Originally published at: Cyclist regrets decision to ride across shallow water | Boing Boing
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I looks like he slipped on some slime and couldn’t regain his footing.
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Harder to do if he was wearing cycling shoes and they are very hard soles… hard to walk on them.
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It’s not obvious how the photographer could have helped.
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Ow! Ow! Ow! Weir Rash! I wonder if he was able to recover his bike from the undertow?
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Forget the bike. It doesn’t take that big of a quantity of water to get you trapped under a dam like that.
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This is a classic volume & mass issue, the he frankly did not understand, in the slightest.
P.S. I hope he is ok, and his IQ improves.
P.S.S. Spillway deaths in the USA are common, they’re highly dangerous.
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Wow, that’s effectively a low head dam, guy is damn lucky he didn’t get caught in the eddy at the bottom. Those things are insanely dangerous.
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I’ve been at a park out here in TX that had a similar drivable section that could occasionally flood, and when we got to it there sure as hell was water flowing over it. I made my dad wait while we decided if it was safe or not, when we noticed that a truck made it through we knew our SUV could make it too. Personally i wouldnt’ve driven through because i’m overly cautious like that but we made it over ok.
Reading through Reddit indicates that it really doesn’t take much water to pull things with the current, and a lot of these weirs seem to be set up in ways that make them effective drowning pools.
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The famous stat is six inches of running water can float a car, don’t think you need that much for a bike. ETA: I imagine they must have had to ignore some signage saying “don’t enter” or “don’t cross here”.
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Those aren’t cycling shoes.
This is clearly not a serious cyclist. Neither the bike nor the rider should have left the bike path.
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sometimes the best help you can be is an example for others. i think the person filming was doing the best thing at the moment. (of course, AFTER he was at the bottom, that’s when to start helping pull him out).
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Came here to post about the dangers of spillways- glad that others beat me to it. Those things are seriously dangerous. The undertows created at the bottom of them can be impossible to escape from. That moron is lucky to be alive.
The city I grew up in had three of these in the main river, and every year a handful of people try go over them in dinghies and die. The city blankets the area with signage and runs PSAs on TV about them every year, but you just can’t fix stupid sometimes.
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Happened to me once but on a smaller scale. The road crossed over a small creek, and due to rain the creek was flowing on the road and caused moss that was very slippery. Almost lost the bike as it was headed into the flowing creek, but managed to save it just in time.
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I bet a Ford would have been able to cross.
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We used to slide down the spillway at the local lake (with not as much water flowing) as kids. Until one of us hit the exposed rebar and gashed his leg open. Good times.
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That’s how we figured out how to ford rivers in Costa Rica – you wait for a local and watch how they do it. Mrs. Shiv once refused to drive across a muddy river until she saw some kid on a scooter do it in like 10 seconds
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People are always underestimating water…
People are always underestimating Zan from the Wonder Twins too.
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“The highest motive is to be like water;
Water is necessary to all living things.
It asks nothing in return, rather it flows humbly to the lowest level.
Nothing is weaker than water,
Yet against those things which are strong and hard,
Nothing can surpass it nor stand in its way.
May we all learn the way of water.” -Buddhist Dedication of Merit
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