Black Cobra badly hurt

[yuweng]

On 5/18/2021 at 5:59 PM, Mike Sacristan said:

If you can land into a push up from standing then you can survive a fall.

 

8 hours ago, John Montpetit said:

I agree 100% on that. I remember seeing the video in which you suggested something to the effect that we should practice falling to a position something akin to a plank. It seems that has evolved to a push up position. Correct me if I'm wrong Mike.

A fellow rider fall off from a 30km/h fully gear in the same manner, needs about USD4K+ for the damages & 3-6 months recovery  Upon knowing this i started working out & taking calcium supplement 

[Simply_Striking]

21 hours ago, Scottie888 said:

I've been thinking about that lately & I'm not so sure. I wouldn't mind trying a cycling type clip-on system on the lead foot. In theory at least, that would seem much better than pads & would help loads on landings. It also would negate spike pedals on 1 side at least. Or maybe clip-on 1side & smaller jump pads on the other.

Its an interesting thought experiment.

I think there should be a balance, I got some spiked pedals from Murland, and ended hating how stuck my feet felt. Ended up going through the process of removing more than half of the spikes and grinding a few down. It has a little give now and for whatever reason it just feels better.

[Mike Sacristan]

15 hours ago, John Montpetit said:

I agree 100% on that. I remember seeing the video in which you suggested something to the effect that we should practice falling to a position something akin to a plank. It seems that has evolved to a push up position. Correct me if I'm wrong Mike.

Yes I prefer not to use the word plank as some people might confuse between basic plank (on the forearms) and plank (fully outstretched arms = bye bye shoulders).
And hands will go down first anyway and then we will end up in a basic plank anyway.

So yes.. the falling will usually be hands hitting first and then ending up in a basic plank on our forearms and elbows. It is our instinct to keep our elbows in during the fall.

On 5/18/2021 at 6:37 PM, Ronin Ryder said:

Pads locking the rider down are death traps, especially with spiked pedals.....

Ironically... I have found them very safe to ride especially at high speed and on crappy asphalt. It almost feels like cheating.
And we can be as locked down as we want to be.

In this clip I am only using spikes on the front half of the pedals and I am using locked pads.
Watch me bail (although I am sure a high speed fall will play out very differently where the wheel will probably still be attached to me.

 

 

[Mike Sacristan]

9 hours ago, yuweng said:

 

A fellow rider fall off from a 30km/h fully gear in the same manner, needs about USD4K+ for the damages & 3-6 months recovery  Upon knowing this i started working out & taking calcium supplement 

Ouch! Vitamin D helps as well. As does strength training.
Lift those weights and get that D!

[Tryptych]

On 5/13/2021 at 11:59 PM, CarlW said:

Is there any gear or riding techniques that could have prevented Black Cobras serious injury? 

NO

....unless you're willing to wear a super-expensive airbag jacket...

This is the ugly reality of our hobby (as Duff put it).

Motherboards/Components can die at any moment and we're all potentially Black Cobra.

Gear up and be ready for your wipe, everyone gets one if they ride long enough.

We need fully redundant wheels, which is entirely possible IF we're willing to pressure the manufacturers for it, and pay the price.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/2086gjn6qo

Edited May 29, 2021 by Tryptych

[Unventor]

21 minutes ago, Tryptych said:

We need fully redundant wheels, which is entirely possible IF we're willing to pressure the manufacturers for it, and pay the price.

No it is not. You are standing on one wheel that has one motor. 

There are many type of failure that can happen yhat there is no back up for. 

Yes you can have a wheel with multiply battery packs. But if one of them get watter into it there is vey little you can do to prevent a battery fire. It might not cut out at first but goodluck riding a wheel on fire. 

You have only access to one mulriphase motor wire. If some where to jappen with it there is no balancing or you could end with a total lock up to. 

Even if you were to have 2 seperate wire going into the motor you have to detect react and activate the secondary system. If people are going 70kmh on a wheel the forces involved inside the wheel I doubt that will work in practical use.

Instead of put blam on manufactors you need to accept riding an EUC comes with an risk. All we do in life has risks. 

[Eucner]

So because there are risks in EUC's, there are no reason to get them lower? I would prefer every way to reduce risks and make riding safer.

[Unventor]

4 hours ago, Eucner said:

So because there are risks in EUC's, there are no reason to get them lower? I would prefer every way to reduce risks and make riding safer.

I didn't say that. Only that there are things there are not possible to do. 

Also when people think there are no risks they will take more changes. This is how people works. 

[Eucner]

3 hours ago, Unventor said:

Also when people think there are no risks they will take more changes. This is how people works. 

Maybe, but still it would be safer.

[OneLeg]

Guys the IPS S5, had dual everything, batteries,controllers, stators.... http://www.iamips.com/s5/

I don't think that the market the consumer is ready to pay for fault tolerance. I think we are currently in the 1960's of car where BIG is good, quality etc is not that important. Everyone is focuses on MORE, more Kwh, Kw,  Speed.... that results on greater complexity problems which are hard to solve.  Larger results in having wheel that have to handle larger loads, more stress, more weight... More weight means more momentum and the need for more impact resistance.  Of course everyone wants it for less... and we have the big issue of the battery pack manufacturing and cost of lithium...

The other day I saw a very MSX (classic model) being dropped down 7 steps and then blowing up its mother board....

Presently, You can reduce your risk

• by riding less complex unicycles,
• choosing proven model that has not burnt over and over and over, like the Monster and doesn't have manufacturing issues.
• A unicycle that is lighter that at don't build as much momentum and can handle impact at speed and damage, short its internals.
• A motor, controller and battery systems are aligned. Large motors have the ability to put massive loads on the controller and battery system.may not handle.
• BMS's controllers are as simple/robust and designed for the survival of the rider.  GT16's BMS with mostfets on discharge circuitry
• Systems that stop people from doing things which threaten safety, and shut down like Inmotion does  Eg.  stop you from  attaching an external pack to the charge port, swapping the motors to other models.
• Ensuring that if you are heavier etc, you run higher discharge cells than the usual 10A and has a bettery chance at delivery power.

In there future,

• There should be better systems to do per cell diagnostic, and give us visibility on wear, damage, temperature etc and the ability to fail a battery pack, disconnect parallel packs.
• Twin everything like on the S5
• THere has to be a focus on building lighter wheels, lighter motors,

 

 

[Camenbert]

1 hour ago, OneLeg said:

A motor, controller and battery systems are aligned. Large motors have the ability to put massive loads on the controller and battery system.may not handle.

A motor is passive, it receive and not put loads. Larger the motor, heavier, and less luckily to overheat, that's it.
Same goes for the battery (replace luckily to overheat by luckily to sag).
The guilty is always the controller.

 

1 hour ago, OneLeg said:

Guys the IPS S5, had dual everything, batteries,controllers, stators

I like that, but it's a contradiction with riding less complex unicycles

The same goes with BMS's controllers are as simple/robust  vs  should be better systems to do per cell diagnostic, and give us visibility on wear, damage, temperature etc
I agree BMS must be robust, yet BT allow the visibility on the health of the battery.

[alcatraz]

I'm really surprised that there aren't more shoulder injuries among riders. I had one at only 20mph too. I don't believe that the gear can protect you against this kind of injury.

Dislocated shoulder - 3 months healing time, life long pain and limited movement thereafter.

Broken collar bone, out for a loooong time.

The riders that consistently go over X km/h are really rolling the dice I think. At some point it's better to limit the speed than to put your trust in the protective gear.

[shellac]

1 hour ago, alcatraz said:

I'm really surprised that there aren't more shoulder injuries among riders. I had one at only 20mph too. I don't believe that the gear can protect you against this kind of injury.

Dislocated shoulder - 3 months healing time, life long pain and limited movement thereafter.

Broken collar bone, out for a loooong time.

The riders that consistently go over X km/h are really rolling the dice I think. At some point it's better to limit the speed than to put your trust in the protective gear.

Just curious, how did you land exactly and what kind of gear were you wearing?

[alcatraz]

It was a surprise cutout on a long smooth straight. That's when you normally have your legs straighter because you don't anticipate something to happen. 

No protective gear.

Started falling forward. At the time I was resting more on the left leg so that shoulder was rotated forward a smidge.

Rolled forward. Tucked in half way down. Upper back contacts. Left shoulder took the first hit with the entire body weight on it. The force came from the back. Stand up shocked, notice the shoulder feels weird. It's like my arm is in my chest. Luckily it pops back by itself and I walk back. Wheel powers on normally afterwards. Don't know what caused it. 

Arm disabled for a good 4 weeks. 3 months later I'm 95% recovered. 1y later 96%. 2y 96%. Can't do a pull up anymore because of pain.

No previous injuries before this. I'm a light guy ~65kg. Crashed few times before on my road bike. No injuries other than some road rash.

If you're going to wear gear and it can't prevent the shoulder from rotating forward, this can happen. To my knowledge the gear doesn't brace the shoulder in that direction.

[alcatraz]

On the other hand the dislocation may have saved my collar bone. Cancer or aids, hmm?

[Skeptikos]

We all missed an extremely important detail here, which is that @ThaBlackCobra was wearing cheap knockoff motorcycle gear from Amazon that isn't CE certified, meaning that it probably doesn't meet even minimal standards of impact protection.

I accidentally figured this out from a video where he recommends cheap gear (here). And in his footage of the day of the crash (here) you can see that he's wearing one of the cheap jackets he recommends.

That completely changes my interpretation of this crash. This crash does not show that you can demolish your shoulder even when wearing full motorcycle gear. What it shows is that you can demolish your shoulder when wearing cheap knockoff gear that isn't certified as protective gear.

The moral here is very clear: don't try to save $50 by buying cheap, uncertified knockoff gear on Amazon. Get the real stuff. Get the stuff that has been tested in an independent laboratory in order to be officially CE certified as protective gear. The $50 you save isn't going to pay your medical bills after a crash.

[supercurio]

Good find @Skeptikos.

As you point out, when comparing the Alpinestar one vs the cheaper option he wore the day of the crash, the amount of padding around the shoulder is night and day, the cheap one being made of a piece of hard plastic on top of some foam that doesn't look thick at all, whereas the Alpinestar has very thick padding which would have a chance to dissipate some energy of the shock.

[Heymelon]

On 5/14/2021 at 5:53 PM, GoGeorgeGo said:

As for rolling out of a fall, here is my buddy ray rolling out of a fall 

skip to the last minute for his roll out. 

Yeah and this is about at brisk walking speeds right? I think the argument is that you're not doing this to any safe or injury preventing degree if you get a sudden cut out at fast speeds or even speeds close to your avg running limits. Learning to fall well and rolling is great, but we have to realize that it is not suitable and can't save us in worst case scenarios at higher speeds. 

[Heymelon]

On 5/29/2021 at 8:55 AM, Tryptych said:

NO

....unless you're willing to wear a super-expensive airbag jacket...

This is the ugly reality of our hobby (as Duff put it).

Motherboards/Components can die at any moment and we're all potentially Black Cobra.

Gear up and be ready for your wipe, everyone gets one if they ride long enough.

We need fully redundant wheels, which is entirely possible IF we're willing to pressure the manufacturers for it, and pay the price.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/2086gjn6qo

Potentially. Now with even more hindsight is there more information about the cause of the crash? If it was due to a hill angle being too steep then there is at least something we can adapt to and it wasn't just 100% component failure. Hopefully complete competent failure crashes remain rare enough that I will continue to feel reasonably safe enough to remain in the hobby. 

[Esash]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:02 AM, Skeptikos said:

We all missed an extremely important detail here, which is that @ThaBlackCobra was wearing cheap knockoff motorcycle gear from Amazon that isn't CE certified, meaning that it probably doesn't meet even minimal standards of impact protection.

I accidentally figured this out from a video where he recommends cheap gear (here). And in his footage of the day of the crash (here) you can see that he's wearing one of the cheap jackets he recommends.

That completely changes my interpretation of this crash. This crash does not show that you can demolish your shoulder even when wearing full motorcycle gear. What it shows is that you can demolish your shoulder when wearing cheap knockoff gear that isn't certified as protective gear.

The moral here is very clear: don't try to save $50 by buying cheap, uncertified knockoff gear on Amazon. Get the real stuff. Get the stuff that has been tested in an independent laboratory in order to be officially CE certified as protective gear. The $50 you save isn't going to pay your medical bills after a crash.

thanks, your comment made me dig out my old ce motorcycle jacket from the closet.