By John Allen, CRW Safety Coordinator

There are several ways you can be better prepared in pothole season. 

It depends to some degree on your choice of a bicycle.

A pneumatic tire can be crushed just short of the rim and sustain no damage. The fabric of the tire flexes and the air inside compresses harmlessly, as this slo-mo video shows.

Fatter tires are more pothole-tolerant, and as recent research has shown, supple tires up to 47mm wide are no slower under real road conditions than skinny tires. Gravel bikes have this advantage. The trend in road bikes also has mercifully been away from ones where tires only up to 25mm wide fit under the fork crown – and the late Sheldon Brown suggested as an alternative replacing typical road wheels with the slightly smaller 650B wheels: the bottom bracket of many bicycles is higher than it has to be, so this is workable. With disk brakes, wheels of different sizes can fit without any other modifications. An older rigid-frame mountain bike can offer the advantage of wider tires at a lower price and a moderate cost in added weight. Good road tires are available in mountain-bike sizes too, and there’s nothing wrong with equipping a mountain bike with road handlebars. 

Vigilance and vision training

Keeping the eyes moving, and scanning the road surface every few seconds, is essential. It took a couple of years after I first took up cycling as an adult, before I got good at seeing potholes in time. I dinged up a few rims. 

With practice, it becomes possible to focus attention more broadly, observing the entire visual field consciously rather than peripheral vision’s only providing semi-conscious cues to look in one direction or another. I trained myself over a period of a couple years to focus my attention in one direction while my sharp central vision looked in another. A rear-view mirror, particularly a helmet mirror, avoids the need for full head turns, allowing more attention to the road surface. 

Seeing conditions matter. Dappled light or shade under a tree can be especially difficult. A good headlight with a flat-topped beam pattern casts a long, even beam of light onto the surface ahead. A headlight mounted lower down, at the fork crown, will reveal irregularities in the road surface better. Slow down if you aren’t sure that you can see well. 

Avoiding tight groups

You might consider avoiding drafting or any type of riding in a tight group. A large percentage of crashes on CRW rides occurs when a rider behind fails to notice a hazard, or touches wheels with the one ahead. The hazard also occurs when riding close behind a motor vehicle, even at low speed. My worst experience with a pothole occurred when I was close behind another cyclist on a group ride. It cost me a concussion – 15 minutes of my life when I appeared and acted normal, but which I do not remember, and the scary realization following this, that I didn’t remember my route home. Fortunately, I recovered within a couple hours. It could have been worse.

Give yourself room

Perhaps it’s obvious, but your options to avoid potholes are much improved if you are away from the edge of the road. Again, a rear-view mirror is helpful. A glance into the mirror will reveal whether there is any traffic (bicycle or motor-vehicle) behind you, and afford you the sense of security to use the space you need. If there is traffic behind, the mirror makes it much easier to negotiate using lane position and hand signals.  

The rock dodge maneuver

If you notice a pothole well ahead, you can steer around it normally, or slow and wait for an opportunity to divert and ride around it. Sometimes, though, you don’t see a pothole until it is right in front of you. CyclingSavvy and Smart Cycling teach the rock dodge maneuver – steering quickly to one side (usually the left) to avoid a pothole, then regaining balance by steering quickly the other way. This can be so quick that the bicycle just zigzags to one side, then the other under you, and you continue to ride in a straight line. It’s good to practice this in a parking lot, though the real experience is a bit hard to duplicate when you know in advance what you are going to do. Still, you can ride along and intentionally yank the handlebars to the left, then the right. Sooner or later, a pothole will give you some serious practice. 

Unweighting and jumping

For a surface that is just bumpy, you can rise off the saddle; your arms and legs are a suspension system. After all, the bicycle is light – you are most of the weight. And jumping over a pothole or other surface hazard is often an option. Cyclists who use clipless pedals or toe clips and straps have an advantage, because it is possible to stand up, then pull up on the rear of the bicycle. A single jump works well if you are going fast. At slow speeds, you haul up on the handlebar and then lift the rear wheel. Timing is important, and it takes practice. Skillful mountain bikers accelerate to lift the front wheel, but you won’t need to do this when you are not riding over tall obstacles such as fallen logs.  

If you do damage a tire or rim

The classic example of pothole damage is the pinch flat, where the tire was crushed against the rim. It is also called the snake bite, because it leaves two holes in the inner tube. 

Tubeless tires are almost invulnerable to common punctures. Mountain bikers like them because they can run at low pressure without getting pinch flats. But on the other hand, you may be less aware of rim damage without a pinch flat to warn you. Tubeless tires can create a mess if they do let go; removing and replacing a tire is messy too. You need to carry an inner tube in case a tubeless tire does puncture. It’s your choice. 

It is possible to pull out an aluminum rim that has been slightly dented inward by a pothole impact, though that requires a special tool and wheelbuilding skill. Never just tighten the spokes where the rim is indented – that only indents it more. If the rim sidewalls have been spread apart, rim brakes lurch, and there’s no way the rim is going to get back to smooth braking, so it needs to be replaced. Fortunately, most aluminum rims these days have parallel sidewalls and usually do not spread when dinged.

A disk brake may offer a false sense of security when the rim is damaged, as rim damage also loosens spokes. It’s best to check, and err on the side of safety. Carbon-fiber rims and one-piece wheels generally need to be replaced if damaged.

It comes with the territory

Potholes are an unfortunate fact of life in springtime in New England and I hope that I have been able to offer some useful advice!