Botts' Dots Considered the Cause of Tour of California Stage 1 Pileup
Frank Steele of TDFblog reports that race commissaires at the Amgen Tour of California decided to neutralize the last 10 km of the finish of Stage 1 after a massive pileup that caused half the field to crash or have to stop. This allowed Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team rider Levi Leipheimer to retain the leader's jersey despite finishing about one minute behind the stage winner.
Frank points out that the crash was caused by one of the lead riders in the field hitting a Botts' Dot, a raised pavement marker that's used as a traffic lane or pedestrian crossing marker. These markets are very common in California and are being used more and more frequently in the rest of the country.
A bit of controversy has followed this decision. This stage was neutralized at about 10 kilometers to go, at the discretion of the race referees. The current UCI rule governing sprint finishes is that crashes that take place within 3 kilometers of the finish do not affect rider placement. Some people say that the fact that this stage ended in a circuit (the course travels over the same roads multiple times) justifies the officials' ruling.
My question is, how often do Botts' Dots cause cyclists on open roads to crash? I've never hit one, to my knowledge, but I also don't think I've ever regularly ridden a route with any of these pavement markers on it.
Comments
In the Early Bird Criteriums in the Bay Area, which are basically training sessions, they spend the first few weeks teaching you to go over Bott's dots. The two main points they try and teach you are (1) don't swerve to avoid the dots, lest you cause a crash, and (2) if you hold onto your handlebars, you shouldn't crash.
These lead me to believe that Bott's dot crashes are quite common.
Posted by: kwc | February 21, 2007 11:39 AM
Hi Dave,
Yeah, it happens. Last weekend, my buddy and I were reeling in some other riders on a fast descent of Mt. Hamilton in San Jose, CA. He caught just an edge of a reflector in the road while negotiating the apex of a sharp right-hand turn and it immediately kicked his rear wheel about 90 degrees to the right. The rear end of his bike looked like a bad golf shot bouncing crazily to his right side.
He brilliantly turned into his wayward rear end, skidded off the side of the road but used his cyclocross skills to maintain before finally going over the bars after scrubbing most of his speed.
It was weird how violently his rear wheel shot out to the side after just barely clipping the reflector. He is OK, but watch out for those reflectors, they can definitely mess you up, especially at high speed.
Posted by: TruthMaker | February 25, 2007 3:44 PM