Looking over the bike..
The rear did nothing to help break my fall; it's much narrower than the pedals. So, my body took up the slack in the rear.
Looks like the pedals and the handlebar both helped me take the fall. Thank heavens for that 128mm wide bottom bracket i installed, otherwise my knees would have gotten smacked.
Thinking about it, we have something at the top and bottom of the front of the bike protruding to help take the fall...
But nothing in the rear.
Here's a solution that would prevent >90% of body to ground contact while falling to the side.
General idea: have a 1-2 inch buffer between my body and the road.
- Keep this handlebar width, it's more than adequate, but put bar ends on it.. this bar also helps orient it along the road so it can do it's thing as a primary "crumple zone" even if we don't have the handlebar perfectly aligned.
- Bolt some drop grips to the bottom of the seat, this should create a 4 inch protrusion ( handlebars are still 3 inches wider but that's okay ). Alternatively if i can find some thin plastic boxes for storage, these can be my side-bumper.
- 2 inch of plastic pipe bolted to the end of the cranks.
- Handlebar extender with plastic pipe going through it.
..with this there should be 4 points of possible bike - ground contact on each side of the bike & a few should simultaneously be engaged when dragging or hitting the ground.
..in the case of a crash, if you hold the handlebars straight and keep your knees in, there should be zero body to ground contact.
Handlebar extender for the top of the seat:
Bar ends:
Once i'm healed up i'd like to build these safety mechanisms and do a test crash...
..because what's cooler than a fast recumbent bike? one you can dump at high speed and walk away from totally unscathed.
Nonetheless i am still really happy at how recumbent bikes crash & how easy it would be to add some effective safety to them for some 90% of types of crashes..
It's going to be hard to ride my upright bike knowing how much nicer a recumbent crash is.
Then again, some of this thinking translates to an upright bike too..