 So this is where it happened. The car was doing this. You can see this car. It's about to turn right. And you can see the sun. There it goes there. See where the sun's coming from? Up there. So the sun was coming. I was riding this way. The sun was coming over my shoulder. And there was a car turning right. And I don't know whether the car had dirty windscreen or whatever it might be. It blurred their vision and essentially as I was riding it turned right in front of me and I went over. In this video I could get severely interrupted at any stage. You see it's school holidays here at the moment. But in all seriousness what I'm going to do with you in this piece is share two lessons. And unfortunately this does involve me getting hit by a car which is not a very positive thing to be talking about. And I did debate on whether I put this video up but I truly believe the lessons learned. The things that I can share far outweigh the fact that I did get hit by a car. So the two things I'm going to share with you. Number one how I believe I could have avoided the incident if I was a little smarter about my surroundings. And number two we're going to head to Giant Noosa where Jesse is going to explain to us the quick and easy steps we can take to assess our road bikes after an incident. Now a couple of quick things before we get into the meat of this video. Number one thank you to everyone's support recently we had our biggest advertising revenue month on the channel last month. It's over $1200 AUD and I don't say that to gloat. 100% of the advertising revenue on this channel goes directly to the Mirabelle Foundation which helps underprivileged kids in Australia access sport. The second thing I wanted to quickly mention and this is a personal story that I'm going to share with you. It's a very important topic on the 6th of October in major cities around the globe. There's something happening called the man ride. Now the man ride isn't another charity event. It's actually an opportunity for men to get together on their road bikes and talk openly. You see the simple question how are you sits at the cornerstone for early intervention to help prevent the biggest killer of young men in this country that being suicide. But the man ride isn't just for people out there that might be dealing with some mental struggles at the moment. It's also for men out there that have a positive story to tell or perhaps it's a positive story that's come from adversity such as myself. You see I am feeling fortunate. Fortunate that at the tender age of 38 I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. But these recent feelings of fortune have actually come from a two year period of some pretty dark times. It was mid-2017 where I finally took the plunge. I left the corporate world behind to tackle a passion project, a cycling marketplace called Bike Chaser. Now to cut a long story very short, that business to date has been unsuccessful from a financial perspective. Which is the perspective we all deem as either success or failure in a business world. And as a result of the past two years I've experienced moments of stress, concern, financial worry, which has led to moments of anxiety. I've constantly questioned myself, am I good enough? Comparing myself to others who are doing really well. There's been a lot of self doubt and I've actually felt ashamed of myself at times. And I never really spoke to anybody about this because I come from a long line of Aussie men that take the stance just get over it. You live in a good country, you went to a private school, your parents are still together, you're now married with a family, who am I to complain about my own self doubt? But what I've realized is dark thoughts are worthy of discussion no matter the circumstance. The best thing that you can do is to talk about it. Whether you learn something from that discussion or whether you just feel better about getting it off your chest. That is what the man ride is all about. So all the details from the man ride I'll link to below. So the first major part of this video is how I truly believe I could have avoided this incident if I was a little bit wiser, a little bit smarter about what was happening around me. Now I did debate on putting this video up at all as mentioned and the reason being I don't want there to be somebody out there that might have had a near miss in recent times or maybe they've got a family member in their ear trying to stop them from going out in the road and this is sort of the cherry on top. This is what stops them from going out and participating in one of the great activities on this planet being road cycling. This is more of a learning that I'm keen to share with you and I was very fortunate in this incident that nothing bad happened. I can share this story and hopefully mitigate somebody else being caught up in this situation. Now I have been road cycling for 10 years. This is the first time I've ever been clipped by a car and there is no doubt that it was the motorist fault. They stopped, they apologized profusely, they're actually cyclists themselves. I think they were more traumatized by the experience than me. And I was fortunate as I said I hit my neck and my shoulder. That was a bit sore for a week. I had a cut knee. The bike was a little bit scratched up and the drivetrain needed a little bit of fixing but that's all being cleared up now thanks to the insurance claim. So everything is okay. So I wanted to share with you how this incident unfolded and how I could have avoided it and I didn't capture it on GoPro as it happened. So we're going to have to do a bit of a reenactment in this particular instance. I was riding my bike up here on the Sunshine Coast and I started to head in a westerly direction. The car was coming in the opposite direction and while I saw the car had indicated bright not for one second did I think it would turn directly in front of me which is what happened. I hit the back of the car and it went directly over onto the road. If we break this down you can see that the sun is shining directly in the windscreen and the eyes of the oncoming drivers turning right. Additionally the area that I'm riding on albeit it is a bike lane is shaded and when you look at it from the other direction the shade can actually act almost as a camouflage. It's no surprise that the driver claim they didn't see me. So as bike riders or cyclists we need to take safety into our own hands as many of you would know. We can't rely on motorists because motorists get involved in incidents with each other all the time and there is a lot of cyclists out on the road so we need to have a more heightened awareness surrounding our own safety than any other vehicle on the road in my opinion. And as a result whenever I'm cycling past parked cars I'm always looking in rear view mirrors to ensure that there's nobody sitting in the driver's seat because doorings are very prevalent which can cause extreme injury and I think that scenario that awareness that we have when we're cycling past parked cars you need to have that type of awareness in many instances such as the one I'm just describing to you where you might be riding early morning or late afternoon the sun is coming over your shoulder it's disrupting the vision of drivers who might be turning in front of you and if I had my time again I would have slowed the bike down to ensure that that driver had seen me before cycling through and with that awareness I truly believe I would have avoided that incident and I hope me sharing this lesson with you could help mitigate further incidents out on our road Now the second major thing that I wanted to talk to you about is okay if you do get an incident and your bike is potentially compromised what is the system, the step-by-step approach you can take to ensure you're not riding away and putting your safety at risk So for this part of the discussion as I said earlier let's go over to Giant Noosa where Jesse's going to walk us through a few things Yeah about five or six things we generally run through when we're checking a bike that's been damaged in a crash be it vehicle, by itself or with another rider obviously severity varies a little bit but in your case we're pretty lucky so you're a good man basically five things we'll be checking out or six things we'll be checking out today we'll be looking at contact points so handlebars, seat, pedals making sure they're all intact and not damaged wheels are obviously a big one, making sure they're running okay frame's obviously another big one too, making sure there's no damage to your frame and it's safe to ride or get inspected and also we're checking the mechanics of your bike making sure they're running all sweet and tuned up properly Okay nice, so should we start with the contact points? Yeah so we'll start with a few contacts here so we're going to be looking straight away at your hoods So what are we looking for with the hoods? So with your hoods if they've been knocked or damaged usually side impact it's not uncommon for them to push in push in at a 45 degree angle or in worst case they've snapped off just unwrap your bar tape just before you go too far even if you just unwrap it all the way off and just check that there's no damage to the handlebar itself what you'll find particularly with carbon bars if there is a big knock that's had to the side of the hood it can score the carbon underneath there or crack the carbon and the only way to check that is to take the bar tape off and visually inspect it not a big job but worth doing especially for the sake of a $300 or $400 handlebar obviously scuffing to your handlebar tape that's physical stuff obviously you can see a little bit of much yeah it's not the end of the world but it's also a good idea to check your brake cables as well because a lot of the time if it is bent in at that 45 degree angle the actual brake cable itself may need to be replaced not a bad thing to check as well is your pedals so not such an issue with your speed players here pretty bomb proof pedal but nothing to really break on there's no moving parts or it's on your foot so most people ride Shimano don't they? they do yeah so in a Shimano pedal for instance I'm going to steal one from over here if it's been ground down the road or slid along the road at some point a lot of the time that plate will actually lift up or bend off or pop off so it's a metal plate it's pressed on there if that is the case you can bend it back but it would make it a lot harder to clip into yeah okay and you're generally more likely to pull it out as well so while we're having a look on this based on the back part of your bike not a bad idea, check your derailleur now mine was bent wasn't it? it was bent so easy way to check that and what you'll see is you've basically got your two jockey wheels here and if you're in line with the cassette you basically want them to be parallel with each other yeah okay if it's bent or running inwards which is most likely the case particularly in your case it was bent inwards new derailleur hanger potentially a new derailleur in your case we're looking at a new derailleur because it's got a slight twist in it too so can you one twist it manually or? not really you can straighten the hanger itself if it's not badly bent so we straighten your one just to get you back on the road but ideally replace it they're designed as like a fuse in the system so if you have a big knock there stops your frame from getting damaged stops your derailleur from getting damaged ideally 30 dollar derailleur hanger off you go probably solved but be careful if you do have a crash and you go to ride home that it's not bent because if it is bent and you go into shift through your gear set you can run the risk of putting your derailleur into your wheel and then making life a lot worse that's the worst case scenario that's in your case nice set of wheels another real quick and easy thing to check is just your wheels are true so pick yourself up off the road grab your bike get your work stand even better generally on the roadside not so easy give a quick spin and just check that you brake and remark rubbing on each other you'll get a really good visual understanding if it's out by a tiny little bit a couple of mil it's okay to ride home chances are you're not going to do any damage but you might likely have it rub along the road as you're going through do your front wheel as well obviously so we basically popped it off we chucked it in a truing stand it's a really accurate way of measuring how far out of rim is or if it is and we also inspected it for any cracks or flat spots so flat spots are when you spin your wheel and you'll get an up and down motion because this is a tubular your tyre is obviously rotating a little bit but the rim itself is running pretty true in a big accident with an alloy wheel it'll most likely buckle a lot more than a carbon wheel carbon wheel is obviously a lot stiffer but it is a good idea to check those things as well also check when we're looking at your bike saddle now I've changed the saddle but mine was actually a little bit scratched up wasn't it? correct yeah so you scuff the side of your saddle which is more of a physical thing it's not really your actual seat itself is straight really good idea if it's hard to knock on the side is to jump behind the back of the bike and just check that the seat is actually sitting flush and lined with the actual seat rails correct so is that what can happen? correct yeah so what will happen is your seat will sit effectively a couple of degrees off to one side and it's enough that you're probably fine to ride it but you could cause some hip problems back problems, neck problems yeah so for sake of checking that out quickly good way to do on it and lastly we're just going to check your frame so with a road bike obviously with drop handlebars in a crash you don't really know what's going to happen to your bike once you're off the bike pretty common thing is your bars will turn around so in this case with a rim brake bike your brake calipers most likely to hit first so it's going to hit basically down here on the down tube alright so that's a contact point you're very lucky it hasn't done that usually you'll see a markers looks alright usually what you see is a marker an impact there might look like a little bit of a bruise and a bruise is basically where the rim's discoloured so it'll be a nice black frame and it'll have like a grey patch there for instance in that case it's good to get a carbon repair specialist to look at it also good to get a bike shop to look at it too just to make sure there's no damage underneath that the next contact point is if it goes the other way and it's your handlebars and they'll hit your top tube top tube's not designed for an impact like that so it's a good idea just to get a nice torch or your iPhone or something like that just run it over there and just check there's any marks or imperfections in the frame there always check your helmet always check your helmet even if you don't think you hit your head you'll be surprised what goes on in a crash you don't know about make sure it's running okay