The Chainlink

. . . at the Bike the Drive 2011, according to the Sun-Times Media Wire.

I saw two accidents: one as it happend, and passed by another few minutes after.

The former involved one female rider, who fell for no apparent reason—her bicycle suddenly stopped, she fell flat on the pavement with her cruiser landing on a top of her. She was probably bruised pretty badly, hopefully with no bones broken. This happened within two miles from the Museum of Science and Industry, on the southbound side of LSD.

The latter was more serious, and involved at least two riders. When I passed the site of this accident (just south of that seasonal restaurant at the Oak Street beach), I saw one biker sitting on the ground and another laying on his left side, unconscious. They were surrounded by about a dozen riders, who stopped to help and alert other bikers; the fog was particularly dense there.

I haven't found anything on the net about either of these crashes.

Has anyone? If so, does anyone know any details? Is everybody all right?

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I wonder if the second accident you mentioned was the one I saw as well. I was in about that same area when all traffic headed south was stopped to carry a guy across to an ambulance. I hope he is ok I haven't heard anything else.
I'm surprised there weren't some more, given how thick the fog was and how many people were pacelining and zipping around in silly aero helmets. Active Trans does a fantastic job with the event (at least in my opinion; I'm a volunteer, so I'm biased) but should really do more to stress the point that high speeds and wobbly non-riders are not a good combination, especially in bad weather.
Between the fog and the misting, I was surprised at the number of riders who turned out for the event. I enjoyed the ride, but I wish I had windshield wipers on my glasses. I have to admit, I am surprised that there weren't any major accidents, but it is good to know no major injuries have been reported.

Sounds like it was a circus out there on the LSD.  The normal roads were pretty clear of lancers and nufreds alike -so I don't think I missed anything.  Hopefully no serious injuries amongst the many participants.   It is almost a certainty that with that many riders in one area there are going to be a couple that will inevitably wreck.  

 

 

The requests for ambulance seemed high this year.  ATA needs to stress A) fast-left, slow-right B)it's not a race, Lance.
Whenever there are road-users sharing the same area/space with a vast discrepancies in speed there is always a larger chance for a collision.   I've found that many of the lancers seem to think that zooming by someone <3' is OK but not when a car does it to them.
This was the first BTD I've attended, and all I can say is that there weren't nearly as many speedsters as I was lead to believe (I was maybe 98 percentile speedwise and I'm slow) and it was overall a much smoother experience than riding the LFP during the high season. I had fun.

We passed the gentleman who had the heart attack, just as the FD was pulling up. Hope the guy's going to be OK.

 

Mostly everyone seemed to be well-behaved, I thought. The freds generally stayed to the left and we slowpokes kept to the right.

 

This was our first BTD, but it won't be the last. I posted some pix on my blog, Mr. Pither:

http://misterpither.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

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