least as much as trucks. There's about 2' of hard shoulder along there and the expectation is that you'll pull onto it if something wants to overtake when there's an oncoming vehicle. Lots of the Aussies use mirrors so they aren't taken by surprise.

He shouldn't have run out of water there. It's 150km from the Yellowdine Roadhouse to Coolgardie. It's probably the first big gap he would have encountered. He must have either messed up roadhouse opening times or tried to do it on two 750ml bottles or something.

https://ipwr23.maprogress.com/

Starts at the weekend.

They are off. Mike's marker out in front. A velomobile in there too.

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