Must Watch: Cyclist Gets Surprise Encounter with a Deer at 30 MPH

Did the stem break?

Ouch. I guess a 50 kg deer does dissipate your speed quite a bit. Time to GMO the beasts to look left and right before crossing!

Collin,
I’m assuming the steerer broke, and broke severely. Enough that if relieved the compression stress under the stem and allowed the pieces of steerer to fall or slip out. A simple crack in a AL steerer will do that, same with a CF steerer.

If you go slow-mo/freeze frame around 27 seconds, it almost looks like something shattered and is in the air… maybe the carbon of the steerer tube? That would have to be a massive impact.

F that guy. What about the stem!

Lol guys come on, if the stem stayed on it’s no big deal.

I was hit by a deer once in Santa Cruz going about 25mph. Different than this… This guy hit a deer, in my case, the deer sideswiped me directly into the back half of my front wheel. I flew about 5 feet up into the air as the bike endoed and hit the paved bike trail (UCSC) in a series of about 5 shoulder rolls before coming to a stop. Saw the deer get up and run off while I was upside down during the second or third roll. My bike ended up in the dirt, and was mostly undamaged. I was fortunate that it was a cold day, so I had windproof gloves on and a fleece. The gloves lost their pinky side and the fleece was gone from elbow to shoulder. Other than some skin damage to my knees and a ton of bruising, I was okay. Never even touched my helmet to the ground. Seeing this, I’m thankful that the deer wasn’t 1/4 seconds earlier, or I’d have been much worse off.

did he have a bell installed? wild.

Same thing happened to a friend of mine on the Woody gap descent in North Georgia several years ago during the annual Six Gap Century ride. He was running over 40mph and managed to miss the actual deer but lost both tires to locked brakes and laid the bike down. After grinding off one one ass cheek he grabbed the guardrail to keep from sliding off the side of the mountain. Cost him a nice carbon Madone frame. I’ve nearly hit deer at speed on the mountain trails in the area too. I like venison, but still running is a bit rare for my taste.

i did something very similar on a motorcycle during the summer of 2013. The extra mass of my bike helped a lot. I made it through the impact without falling, thanks to the added 450 pounds under me. Those deer don’t give much warning!

And this one’s about me: I’ve been on that road — used to live in San Francisco. Now I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and out in the country west of town I’ve had a deer run along with me for 15–20 seconds, but I’ve never had one jump out in front of me. That groan a few seconds after the rider hit the pavement is a good sign, I guess; glad he was mostly okay, and I hope the deer was alright, too. A hit in the hindquarters might not’ve injured it.

Early in the YouTube comments, before it exploded, the poster of the video said that the stem broke on the side opposite the end that lands at the camera, and that they bike didn’t suffer much visible damage (not that he was going to ride it again).

Seems the solution is to ride a deer instead of a bike. Just think of the fatbike riders faces as they trudge up a trail and you shortcut up a snow covered 30 deg. embankment yelling away like some wild caveman. Strava that.

AlanM: You win the internet for the day!

Hi, I’m a lawyer, you might have seen me on a TV show. If you need representation, let me know. We can sue…Sausalito…the bike company…the deer…the people who helped you…the guardrail company…the stem company…and, ultimately, we will sue GoPro.

Call Saul.

According to the reddit post I saw this on, the guy was knocked unconscious briefly. His stem flew off his steerer tube, but there didn’t look like there was any damage to it. Of course there was only one picture of the damage. But I suspect it is a case of someone not torquing their compression plug and stem pinch bolts.