Cycling Providence, Hidden Skill, or Blind Luck. What keeps us safe.

[Clancy]

As much as I try to stay focused and pay attention, there are those times when I may glance down at my gearing for a second, look over my shoulder, or just take a moment to look around at my surroundings. More than once I’ll look down at the last second to see I just missed a large rock, a split or pothole in the pavement, or a road reflector, any of which might have taken me down. Not all the time but it seems to happen infrequently but always causes me to think.

My heart wants to believe there’s some cycling magic or power that watches over me.

My logic tells me that I probably have my peripheral vision going without being aware along with other riding skills/senses.

My brain tells me it’s blind luck and I had better be paying more attention.

But I keep wondering if it’s also a little bit of the bicycle taking care of me. And I say that without too much tongue in cheek.

Thoughts?

[Polyglot]

I suffered a brain injury a few years back in a car accident. The injury was sufficiently bad that it quite severely impacted my speech as well as other things in day to day life. Since then, I have recovered almost completely (let's say 97%).

I can say without a doubt that in the first months after the accident I was very challenged when riding, not seeing things that in the past had simply been second nature to avoid. If there were stones along my route, I seemed to almost have a magnetic attraction to them. The frequency of punctures increased to a level I had never experienced in my life. As I recovered, I found that the punctures decreased and eventually returned to a level that was in line with past history.

So yes, I believe that there is a "skill" involved with riding and that it can be impacted by training and or brain power.

[OtayBW]

Originally Posted by Clancy

As much as I try to stay focused and pay attention, there are those times when I may glance down at my gearing for a second, look over my shoulder, or just take a moment to look around at my surroundings. More than once I’ll look down at the last second to see I just missed a large rock, a split or pothole in the pavement, or a road reflector, any of which might have taken me down. Not all the time but it seems to happen infrequently but always causes me to think.

My heart wants to believe there’s some cycling magic or power that watches over me.

My logic tells me that I probably have my peripheral vision going without being aware along with other riding skills/senses.

My brain tells me it’s blind luck and I had better be paying more attention.

But I keep wondering if it’s also a little bit of the bicycle taking care of me. And I say that without too much tongue in cheek.

Thoughts?

Interesting perspective. In the final analysis, yes - I thing it is some kind of Providence, or blind luck, or your karma that is at play.

I've been fortunate over the years. I'm a pretty conscientious rider with decent handling skills, I think. I pay attention at all times to what's in front of my face, and my surroundings. That means, in part, that I make a habit of not riding with people who I don't know, or who otherwise don't demonstrate that they can handle a bike and know about group riding skills - and courtesy.

I also tend to get more and more selective about which roads I will ride in terms of pavement quality and traffic flow as I get older. I do ride with an eyeglass mirror, which works for me (geekiness notwithstanding....hey, it's made from a Dos Equiis bottle cap and a spoke, so at least I got that going for me...), and my 'radar is ON' at all times. I'm constantly at least informally considering possible bail out options at all times.

So, I don't know. If it's all just blind luck, I'm trying to improve the odds...

[FlashUNC]

It's peripheral vision.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

It's peripheral vision.

This and then some. I recently finished reading a book by Katy Bowman, an author who explores evolutionary fitness. She had a whole section devoted to vision. As a species, we've regressed due to close contact devices such as cell phones. From an evolutionary perspective, we survived due to scanning the horizons for distant threats.

Cyclists, by necessity, are on "high-alert." We have to look in many different directions to see where the perceived threats are coming from.

I'm willing to bet that active cyclists score very high on spatial awareness tests.

[weisan]

[Spaghetti Legs]

There is a certain amount of luck involved, but I think that is more specific to the “unforced error”, like distracted drivers, dog running in the road, etc. There is a significant amount of skill involved in staying upright otherwise IMO. I take pride in being a good bike handler and I can think of several occasions I’ve ridden through when a less experienced bike rider would have gone down.

I am knocking on wood as I write this ...

[velomateo]

My late brother-in-law was treated for ocular melanoma and struggled with eye movement and vision issues after. When getting back on the bike, he used me as a reference for lane positioning to compensate for his deficiencies. So I would agree with peripheral vision.


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[Blue Jays]

My sense is we also bury tiny yet useful tidbits of riding data in our brains for retrieval later.
We might ride a road ONCE and return two years later and recall a pothole location, for example.

[veggieburger]

When I hop on the bike, I feel like a knight getting on his horse, sort of. I get on with a bit of an edge, an edge that I do not have off the bike. I ride expecting to get hit by a door, or a pickup, or there's a pothole waiting for me.....or something like that. It doesn't hinder my enjoyment, but it keeps me sharp. It's like owning a firearm - always assume the gun is loaded, even when you know it is not. A part of me assumes there might be something out there waiting to happen, even if it's a gorgeous fall day with nary a car nor ripple in the pavement in sight.

[ultraman6970]

IMo is a little bit of everything, but you have to add something else, the confidence. You dont have confidence in what are you doing and bad things start happening right away, mentally you have to be in a state of "i'm in control of everything," even when you are riding with other people you have to keep yourself in that state of mind and pretty much nothing will happen to you.

[unterhausen]

I think we tend to confuse luck with a fairly low probability of occurrence. Fortunately, serious crashes involving bikes are still pretty rare. Not for lack of trying on the part of some motorists, however.

[Matthew]

Unfortunately there was no cycling magic when I crashed my new Meivici on it's second ever ride. Looking down, I hit a hole in the road for a sewer pipe. Not even a major hole for the standards of Michigan roads. Fortunately I took the brunt of the road rash. Just a minor scuff to my shifter. I thought for sure I had wrecked it when I scraped myself off the pavement. Luckily only my skin and a fair amount of blood left behind. So maybe someone was looking out for me.

[paredown]

Originally Posted by Matthew

Unfortunately there was no cycling magic when I crashed my new Meivici on it's second ever ride. Looking down, I hit a hole in the road for a sewer pipe. Not even a major hole for the standards of Michigan roads. Fortunately I took the brunt of the road rash. Just a minor scuff to my shifter. I thought for sure I had wrecked it when I scraped myself off the pavement. Luckily only my skin and a fair amount of blood left behind. So maybe someone was looking out for me.

You know you are hard core when you are on the ground, but asking your riding buddies if the bike is OK...

[Hindmost]

And I thought this thread was going to be about the particular hazards of riding in a town in Rhode Island.