Friday wipeouts: you're the (club run) referee

How's your Friday afternoon going? Anyway, hide that spreadsheet and have a look at these two vids from Fly6 that we've been discussing in the office, which both end up with a bike and rider flying off in an unplanned direction.

Wipeout 1

Some fast-paced group riding on a fairly narrow cyclepath shared with pedestrians here, which in itself probably isn't all that advisable. But anyway, a botched overtake means that one chap is lucky not to end up in Hooger-land impaled on a fence. And also lucky not to break his neck, by the look of things. But should he have checked back before he changed line? or does the shout from the charging rider in red come too late? We've had people arguing both corners. Have a look, and get your blame in.

Wipeout 2

This one involves a bit of wood that ends up in a rider's spokes. We've watched the video a bunch of times and it's still not clear how; our best guess is that the first rider catches the very end of it with his wheel and it somehow flicks up and ends up in the next man's wheel, which you'd have to concede is pretty unlucky.

Obviously the guy riding in the front of the video isn't front of the line: there's at least one more bike (the one the camera is attached to) and possibly more. So the hazard may have been spotted and the message not passed back properly, or it's possible that no-one saw it. In any case, the chap in shot is busy waving to a tandem on the other side of the road when he rides over the debris, so he's not 100% focused. But then, we're all guilty of that on a club run. It seems fair to assume that since he ran over it, he didn't see it. What do you think?

Have a safe weekend's riding!