how to cross railroad tracks

[Biciclista]

This blogger is a guy that lives near me. His blog is excellent. He's a very very strong rider.


http://janheine.wordpress.com/2012/0...tracks-safely/

[7rider]

Funny you should post this.
DH and I just caught on Showtime last night a show called The Ride - a docu about Phil Keogan from The Amazing Race t.v. show (which we never watch) riding his bike across the country fro MS.
Excellent show - but Phil nearly had his adventure come to an end when he wiped out in the rain crossing RR trax (head down, didn't see them coming).
Rain is bad enough. RR tracks are a potential disaster. Extreme caution is always warranted.

[marni]

I was wondering why the bog writer didn't mention the danger of wet or even slightly damp (fog, mist) tracks and the dangers of falling. I have seen more people go down on tracks and cattle guards that they didn't realize were damp and slick and they were either not exactly perpendicular or were leaning, than I have in any other kinds of common biking accident. Don't know if that is due to the prevalence of rail road tracks and cattle guards around here or just circumstantial but.. wet paint is also equally potentially slick.

marni

[Pedal Wench]

Saw "The Ride" about 5 days after my BF crashed because the guy in front of him in a race didn't properly cross tracks that were damp from fog/mist. The guy started to swing out like he was going to cross perpendicularly, but he went at a totally bad angle, slid out and took BF with him.

[Owlie]

There are a couple places that I'd rather just get off and walk rather than cross. Tracks, with a single exception, are one of them.

[Crankin]

Yea, I wiped out on horrible tracks as we were leaving lunch with Lisa, a couple of years ago. She even warned me! I don't have a lot of experience with tracks; we don't have a lot of them here and the ones I cross regularly are not raised or scary. If I see tracks that look dangerous, I often unclip and put one foot down and scoot across. The reason is in my next paragraph.
When I went on my bike tour in the Czech Republic, one of the women crashed on wet tracks on the second day. She was in her late sixties. Short story is the docs at the hospital said no, there's no broken hip. She had to hole up in the room until we got to Austria, where they promptly diagnosed a hip fracture. By this time, her stomach was wrecked from the Ibuprofen she was taking. It was really awful.