pedaller's entry today about a cycling gent in Newcastle catching a 60km/h tow from a car made me wonder how prominently bicycles feature in the Darwin Awards. Interestingly, there's only one real nominee, from 1997:
(26 December 1997, Brazil) A bicyclist crossing an airport runway in Sorocaba, a city 87 kilometers from Sao Paulo, was killed when he was hit by a landing airplane. Marcelo, 25, could not hear the twin-engine plane because he was listening to his Walkman on headphones, investigators said. The propellor and right wing of the plane were damaged.
An object lesson for anyone who rides with iPod inserted!
There are also a couple of other "personal accounts" (i.e. anecdotes where the perpetrator did not necessarily remove himself from the gene pool). From 2000, a story about using a foot in the spokes as means of braking and another from 2004 about treating sqeaky 'V' brakes with a generous amount of 3-in-1 oil
. Both resulted in nasty crashes and impressive scarring, apparently.
Of course, there are relatively few Darwin Awards incidents involving bikes because it's common knowledge that cyclists represent the peak of evolution…
It actually is a sticker, which you can order at carryabigsticker.com.
Actually, last year there was a story about a guy who tried to ride across a railway crossing while the gates were down and the lights were flashing. He had a rather unfortunate encounter with a train.
Missed that one—just double checked and couldn't find it on their site.
But that does rather remind me of many cyclists' attitude toward red lights…
Comments
I love that pic. A few of the Critical Mass riders have something very like it on stickers on their bikes. Says it all, I reckon.