Yup. Can't stomach it anymore. It's not worth that level of risk to maybe win a 4 pack of komucha for a podium finish.

Sorry about your crash - that sucks.


Not me. I've been bike racing for around 15 years now, after converting from triathlon. I crashed a couple times as Cat 5 and 4 (talking about U.S. racing), almost none in Cat 3, 2, and masters, encompassing many hundreds of mass starts in criterium and road, regional stuff, nationals, masters worlds. Hundreds more starts in track where I've never crashed. The last crash I remember was 5-6 years ago when I slid myself out in the corner of a criterium during a downpour - fortunately not taking anyone else with me.

There's a lot of sheer chance involved, and I fully recognize that I could go down at any time.

But there are skills too. Before every start I take look at the field and identify the people I'm comfortable with, and those I'm not. And then during the race I position myself very intentionally, not just letting myself end up someplace randomly. I'm always monitoring body language and behavior, always carefully protecting my front wheel, and always scanning for my bailouts. I spend the bulk of time in the first ~10 positions, even if it costs me a lot of energy to stay there. One caveat is that while I'm not afraid to do a little shoulder bumping in track where movements are tightly regulated by rules and lanes, if you bump me in road or criterium because you're fighting for my position at a critical moment, 95% of the time I will cave in and let you have that wheel. So I will never make a good sprinter. But I'm physiologically not a sprinter anyway, so it doesn't bother me.

My worst crashes have been in low stakes cx races, not crits but maybe I’m just lucky that way.

I quit triathlon and went to bike racing

I've switched to triathlons but not because I think bike racing is too dangerous.

Just got a bit dull and boring after a while. I might do some crits again in the future, but the demands are so different from triathlon I think I have to choose one or the other to be competitive.

Can't speak to the switching to triathlon part of the question, but I've been road racing a *lot* of years, staring back in the days when six cog freewheels were state of the art. There always have been risks associated with bike racing, especially in the lower rider categories, where strength on the bike doesn't necessarily mean strength in terms of skills and pack awareness.

These days, there are less opportunities to road race in IRL. The growth of indoor platforms like Zwift has produced a cohort of riders who are very strong, but who might not have the necessary skills to manage a pack on the road. Also, the culture of racing has changed pretty significantly over the years, with even the upper categories becoming way more aggressive in the pack, and far earlier in a race. It seems that almost every moment in a race has become high stakes.

For instance, it used to be that non-sprinters would drift to the back near the end of a flat stage to let the sprinters compete it out. There was a greater culture of respect for the stronger riders in the peloton, and people raced a whole lot more, which meant that the stakes for most individual races weren't as high.

While I have no stats, it's my sense that road racing is more dangerous than in the past (but then, I might just be an old guy yelling at clouds, too) and that a greater number of stronger riders in the peloton have weaker pack skills than in the past, due to the rise of indoor training.

This said, my most catastrophic accidents, the ones that resulted in joint replacements and long rehab stays, took place in triathlons, when I was doing the bike leg. Racing Cat 1 and 2, I wasn't as worried about crashing as I was in the lower categories or when I do a relay in a big triathlon. And this comes from the perspective of someone who was a sprinter, when we all kinda expected to go down at the end of a race.

Of course, though, the *real* reason for the increased danger in road racing is the move to disc brakes. They are WAY more dangerous that then old Spinacci aerobars and Spinergy carbon wheels. (/pink)

On the other hand, I got my start racing on the track and when I moved to crits, I was horrified at how much people used brakes to control their positions in a pack. That took some adjustment ;)

Bike racing has a very large fat tail in terms of risk distribution. One can go decade plus experiencing at most the most minor of crashes, but then out of the blue get caught up in something nasty.

With the ways rules are enforced, dangerous riding is somewhat rampant, and adrenaline has a way of making most of us disregard warnings.

This isn't to say that one cannot mitigate the risks, as @trail outlined above. But rather, that level of defensive riding cannot mitigate some of the worst things that could happen. It should also be mentioned that @trail is perhaps uniquely able to ride through bumps, given his experience on the track. Not everyone could do this, but as he says, it's something that can be learned. Elbows bent with upper body relaxed. Easy to say, but harder to do when needed. I recall riding 3-wide into a relatively benign crit corner, and one rider bumping into me. With a relatively low position, I was able to absorb the bump and come out of it alright.

But take a look at the courses, and it's not hard to see that besides unsafe riders, there are also often unsafe courses. Downhill right-angled turns where one can go >30 mph, but without any hay bales or protections were one to shoot wide. Or descending down a steep hill with a section fully open to effect of winds. These things didn't bother me much when I started, but I got tired of them eventually and concentrated on ITTs only.

I never crashed in a bike race but did crash in triathlon breaking my ribs... I blame the case that tri has gone compLetitor friendly so completely unskilled riders on the course (newbie on mtb was zigzagging in front of me as I was going twice their speed)

I got a bit bored with triathlon so took up road racing for about 10 years to mix things up.
I loved it! Especially crit racing where my bike handling skills could shine.

However, I had three pretty hard crashes, all of them caused by some idiot in front of me crossing wheels and me with nowhere to go but over top.
After that final crash and $2000+ worth of bike and kit damage, I told my wife I was done.
Gravel racing feeds my itch now and is vastly more safe.

The ability to get super fit but still have shit bike handling skills has become more prevalent with all of the indoor training now.

Going against the grain here, but it seems to me that racing is safer now than it was 10 yrs ago. I stopped racing in 2011 and started again last year. Back then if it wasn't a big pro race there would be a fair amount of start/stop racing and it seemed like the majority of crashes happened on one of these slowdowns. Nowadays racing seems to be more full speed the whole way and keeps the field more strung out. Probably just a mirage but time away sometimes does make incremental changes easier to see.

I would worry about going down in a bike race way more than in a tri. As someone who MTB, Cx races, and road rides, I feel comfortable that my handling skills are at least decent. To your point, the only people I actually fear on the course are the mega ST'ers with their heads buried.

 
so i race road, cross, and tris, have for years.

i'm genuinely curious, why would would gravel be safer? random potholes, loose surfaces, all on top of the normal dangers of pack racing, plus motorists if the roads are open. it seems surprising to me that it would be safer.

In general, in RR / Crits someone else usually crashes you out and causes more collateral damage.

Whereas in gravel races, riders are usually more spread or strung out (comparatively speaking), and you mostly cause your own crashes which can be mitigated with bike handling skillz

The pack is not that tight as you need more room to deal with terrain.
There are usually only 2-3 good lines, so the pack lines out often.
Gravel is selective. You can't cruise in the pack and coast along like asphalt.
Roads are generally light traffic or empty. If they were busy, they would be paved.
Paved roads have potholes, cracks, etc where you least expect it. You're always expecting something on gravel.
Hitting gravel hurts less than hitting asphalt.

Could probably think of more... but best to enter a gravel event where you could see for yourself.

 

this makes sense - less direct exposure to other people's fuckups.

i think i was actually fishing for empirical data, but i doubt there really is any. i've only done a handful of gravel races, and i observed my own near-misses and some injuries to others, and it lead me to doubt my own intuitions that in some way it was safer. in a cynical mood, i even wonder if it's a sort of ad hoc view, tossed in with the real reasons gravel is displacing road.

Forget road racing. What about group rides? All the roadies show up now with their aero road helmets, skinsuits, aero wheels and just want to hammer the group ride like it's the Tour de France. Last month on my Wednesday group ride we had two crashes. The first a lady went down as she hit a pot hole that everyone in front of her pointed out. The second dude was on the limit, crossed wheels and took out six riders. Two of them left in ambulance, one with a broker collarbone the other with a cracked hip. I remember when I used to get the stink eye when I would show up for road rides with clipon's on my road bike.

Both road bike racing and triathlons are inherently dangerous. I raced road bikes in the 1990s. Definitely saw a lot of crashes and had been in a couple minor crashes in races. But I've seen some really terrible solo bike crashes in the half and full Ironmans I've done. Back when I raced road bikes, you started in the first category (5 for men and 4 for women back then). You worked your way up through the categories based on number of races done and placing. So by the time you got to cat 1,2, or 3, you had developed some decent bike skills and how to ride a bike in a big pack of riders. Nowadays in triathlon many triathletes ride so much indoors and don't develop good bike handling skills. It's astounding some of the bad bike riding I've seen on triathlon courses (no offense to anyone, just stating what I've seen compared to my bike racing days)

When there weren't women's races, I sometimes jumped into the men's cat 3 races in the 1990s. It was crazy but fun. Those guys had good bike handling skills for the most part. Doing a crowded Ironman branded 70.3 or full IM does feel a bit safer but still you have many riders around you that might not have the best bike skills. And again, I've seen some bad shit out on those bike courses. I've been shaken up quite a bit from some of the crashes I've witnessed and ridden past (Mont Tremblant, CT 70.3 and Nice worlds 70.3 are still in my head and I will never forget the crash I saw in Nice, France in 2019.) (The only reason I didn't stop at those particular crashes was that there were already medical people or a group of people attending to the athlete.)

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

What kind of group is this?? Crashing on a group ride is 100% unacceptable. Not to sound like a stick in the mud, but if you cause a crash on a group ride you need to spend a little time riding on your own, or at the very least at the back of the group until you can figure things out. When it comes to the safety of the group it's okay to be a jerk and tell people off for doing stupid things. I'd much rather have someone mad at me for hurting their feelings than 5 people picking gravel out of their skin because of them.

The most sketchy rides I've ever done were "no-drop" rides where everyone would wait for whoever was the slowest. Cool idea, but all of the slowing and looking around doesn't create a smooth, easy to follow flow. There's also the issue that when you do get a random knucklehead riding like a clown you can normally just turn uphill and say goodbye.

It's unacceptable, but they happen all too frequently.

I've almost never been a fan of hammer rides, and the ones i know of routinely just blow through stop signs and traffic lights, so that there would be a big gap created by the time everyone has crossed the road. Some riders are also desperate to hang on at all cost, and it was just messy.

The only one I've been on with any semblance of normalcy is one held in a somewhat lowly trafficked park loop and attended by mostly experienced local racers. But even then, inexperienced riders do show up and tag along (easy to do b/c it's flat), but in doing so manage to get themselves into situations way above what they could handle.

Almost all group rides outside of team rides end up being somewhat fubar; at least for team rides, a rider who misbehaves can be sanctioned.

Absolutely. Competitive group rides can be wonderful, but they typically take curation by some respected core of cranky vets. One of my old favorite ones was ruled over by kind of a jerk masters rider, and he'd scream profanities and make Cat 3/4/5 insults to anyone violating group ride etiquette. I still don't like him or his methods. But you know what? Poor rider behavior is corrected, everyone stops at stop lights, etc., and it's a decent group ride.

My current one is ruled over by a legendary pro and masters rider. He's 75 now, so e-bikes the ride. And he's very kind, like an old professor. Will quietly fix problems with no yelling at all. Good stuff.

Without curation these rides absolutely devolve into free-for-all shitshows not unlike a Zwift race.

I saw way more crashes in one year of road racing than I've seen in the 8 years I've been riding gravel.
I know it's anecdotal, but the pack dynamics are just so different.

Of course, the start of large events can still be sketchy AF, but about 30-45 into any race it all smooths out.

They’ve changed the requirements to upgrade. When I started it was 10 to go from cat 5 to cat 4 unless you won a race. Now you can just start in cat 4 and only need to “pack finish” 20 races to become cat 3. I got my cat 3 upgrade through actually getting the 20 points needed through consistent racing and placing well.

There’s people who are “cat 3” who never came top 10/15 never podium or won a race which I believe has made it more dangerous.

I suggest a different group. There are a lot of friendly cyclists out there too.

I think that's the critical peace.

Bike races are at its most dangerous when you are fighting for position in corners. If you are ok with backing off, the risk reduces drastically.

On the other hand, you are better positioned for avoiding pothole, oily road surfaces, and traffic (if open course) on a road bike.