An Ounce (a few grams) of Prevention
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--A helmet kept a concussion from being major trauma for me just last month.
--The time I broke my wrist I had NO wrist guard on it.
--Home-adapted shoulder armor kept a 20mph shoulder slam from being a shattered collarbone or a dislocated shoulder.
--My heavy-duty Scabs knee pads have scrapes, meaning I must have landed on them, more than once -- with NO knee injuries.
--One time I knocked an elbow wearing dinky Triple Eight elbow pads; so now I wear Fox Titan Pro which provide much more coverage.
--In my blue jeans I stuff old knee pads on my hips -- which I have indeed bruised a couple of times.
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@s-leon I hadn't realised how many injuries you've had. Lot of respect for dusting off and getting back out there each time. Not sure how I'd react if I broke/dislocated something D:
Can confirm my 2 injuries resulted in misery because of a lack of gear.
- Lost skin on my knee, hip, arm and palm because I had nothing other than normal clothing on. Skid on pavement at 15mph is no fun.
- Poor choice in footwear meant a fall led to soft tissue damage near the ankle and a nearly broken foot. Propper footwear makes emergency dismounts easier.
Ways gear has so far protected me.
- During the prior fall my helmet stopped my face and eyes getting poked by a bush that I stumbled into.
- Wrist guards allowed me to keep floating because they stopped me busting my hands up when bailing from a failed curb drop 2 years ago.
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I offer this: In addition to the equipment already mentioned, I’ll often throw on some hard plastic shin guards in the socks under the jeans when doing challenging or unfamiliar forest trails. I had my board flip/roll towards my shins one time and the edge/grip tape took a nice little slice o bacon off my leg.
It was far from the trail head, so I immediately got back on the board and headed for the car while the adrenaline was still working and shock hadn’t set in. 🌲 🪨 🔪 🥓
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@angusofstockholm I'm not sure I would go there, personally. But, I have been hit by the board in my shins multiple times, and it hurts, a lot. So, I totally respect the idea.
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@biell - I get it, but one good look at the bone sheath of my shin bone was really enough for me. My scientific curiosity has its limit. :D
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A bruised hip -- because I was not wearing eye protection! In early summer in the swampy woods here are one kind of nasty, foul, awful tasting insect. And it turns out they are also blindingly burning to the eyes. I was not even on a Onewheel, but testing my e-bike when my eye got zapped! Oh! The insect's chemical burn to my eye hurt so bad I slammed on the brakes, skidded into the gravel on the side of the trail, and fell onto my hip. And my eye continued to burn and hurt. Traveling 20+ mph I am unlikely to EVER not wear eyewear or a face shield again!
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After my last Onewheel fall in which I managed to shatter my collarbone, a dance friend -- who used to ride a mountain bike on single-tracks -- gifted me a Fox Titan Sport Jacket. Basically mesh it is, with CE armor -- elbows and forearms, shoulders, back, tailbone, and ribs. Skeptical at first whether I could wear such a thing, I have been trying it in the warmer summer weather -- and surprise! I love it! It allows great airflow, and it is easy to put on. In the leading shoulder I do tuck in an extra d3o pad. No falls taken yet to test it -- and hopefully there will be none.
And apparently the Fox armored mesh jacket looks fashionable! Two different trail users said that they thought I was a teenager on a Onewheel.
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Through a rain spattered window of my car, my two skate helmets with "a bit deaf' and "almost deaf" signs for safety to encourage people overtaking me to speak up and clearly announce their intention to pass. The full face TSG Pass does not yet have a sign on the back. Although these days, I on my Onewheel have been the one doing all the overtaking. Partly the reason for posting it is that I enjoy the impressionistic effect of the photo.
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@s-leon said in An Ounce (a few grams) of Prevention:
to encourage people overtaking me to speak up and clearly announce their intention to pass
I wish someone, anyone, would announce they are passing or even just ring a bell. I've never had anyone do this whereas I ALWAYS announce myself. A couple weeks back, this guy on an e-bike passed me at over 20 mph as I was passing someone to my right and a walking pedestrian was on the left. He zipped between me and the pedestrian without any warning. Scared the cr4p out of me. Further up on the boardwalk in Old Sacramento, I saw him (again at like 20 mph), trying to pass a walking group of maybe 10 oblivious people. He tried to go on their right as they slowly crowded him and he almost hit the guard rails, but he still never said a word.
We have to set the examples as the safe and polite EV riders!
GT-S > GT > Pint X > XR > +
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@onedangt -- Too, I always announce, "Coming up... Passing left (or right, or even between, as the case may be)," from fairly far back, and drawing out the syllables in a strong, confident voice so as not to surprise or scare people. Then after I was scolded once for closing the gap shockingly fast, I now tend to slow down some in overtaking and passing. Edit: Around any children I slow WAY down.
And I get "Thank you," or handwaves from many. Word of general courtesy gets around and it puts Onewheeling in a good light.
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Happily exultant I am! At dusk this evening I tested my safety gear with a sound twenty-five-mile-per-hour nosedive off my lifted, Leaderboard Onewheel Plus, and the safety gear passed with flying colors! I had been testing out my new Outbound “Detour” light in the dim light on the Greenway, not paying attention to the BadgerSense.
This was on a deliciously smooth stretch of pavement on which I have fairly often seen more than three-quarters RED on the BadgerSense — and I should have known to be paying more attention. As the nose dipped my first thought was, “No, this shouldn’t be happening.” As my leading body-side impacted pavement my thought was surprise, “Oh, that did not hurt.” And immediately, as my helmet hit, “Here comes another concussion.” Then I relaxed, enjoying the sliding sounds, surprised at how far I was sliding down the pavement (like ten, or fifteen, or more feet) on the hard plastic of knee pads, hip guards, elbow guards, shoulder armor, and open face snowboard helmet. Joy!!! I did not even drop the OutBound light from my lead hand. Edit: Actually, the wide hard plastic scallops covering my spine from neck to tailbone was the sled on which I coasted until I stopped.
Slightly scraped and mildly bloodied knuckles on my leading hand, a two-inch rug burn near my leading elbow, and an extremely slight, almost imperceptible bruise on my leading hip are the full extent. Unplugging the XT-90 connector and plugging it back in turned the Onewheel back on. A quick check to verify that I was not really hurt, and I got right back on and headed the three dark, wooded miles back to the car.
Then to give the OutBound light a truer test in the now near-pitch dark of the woods, I immediately headed back down the Greenway with the OneDanXR to see if my safety gear had left any marks on the pavement. No sign of the mishap there at all! — Although I did lose my eyeglasses mirror in the impact or the slide, and will need to go back in the morning to find it. The OutBound “Detour” light did not get hot in my hand, and it lit the trail well, even then at twenty-some miles-per-hour.
Happy I am!!! Not dead. Not hospitalized. Not traumatized. Not even sore or achey. A better ending I could not have wished for! — And I now know the cut-out point on my Onewheel Plus surely and for certain.
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@s-leon Glad you’re okay, what a spill!
Guess it was a good thing the ground was smooth so you didn’t get any sharp body busting deceleration D:
That gear pays for itself in saved bandages and trips to the doc. -
@lia -- Yes, indeed! Good safety gear can be life-saving! Laundering the wind breaking jacket I had been wearing in the fall on Sunday, I noticed it is somewhat tattered, including new holes in the sleeve and shoulder area near the neck. So, I was prompted to look more closely at the Fox Titan Sport Jacket protection I was wearing over the windbreaker jacket when I went down. To my surprise there are scape striations not only on the elbow and shoulder, but also all the way down the back, from the neck to the tailbone. The hard plastic sections of the armor in back acted as a pavement sled for me -- on which I rode out the surprisingly long slide.
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Maybe it's the fall, or perhaps it's the cool, chill autumn -- my average speeds and top speeds are lower. A contributing factor to slowing down could be riding a much slower and attention-needing V1 daily on the Greenway pavement, carrying over some to the way I ride the OneDanXR and my Onewheel Plus. Anyway, instead of regularly 22, 23, or 24 mph top speeds, lately it has been 19, 20, and sometimes 21 mph.
Reviewing my Onewheel fall history in my mind, it seems I fall backwards equally or more often than forwards. With that in mind this week I added freewheel brakes to my latest V1 reconstruction. Once before it had had them -- to good effect -- then I took it all apart and it just sat, with me thinking I was through with riding the V1. Then I got fresh inspiration.
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@s-leon I know from my first fall I stopped pushing above 15mph so there might be something about the fall that led to your slower speed.
First year I was sometimes coasting 18+mph before my fall and decided I'm better off chilling at 15pmh. I feel that little pushback nudge and ride it comfortably only barely hitting 16mph sometimes.
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@s-leon i want to bomb every damn hill i come across but pushback reminds me we're not there yet...
XR's got what plants crave!
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@notsure -- Interestingly, caution -- going slow and using your brakes -- while going downhill at full battery will more likely result in overcharge cut-out than Onewheeling with abandon. The braking regen is the culprit. Onewheeling slowly uses less of the battery, allowing it to be more easily overcharged by the regen when you do brake.
Onewheeling with careless abandon or acceleration UPHILL is a different story. In that case it is too easy to overwhelm the battery and end up rolling on the pavement (and rarely with laughter at your mistake)!
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@s-leon yeah i just rip it! id like to just go nuts n bomb it, but that cutout scares me. would love to be able to just ride out those moments at minimal cost to performance (if possible), but i hear its a technical challenge. not my area of expertise so i have to wing it sometimes. getting the motor to spin fast n not lose torque or fry stuff is understandably challenging.
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Hmmph. Today, Onewheeling around sunrise in soupy early morning fog through the woods and wetlands on the Greenway, eye protection off because it was fogging up so bad, an insect — a bee? — came at me at its full throttle, and me at mine, and we collided, it hitting me just below the eyebrow and into the eye socket. The impact itself was a sharp, blunt hurt — but then the hurt kept getting more intense. Stung with a chemical sting! Oh my! A half inch lower and I would be blind in that eye.
Turned around, Onewheeled the five miles back to the bicycle, ratchet-strapped the Onewheels on the rear bike rack, and pedaled home the four miles. The distended swelling around the eye did not really start until I was home for more than an hour. Now it looks like I had been in a fist fight and took a hard blow. Do they sell safety glasses with heating elements in the lenses? To burn off condensation? Perhaps I should get a helmet with a face shield — or at least an eye shield.
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@s-leon ouch. Lucky it wasn’t worse as you say. Phew.
Once many years ago I was on my motorbike and a bee climbed in through a gap in the visor on my helmet. I nearly lost it trying to stop on the side of a main road, it had small stones (like on a beach) for drainage which as we know are not really good for driving on. I avoided being stung, just.
You may still find fogging with a helmet, but maybe the type which is open face but with a visor would be suitable indeed. I just know that motorbike helmets fog up, and unfortunately holding you breath isn’t an option ;)
