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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

On a hill? I was going too fast down a hill on a road cycle. Had a car behind me, and a very slightly raised manhole was ahead.

I braked, and went flying hard over the handlebars. I am not sure if I was going over before the manhole or not, but the hill radically changed how the brakes worked for me.

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I was not there when that happened to you and I might be wrong but I cannot imagine that happening under normal circumstances. I used to race and during many thousand kilometers on the road I encountered many risky situations (including a car appearing out of nowhere if front of me while I was going down the hill on multiple occasions) and I am afraid of many things while I am on a bike. But I have to say that going over handlebars because of braking is not one of them. If I could venture a guess I would say that something might be wrong with your bike - bad geometry (some cheap/old bikes are unstable), tyres not pressurized enough, really bad brakes (front one working, back one not working) - if I were you I would make sure that my bike is safe. By any chance did you have a heavy backpack on your back? Or maybe you just panicked and did something you really should not do... like braking really hard with only your front brake? Please check your bike anyway.

I can't be sure. It was a friend's bike, and I was used to mountain bikes, not racing bikes.

I may have been leaning forward, I may have jammed the wrong brake. The bike may have had any of the problems you list. That combined with the manhole + hill speed was probably what did it.

I now use the public bike system in Montreal, bixi. Very convenient, and they're built like tanks, so I feel confident it won't happen again.

It depends on your technique. If you have the technique down it isn't difficult to rapidly decelerate on hills. It's mainly just a matter of bracing yourself, keeping your centre of gravity back and modulating the brake.

If you're not prepared for it and slam the front brake on your weight will shift forwards and you'll have lift off.

Riding trails for so long I sometimes take for granted the instinctual awareness of center of gravity without which its impossible to become even an intermediate mountain biker. Getting your weight back makes all the difference going down hill.

The bigger problem on a road bike are the skinny tires and twitchy handling make it very easy to fishtail and topple over when braking at speed.

I think the key here is "If you're not prepared..." in a high speed traffic accident you're very likely not to be prepared.

You need to shift your centre of gravity backwards and then you can still brake, or at least feather the brakes, hard.

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