What to do in a crash

[onewheelkoregro]

I feel like this topic isn't discussed enough. Everyone posts when they crash but how to you minimize damage to your body? Wearing gear helps sure, but you are after all you're just a bone mech with meat armor. Coming from a martial arts/athletic background I know how to fall. But I feel this isn't discussed as much as it needs to be. I was taught that when you fall and you are standing up, to extend an arm and as soon as that arm makes makes contact with the ground to initiate a roll. I have done this effectively while skateboarding, rollerskating, rollerblading, ice skating, etc. But I feel that this topic isn't discussed enough, and I was curious as to other techniques to mitigate damage to my meat armor if an EUC loses power due to a malfunction/overpower.

Edited June 27, 2023 by onewheelkoregro

[alcatraz]

I don't know if it can be learned without doing it lots of times.

I was lucky that my most severe crash happened with me completely upright (borderline overlean). That means that you have the most time before you hit the ground. I tucked and rolled, instinctively. It wouldn't work if you're accelerating.

Edited June 27, 2023 by alcatraz

[gon2fast]

My only suggestion is to stay loose during a crash in hopes of preventing broken bones.  Wear good shoes too, my feet have taken a beating in minor crashes because I had on crappy sketchers... 

[Poker]

Normally there's not enough time to extend the full arm in front of you if you fall forward. But getting an elbow up is way more realistic.

If you've fallen on your right shoulder recently maybe try to lean with the left one instead for a while while the right one is healing and vice versa 

[0000]

A better title would be "What to do before the crash" as with most crashes at speed you are pretty much along for the ride.

So basically, dress for the slide, lose weight (less mass = less impact forces), be athletic, stretch your muscles and limbs before the ride. Not saying anything new here.

I mean, does anyone train their brain to go limp in a loss of control scenario where you have a split second to respond? Doesn't seem realistic. You'd probably have a better shot at going or most likely remaining limp under the effects of alcohol. Then again, you also have a much better chance of crashing while under the influence (among other things). So there ya go. Start sippin' before you go tippin'. ^{Just kidding don't do this.}

[gon2fast]

1 hour ago, Vanturion said:

I mean, does anyone train their brain to go limp in a loss of control scenario where you have a split second to respond? Doesn't seem realistic.

First crash panicked and tried to intervene resulting in a broken arm. All crashes following I have just gone along with the ride and took the blow without tensing up, it is not a skill. 

[0000]

20 minutes ago, gon2fast said:

First crash panicked and tried to intervene resulting in a broken arm. All crashes following I have just gone along with the ride and took the blow without tensing up, it is not a skill. 

I mean, what you said pretty much meets the definition of a skill, things went poorly until you learned to do it better soooo..... narp?

What I was saying earlier - I tried to qualify with "at speed," but that wasn't a very good way to put it. Maybe better to say there are two types of crashes:

1. Crashes you have time to react to - tend to occur at lower speed, but can occur at any speed. Less likely to result in injury.

2. Crashes you don't have time to react to - tend to occur at higher speed, but can occur at any speed. More likely to result in injury.

I've had my share of both and far more of the former, but the crash prep advice applies to both types. The better your fitness, gear, and other prep is (possibly even including dive roll practice I guess to OP's point), the higher likelihood of having a positive or at least less negative result in the event of a crash of either type.

Bummer about the arm my man, been there. Speaking of broken bones, I wonder how the injury statistics would shake out on EUCs vs other PEVs or MTBs. Bike vs E-scooters has some survey data from Seattle DOT 2022:

There's no EUC-rideshare programs that I'm aware of (thankfully) so I doubt "our" numbers on a percentage basis would be as high.

[Cerbera]

As mentioned above, there are some types of crashes / falls / cutouts where there is no time to think anything before you are on the ground. But there are others where you have a micro-second or two in which to better plan your inevitable dismount ! The following thoughts apply to those.

Unlike other situations in life, I would concur that floppier is better than stiffer if you have a choice ! Also, if you are on a higher wheel, then crouching down to place yourself closer to the ground in the run up to disaster has helped me recently. If there is time to choose a hand position I go with arms outstretched, palms down (where my slidey wrist guards are) and fingers raised or clenched in a fist to minimise the chances of damage to those, which was particularly important to me back when I played piano for a living, but I imagine everyone needs their hands, so probably applies universally.

In the various falls I have had over the years I don't think I have ever had the opportunity to try and roll out of them, so I tend to adopt the superman position and try and slide on all my armour, hoping it doesn't shift, which leads to another point - make sure all your armour is tight enough that any pads can't get displaced, exposing your joints.

[woke rider]

11 hours ago, onewheelkoregro said:

I feel like this topic isn't discussed enough. Everyone posts when they crash but how to you minimize damage to your body? Wearing gear helps sure, but you are after all you're just a bone mech with meat armor. Coming from a martial arts/athletic background I know how to fall. But I feel this isn't discussed as much as it needs to be. I was taught that when you fall and you are standing up, to extend an arm and as soon as that arm makes makes contact with the ground to initiate a roll. I have done this effectively while skateboarding, rollerskating, rollerblading, ice skating, etc. But I feel that this topic isn't discussed enough, and I was curious as to other techniques to mitigate damage to my meat armor if an EUC loses power due to a malfunction/overpower.

Stay alert and don't zone out while you are riding. After you learn to trust your Begode Hero from spontaneously cutting out then you can enjoy the ride more. I learned to trust my wheels, but I still worry sometimes about a cut out. I have only had 2 cut out's, one on my KS14D and one on my Z10. The both happened because I tried to turn too quickly at an angle.

We don't have that much control over the outcome after the crash. The best thing a rider can do is to prevent the crash, especially by riding sober, make sure your pedals fit your feet, don't keep on riding after your muscles get fatigued, wear your gear, don't ride faster or take more risks just because you are wearing gear, don't ride fast. If you ignore all that, then when you crash just go limp and try to roll out of it.

Edited June 27, 2023 by earthtwin
more info

[Roadpower]

It certainly depends on the type of crash. If it is not a cut out type then I think you obviously want to roll instead of flop. If it is a cut out then you likely have little control in how it plays out since you can experience the cut out during a variety of stances. Probably the best advice is to play out in your mind how you would react in different situations, do this until you have an ingrained mental memory muscle of such events.

[0000]

5 hours ago, Cerbera said:

In the various falls I have had over the years I don't think I have ever had the opportunity to try and roll out of them

I've had 2 that I can recall off the top of my head and whaddya know I even got them on film (timestamped):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w388ebbzGvw&t=7m9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8abXR4BBGGM&t=12m22s

Both low speed pedal clips where I just happened to be positioned in a way momentum could be bled by rolling. You often don't get a choice how you get thrown off the wheel in the event of a pedal clip as it is almost always unexpected, but if you manage to get at least one foot out on the ground you may have the opportunity to transition your forward momentum into a roll depending on the terrain.

Running your momentum out at low speed by staying on your feet happens much more frequently, followed by the straight flop to the ground being the most common. That said, I've never experienced a cut-out type wreck.

[chanman]

My personal favorite has been the attempting to run out at low speed, but the speed not really being low enough, becoming a flop onto the ground after a couple steps. That's really the only situation where you get to somewhat choose how you impact the ground I think.

Edited June 27, 2023 by chanman

[0000]

1 hour ago, chanman said:

That's really the only situation where you get to somewhat choose how you impact the ground I think.

Minor counter-point - the one time I had got to control my impact at speed was when I delibately ditched my wheel due to wobbles I couldn't get under control. I was able to point my wheel to the side of the road into the dirt and jump off behind it into a baseball slide. I think I was going around 25 mph at the time since I hit the beeps on my RS HT and backed off a little before the wobbles came on rapidly worsening to the point where I couldn't regain control. User error and inexperience led to a nasty wreck, for the wheel as I only got 1 minor scrape out of it thanks to my gear, but sadly all this wasn't filmed.

[level9]

What to do in a crash is to actually train yourself beforehand.

Unfortunately the conscious mind is too slow to engage in situational analysis and decision making during a crash, especially when they are unexpected as most are.
The conscious mind takes half a second just to collect sensory information from the outside world and that's slow. Like, insanely slow. It's practically always living in the past.

In contrast, the subconscious mind is a giant super computer running at the speed of light comparatively and consequentially at speeds of an exponential order of magnitude faster. Some people call this "instinct" or "muscle memory", etc. Whatever you want to call it, it needs to be trained beforehand.

 

Example. One time I was having so much fun and had a thought. "Let's really give her some GAS! YEAH!!" and then I slammed down hard on my power pads which resulted in an instant cutout. My next conscious thoughts were "man.. the sky is a really nice, clear blue today... wait.. am I on the ground? oh.. I'm rolling.. OK. I suppose I should keep rolling while evaluating wtf just happened..." and I rolled onto my feet.

I never chose to roll it out. It was automatic.

 

[mrelwood]

12 hours ago, level9 said:

I never chose to roll it out. It was automatic.

And how exactly did you practice to make it automatic?

[Cerbera]

I too am a little confused by the 'auto-roll-out' strategy. Which direction and type of roll are we talking about exactly ?

For example, it could mean the sort of tumble that resembles a series of 'forward rolls', where you sort of dive forwards and downwards and your feet go over your head and you roll that way, or does it mean the sort of sideways rolling you might do as you rolled down a hill as child for fun etc...

Aged 50, I did a forward roll on the lawn the other day (no armour) to see how that would go. I can say with some disappointment that my result was not full of the gymnastic excellence and a perfectly rounded back I seem to recall from doing them in my youth, but was more of a straight-backed 'flop', which didn't feel great when it landed, and there seemed no possibility of my aging frame doing more than 1 of them before I ended up as crumpled pile on the floor !  Perhaps this method is more suited for the young and flexible, but of course if we have things like bodysuits and helmets on I think that will further compromise any forward rolling activity. The sideways roll would also be rendered impossible if we are wearing any sort of backpack I would guess. So just wondering how that works in practice really...

I looked at @Vanturion's vids and he seems to be mostly going for the sideways roll as far as I can see, which seems to work for him despite a backpack, but mine is usually a lot bigger and fuller than that, so I worry I couldn't roll that way.

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Cerbera

[level9]

3 hours ago, mrelwood said:

And how exactly did you practice to make it automatic?

you mean other than actually crashing over and over again? 

Stand up in the backyard (mine is grassy, clay soil) and throw yourself forward and to the ground while deciding ahead of time to try and roll it out by extending your arms with elbows partially bent (NOT locked) and sweep the ground  Sweep forward or sweep to the side. Tuck your head in. Try different things and different falls.
Basically you're training the mind when my body feels like X then do Y.  I'm sure there are more elegant ways of doing this. Martial arts/fall training was mentioned...

Also worth noting is overcoming the fear of falling which reduces tension which causes a lot of injuries in and of itself. There is a reason drunk drivers typically walk away from horrid crashes. You gotta stay loose...

3 hours ago, Cerbera said:

I too am a little confused by the 'auto-roll-out' strategy. Which direction and type of roll are we talking about exactly ?

For example, it could mean the sort of tumble that resembles a series of 'forward rolls', where you sort of dive forwards and downwards and your feet go over your head and you roll that way, or does it mean the sort of sideways rolling you might do as you rolled down a hill as child for fun etc...

I usually end up in a head-over-heels type roll. In an EUC cut-out, you're typically thrown forward/down in my example. Although when I've fallen off sideways I usually still end up in a similar kind of roll it's just that my (geared up/padded) elbow and/or shoulder may contact the ground first. The main goal is to keep up the momentum. Sudden stop = bad.
 

4 hours ago, Cerbera said:

Aged 50, I did a forward roll on the lawn the other day (no armour) to see how that would go. I can say with some disappointment that my result was not full of the gymnastic excellence and a perfectly rounded back I seem to recall from doing them in my youth, but was more of a straight-backed 'flop', which didn't feel great when it landed, and there seemed no possibility of my aging frame doing more than 1 of them before I ended up as crumpled pile on the floor !  Perhaps this method is more suited for the young and flexible, but of course if we have things like bodysuits and helmets on I think that will further compromise any forward rolling activity. The sideways roll would also be rendered impossible if we are wearing any sort of backpack I would guess. So just wondering how that works in practice really...

If you're older, you probably especially want to wear gear when practicing.

I'll agree some gear I see people wear is far too bulky.
I wear lightweight, flexible gear (with D3O padding). This gear does typically cost more but medical bills and pain cost even more 
Think Ninja, not RoboCop.

4 hours ago, Cerbera said:

I looked at @Vanturion's vids and he seems to be mostly going for the sideways roll as far as I can see, which seems to work for him despite a backpack, but mine is usually a lot bigger and fuller than that, so I worry I couldn't roll that way.

 

I don't typically wear backpacks. Seems like a bad idea. If I do, like I'm going to the store for an errand, it's small.

[mrelwood]

10 hours ago, level9 said:

Tuck your head in.

This is the part I’ve always been worried about. Since it’s common for people to describe how they had zero time to react, it’s clear that for some  crashes initiating a forward roll simply isn’t possible. And what happens if you fall short of the maneuver?? You dive into the ground head first. Yeah… No thanks.

 Another concern is to place my head that close to the crashed and bouncing wheel’s natural trajectory.

 

When accelerating or just keeping a steady speed against the air resistance, we are constantly leaning forward. Even if we disregard any reaction time at all, in the worst case scenario there would be extremely little time just for your limbs to get in the correct position for the roll. And again if you fail to do that, you’re diving head first towards the ground.

[level9]

35 minutes ago, mrelwood said:

This is the part I’ve always been worried about. Since it’s common for people to describe how they had zero time to react

There isn't any time to react; that is.. how most people mean when they say "react" - they mean think.

There are parts of the mind that run far, far faster than thinking.

For example, you are walking along a trail in the desert. You hear a rattle and look down. Rattlesnake! you immediately JUMP BACK!
Where did that come from? Did you look down, see the snake, analyze the type of snake for purposes of threat assessment, evaluate the distance you were from the snake and determine based on the degree of your current forward momentum and in reference to the proximity of the snake, and also considering any objects that may be between you and the snake that could prevent it from striking you, and then after consciously thinking through all of those things and running your various calculations of this potential threat, then decide the best course of your available options is in an evasive maneuver, then chose to engage the appropriate muscles to jump back away from the snake with X amount of force to assure the pre-calculated Y amount of safe distance??
NO. It was automatic. Where did that come from? Something did those calculations and did it faster than your conscious thought and that's the part of the mind that must be trained.

54 minutes ago, mrelwood said:

And what happens if you fall short of the maneuver?? You dive into the ground head first. Yeah… No thanks.

ahh well your option is then to just do what most people end up doing in such situations. Tense up out of fear. Extend your arms out in a locked position (to protect your head from hitting the ground - a common, natural response) and then snap your arm, elbow, wrist or all (and possibly still bang your head) or crack some ribs. That force gets transferred through the body. It's the sudden stop that kills.

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

 Another concern is to place my head that close to the crashed and bouncing wheel’s natural trajectory.

 

I don't worry about the wheel. If it wants to roll over or in to me, that's nothing compared to what could happen from falling incorrectly. If you get ejected from the wheel forwards and the wheel is still moving towards you, that difference in speed is minuscule and consequently that impact force is low. It's just not that consequential.

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

When accelerating or just keeping a steady speed against the air resistance, we are constantly leaning forward. Even if we disregard any reaction time at all, in the worst case scenario there would be extremely little time just for your limbs to get in the correct position for the roll. And again if you fail to do that, you’re diving head first towards the ground.

There's plenty of time. Estimates vary, but the mind processes at about the rate of a billion billion calculations per second (1 exaflop). Just not conscious thought.
The conscious mind, comparatively to the rest of the brain, is the last to know and gets it's information from the rest of the brain via an internet dial up modem circa 1992 data speeds. 

[mrelwood]

1 hour ago, level9 said:

There isn't any time to react; that is.. how most people mean when they say "react" - they mean think.

There are parts of the mind that run far, far faster than thinking.

For example, you are walking along a trail in the desert. You hear a rattle and look down. Rattlesnake! you immediately JUMP BACK!
Where did that come from? Did you look down, see the snake, analyze the type of snake for purposes of threat assessment, evaluate the distance you were from the snake and determine based on the degree of your current forward momentum and in reference to the proximity of the snake, and also considering any objects that may be between you and the snake that could prevent it from striking you, and then after consciously thinking through all of those things and running your various calculations of this potential threat, then decide the best course of your available options is in an evasive maneuver, then chose to engage the appropriate muscles to jump back away from the snake with X amount of force to assure the pre-calculated Y amount of safe distance??
NO. It was automatic. Where did that come from? Something did those calculations and did it faster than your conscious thought and that's the part of the mind that must be trained.

Yes, I did understand that you were talking about reflexes. You were clear in explaining that the first time around. My point that you didn’t get, is that despite reflexes being much faster than the human reaction time, they still take some time. And moving your muscles also takes some time. Getting your head tucked in and curving your back and lifting your hands, they all take some time. They are not instant.

 All phones can shoot slo mo video. Shoot a video with someone clapping their hands where you can’t see, and once you hear the clap, you enter the posture ready to roll. Then calculate the time it took for you to do so from the video.

1 hour ago, level9 said:

Tense up out of fear.

You type as if rolling and being tense were the only two options. They are not.

1 hour ago, level9 said:

There's plenty of time.

Great! So you can confirm that there can not exist a crash where the rider wouldn’t have enough time to change their pose to a rolling one?

I do suggest that you watch a few overlean videos shot in slow motion. You can clearly see when their reflexes kick in, a bit after the wheel has cut out. The ones I saw absolutely would not have time to take a rolling pose before it was too late.

[level9]

16 minutes ago, mrelwood said:

Yes, I did understand that you were talking about reflexes. You were clear in explaining that the first time around. My point that you didn’t get, is that despite reflexes being much faster than the human reaction time, they still take some time. And moving your muscles also takes some time. Getting your head tucked in and curving your back and lifting your hands, they all take some time. They are not instant.

 

Of course, everything takes some time. If you want the data, I looked up some calculations for you.

Time for a typical person/height/weight/etc. to hit the ground going 0 mph (assuming no air resistance): 0.599ms.
Time to hit the ground if you are moving forward at, say, 20 mph: 0.789s. (the more forward momentum, the more time you have!).

In either case, typically too slow for conscious decision making, as noted.

If your argument is that the subconscious mind is unable to process the data and execute the appropriate muscle responses in sufficient time, I'm sorry, but that's just not accurate.

It's been some years since I studied neuroscience so I'm just going to cheat and quote the answer to the question posited to the AI and this sounds about right to me as I remember (and has also been my own personal experience):

In general, subconscious muscle responses can occur very quickly, often within milliseconds or even faster. This rapid response is due to the presence of specialized neural pathways and reflex arcs that bypass conscious thought processes and allow for swift reactions to stimuli.

In other words, the body+mind can collect all of the information during the initiation of a crash, determine it's bad and initiate an appropriate response, including the activation of muscles in milliseconds to tens of milliseconds and all of this happens before it ever even has a chance to hit the "thinking brain".

There isn't just one "mind" as most people understand it (the thinking brain). There are many different parts that run at dramatically different speeds. It's possible to train the other parts to respond to an event before it ever hits the (slow) thinking brain.

I do believe most people would simply call this is layman's terms:

Practice. 

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

You type as if rolling and being tense were the only two options. They are not.

3 hours ago, level9 said:

Those are the most common issues/scenarios for most riders as things stand today and as I see them.
If you have other thoughts/opinions on the matter, I'm sure we'd all love to hear. Isn't that what makes the internet such a wonderful place!

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

Great! So you can confirm that there can not exist a crash where the rider wouldn’t have enough time to change their pose to a rolling one?

 

I can't speak in absolutes.
If you want me to explain every possible situation and what to do, I'd be here for days and I don't have that kind of time
At some point, people are going to have to figure things out for themselves, preferably with the right tools.
One of which being - an understanding that the subconscious is significantly faster at processing information.

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

I do suggest that you watch a few overlean videos shot in slow motion. You can clearly see when their reflexes kick in, a bit after the wheel has cut out. The ones I saw absolutely would not have time to take a rolling pose before it was too late.

I have. I've watched every EUC crash video that I could find (overlean or not), including in slow mo. I've studied them closely.
Perhaps that was an oversight on my part and should be part of the training recommendation?
What I determined was that when the autonomic nervous system kicks in (fight/flight/freeze response), most people froze and went ker-splat!
I would say it was very informative about what not to do.

[mrelwood]

 

2 hours ago, level9 said:

Time to hit the ground if you are moving forward at, say, 20 mph: 0.789s.

How was this measured? I doubt it’s starting from a forward lean position.

 

2 hours ago, level9 said:

including the activation of muscles in milliseconds to tens of milliseconds

Activation, maybe, but not execution. Your hands simply can’t move from hanging down low to above your head in a few dozen ms.

 

2 hours ago, level9 said:

Practice. 

If I’d have to choose from crashing a dozen or more times in order to learn a proper way to crash, or continue as is with my nearly empty crash history, just guess which one I’d choose… 

 

2 hours ago, level9 said:

What I determined was that when the autonomic nervous system kicks in (fight/flight/freeze response), most people froze and went ker-splat!
I would say it was very informative about what not to do.

Froze? I haven’t seen a single crash video where the rider would’ve frozen. In literally all of them they just go all wonky and kind of try to run it off (at 30+ mph). But that doesn’t last long since they were already halfway to hitting the ground due to their forward lean.

 And those were only overleans, which give you a lot more time to react than cut-outs. In an overlean the pedals start to tilt forward slowly, but still have some resistance in them for you to jump out from. In a cut-out causing wheel failure the wheel goes dead immediately, giving you zero platform to jump off from, and much shorter time to react (or utilize your reflexes).

 Actually, since there doesn’t seem to be any sudden crash videos that would show how a roll would even work in such a situation, I kind of have to remain doubtful whether it could work. If you have such a video to show to me, I’d be happy to see it. And I don’t mean a video of someone doing something crazy and being prepared for a crash. But a sudden crash, out of the blue, where the rider reacts by rolling it out.

Edited June 29, 2023 by mrelwood

[Eucner]

3 hours ago, level9 said:

Time for a typical person/height/weight/etc. to hit the ground going 0 mph (assuming no air resistance): 0.599ms.
Time to hit the ground if you are moving forward at, say, 20 mph: 0.789s. (the more forward momentum, the more time you have!).

From where did you got more time to hit ground from speed? In riding position knees are bend and body has some forward lean. These both lowers the riders center of gravity and reduces time to go down.

[level9]

3 hours ago, Eucner said:

From where did you got more time to hit ground from speed?

Basic physics. Specifically, Newton's First Law of Motion.

3 hours ago, Eucner said:

In riding position knees are bend and body has some forward lean. These both lowers the riders center of gravity and reduces time to go down.

And standing up on an EUC pedal raises it.

4 hours ago, mrelwood said:

If I’d have to choose from crashing a dozen or more times in order to learn a proper way to crash, or continue as is with my nearly empty crash history, just guess which one I’d choose… 

 

If you don't have any experience in this matter, then why are you posting here?
I can give you all of the data until I'm blue in the face. You're not going to believe it.. so.. 

[mrelwood]

2 hours ago, level9 said:

Basic physics. Specifically, Newton's First Law of Motion.

Yet you seem to have forgotten to take account the factors that @Eucner mentioned.

2 hours ago, level9 said:

And standing up on an EUC pedal raises it.

It does that at all speeds though.

2 hours ago, level9 said:

If you don't have any experience in this matter, then why are you posting here?

That was quite a jump in the topic we were discussing. Yeah, if you want to turn this to a discussion for people who have crashed multiple times, then sure, I have no reason to take part. But that’s not what we were discussing.

2 hours ago, level9 said:

I can give you all of the data until I'm blue in the face. You're not going to believe it.. so.. 

Show me videos of people who roll a sudden cut-out or even an overlean. Based on what you’re saying they shouldn’t be at all hard to find.