Deer crash video: real or not

I found the bear video. It does look fake, unlike the deer video.

There’s another good reason not to fly down the Capital Crescent Trail. It’s much harder to maintain control on a narrow trail than on a wide road. There’s one long straightaway around the DC/MD border where there used to be a series of bumps in the pavement. In my very first month of riding as an adult, I picked up speed going into the straightaway. I could see that there was no bike/pedestrian traffic for quite a distance, so I thought it would be safe to speed up.

Then I hit the series of bumps. I started bouncing up and down on the pavement. Then I started bouncing over to the right and toward the ditch and the heavy underbrush and fallen trees. I panicked and clamped down hard on the brakes. The wheel locked up completely… and I went flying over the handlebars. I had no idea what happened. I maintained consciousness but the back of my shoulder was very sore. I had a cut on my eyebrow and a bruised cheek. (Somehow, despite flipping end over end, my helmet didn’t even graze the ground at all, based on how clean it was. I had dirt stains on my back and on my eyebrow, but nothing at all on the helmet. Strange.) Anyway, another cyclist came by a couple minutes later and stopped to ask if I was OK. I had to collect my thoughts, but I felt like I was OK. He probably saw my eyebrow dripping with blood, but it wasn’t that bad. I convinced him that everything was fine and he reluctantly rode on. I was in a minor state of shock, I think, but I managed to ride into DC and back to Arlington.

Lesson learned. Never ride really fast on narrow trails. I’ve never had another accident like that again, not in over 5 years.

Note: After I got home, I got in touch with the Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail online. Eventually I contacted the National Park Service, who oversees the trail, and told them about the hazardous conditions. I later discovered that those bumps had been there for years, according to other people. NPS had spray-painted them in fluorescent paint, but the paint was worn off by the time I rode there. I could see the faint marking up close, but no way could I see that while riding. I also saw a dirt path next to the trail, around the stretch of bumps. Clearly other people had been avoiding that section and riding on the grass for months or years. When I mentioned that I could have died in the crash (I landed on the grass, but I missed the pavement by just a foot), that must have spurred NPS to act. I heard from other people that NPS had work crews out there within days, and they started digging up and repaving that entire section.

@Raymo853 102413 wrote:

I do not think the bear video is fake at all. It so does not look like a bear suit to me and no way could a person run on all fours that long. CGI? I don’t know.

He wouldn’t have to run that long. He could have appeared at the beginning of the chase. Then the other scenes could have been CGI or the bear suit guy spliced into the video. Then another “live” scene at the end.