Is 94.7 Joburg's safest race?

[Trubie]

I have argued with some hubbers in the past who claim certain races are less safe than others due to mainly traffic and road conditions.

I believe all races are equal ito safety and that riders are the cause and not the circumstances - in most cases at least.

 

Reading all these threads about incidents yesterday and having seen a few myself, I just wonder if this race is safe, and what would the argument be?

 

What do you think?

[1hill@aTime]

i have always thought it was the safest, but not anymore,

[CAAD4]

The fact that there should be no cars on the route for the day, except of course for that woman in the Silver Corsa with the bright red L on her back window, idling down Jan Smuts Ave in Craighall on one of the fastest parts of the race...

[Zula]

I have argued with some hubbers in the past who claim certain races are less safe than others due to mainly traffic and road conditions.

I believe all races are equal ito safety and that riders are the cause and not the circumstances - in most cases at least.

 

Reading all these threads about incidents yesterday and having seen a few myself, I just wonder if this race is safe, and what would the argument be?

 

What do you think?

 

Agreed, thats why I prefer MTB races to road races by a mile.

 

Yesterday was great coz cars by and large were eliminated, but the other problem is the other riders. People are just too unpredictable.

 

Nothing safe about riding in a bunch with that many strangers.

[scotty]

The orgs have removed the metal monsters and seeded riders based on previous results to ensure congestion is minimized, the rest is up to cyclist themselves.

[Trubie]

i have always thought it was the safest, but not anymore,

 

Sorry to hear about the mishap......

Hope the knee recovers soon enough!!

[Malduik]

Yesterday was my first 94.7 and i loved it! I have done a few MTB races and the organisation that goes into that isn't 10% of what goes into the road races so: Hats off.

 

Regarding all the incidents people are complaining about: What do you expect will happen when 26000 people simultaneously try to get to the same point in the fastest possible time?

 

If you are not willing to take the risk you should stay off your bike and find something more suitable to spend time on. I’m thinking bowls or tea with gran.

 

Anyway, heads up to the organisers, the sponsors and most of all the participants!

[Andyr249]

There will be more incidents because there were more people riding! It is probably about the same in terms of safety as many other races.

[Punt]

I thought the race was quite safe, except for the taxi heading up Jan Smuts in the oncoming lane in Saxonwold!

 

The biggest safety hazards I saw were rider-caused. The dude doing 5kph on his mountain bike in the middle of the right-hand lane coming up Jan Smuts in Rosebank, the guy changing his flat tyre in the middle of the road on Summit Road, one idiot riding with his hands on his head in the middle of the bunch going down the M1... It's all common-sense things that people just don't think about when riding.

 

But from an organisation point of view, I thought the safety was spot-on.

[1hill@aTime]

Sorry to hear about the mishap......

Hope the knee recovers soon enough!!

 

 

Thanks man hope to be back on the bike soon

[Trubie]

Yesterday was my first 94.7 and i loved it! I have done a few MTB races and the organisation that goes into that isn't 10% of what goes into the road races so: Hats off.

 

Regarding all the incidents people are complaining about: What do you expect will happen when 26000 people simultaneously try to get to the same point in the fastest possible time?

 

If you are not willing to take the risk you should stay off your bike and find something more suitable to spend time on. I’m thinking bowls or tea with gran.

 

Anyway, heads up to the organisers, the sponsors and most of all the participants!

 

 

If you thought this was about me not wanting to take the risk, I suggest you read again.

If its a general statement, I agree

[Calooker]

I used the event more for training than racing so I rode to the start did a casual ride and then rode home again. On my way to the start at about 5:45am I was going up the hill passed Ponte (opposite way round to the route)and I saw several motorists & taxis moving barriers to go about their thing, hope it didn't happen later in the day during the event, at that time there was no marshals at these intersections.

[Slave]

My opinion: The safety of races is from different perspectives. If you have full road closure as you do in the 94.7, it is considered a "safe race" because there is little danger of a cyclist being hurt by a motorist.

 

On the downside of a "safe race" like 94.7 is the fact that you have a very large contingent of inexperienced cyclists who probably don't understand bunch riding dynamics. So the safety of the race is that you now have the race itself made unsafe because of the competitors /cyclists.

 

Other races, there is only partial road closure so there is the danger of motor vehicles being involved in accidents with cyclists. But, at the same time, you have a much smaller field of cyclists and they are probably much more seasoned bunch riders.

 

In any accident involving bicycles, one or more are going to go down and there will be pain and bleeding. In an accident between two cyclists, the chances are that one or both will be hurt.

 

In an accident between a car and a cyclist, the chances are that the cyslist will be seriously hurt or killed.

 

So, from one aspect, 94.7 is a safe race (road closure) but not from the other (inexperienced cyclists).

 

Maybe the trick from the race organisers is to seperate the novices from the rest of the herd. Like maybe one has to do a few (races) to "earn a place" in one of the better groups.

 

And even this is no guarantee since accidents are always going to happen anyway. A blown tyre can cause one cyclist to fall, and the chain of events is that several behing him go down as well.

 

Accidents are part of cycling. Someone once told me there are only two categories of cyclist: Those who have fallen and those who are still going to fall.

[cat-i]

last time i was on a roadbike was at argus. all the people all over the road with no space to pass and everyone trying to win the race was scary, so i was a bit scared of doing the 94.7.

 

was pleasantly surprised - maybe cos i got a 'safe' seeding. maybe cos i learnt how to handle a bike offroad? maybe cos there's less racing snakes nowadays? i got the impression that there's more people doing it just to finish, or riding with friends, a social day out rather than winning. i liked that a lot.

 

there was one oke who thought he was gonna win the race by cutting in front of me at a corner - i doubt he won, though, being already a bit off target 40 kays into the race, but you never know

 

apart from that, i felt very safe. no cars, enough space to pass where needed, enough space for faster groups to pass without having to push me into the gutter. i felt much safe on tar then i've done in a long time, and i will be back next year.

[pastapouch]

Safest, in terms of cars yes, in terms of rider total there is a very high risk of crashing. We've supported on the side of the road, and there were many riders who crashed and had bloody or bandaged knees.

[jatho]

I thought what let the race down a little was the road surfaces on some parts of the course, I remember hurling down past zoo lake at 75kph with a bunch of tandems flying past us and bouncing across the uneven road surface, noticed a few bottles scattered across the road and I went through there early so can only imagine what it looked like later in the day, apart from that I think the race was very well organised and would consider it a safe ride. There were a couple of crashes in the Vets but I think this was because of a full double lane road going into a single lane turn at speed, just isnt space for everyone in circumstances like that.