Overview

There is no single best way to fall. It depends on how you’re falling, what gear you’re wearing, and how fast you’re going.

Many crashes don’t allow the rider to choose how to fall. The typical forward fall (aka faceplant) may be the worst in this regard. Due to a lack of better options in that situation, you should catch yourself with your hands to make sure you don’t land directly on your face.

If you do have the chance to choose your fall, you should plan to fall on something that isn’t your hands, because falling on hands is a common cause of wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries (sometimes called FOOSH injuries). If you’re wearing kneepads, sliding on knees is a safer alternative, and a parachute landing fall is another decent option. Before falling you also want to crouch down so that you don’t have as far to fall.

The worst advice I see is “just go limp,” which is absolutely wrong. It’s a myth.

The faceplant pushup

Faceplants don’t offer a lot of options. A 2 meter fall happens in less than 2/3 of a second. Often the rider is already leaning forward to accelerate at the start of the crash, so there’s very little time to react before hitting the ground. By the time you’re aware that you’re falling, there’s no time to roll.

The best thing to do in that scenario is to catch yourself with your hands. There just isn’t a better option. You will appreciate having good wrist and elbow protection when this happens.

If your elbows are locked, the impact can damage your shoulders. So make sure your elbows are bent, kind of like you’re doing a pushup.

Falling strategies

If you have time to plan a fall, you might want to try one of these strategies. The main ideas are to lower yourself so that you’ll fall a shorter distance, avoid catching yourself with your hands, and find a way to spread out the impact.

None of these will work in every situation.

The knee slide

The safest way to fall is to land on your knees. This avoids hitting your head and upper body altogether, as well as hands and arms, which are relatively easy to hurt. (This is a good reason to wear knee pads.)

Ivo from the This Is Soul skate shop explains the idea here:

Having a wheel between your legs makes this more awkward on an EUC than on skates, but it’s a good choice if you can do it.

Rolling

Rolling has outspoken advocates who like to point to advice for activities like parkour. See this video for example. I don’t think rolling works as well on unicycles as it does for parkour, though it’s still a decent option.

One useful roll in particular is the parachute landing fall. The idea is to spread out the impact by hitting (in sequence) your feet, calf, thigh, hip/butt, and then back. This seems like one of the safer ways to fall sideways.

Here’s why I don’t think rolling works as well on unicycles as it does for other sports:

  1. There are safer alternatives if you’re wearing proper gear (i.e. sliding on kneepads),
  2. The standing position on a unicycle is relatively awkward to roll out of, especially for forward rolls, and
  3. Rolling at high speeds can lead to chaotic tumbling. For example, compare the relaxed slide in this video at 1:54 with the chaotic tumble at 3:02:

But there are still many cases where rolling makes sense. I specifically recommend rolling when crashing at low speed with no gear. (If you crash at high speed with no gear, then your choices will be to slide and get road rash, or roll and risk injuring yourself in a tumble. Don’t put yourself in that situation.)

Don’t go limp– it’s a myth

I regularly see advice to go limp in a crash. I tried to find the source of this claim, and what I ultimately found was nothing. It’s just a myth.

The myth seems to have originated with data on car crashes, where drunk drivers are said to be more likely to survive due to their drunken relaxation. This claim has been repeated endlessly. But it’s not true.

The claim was already considered a myth by experts as far back as 1995.1 More recently, in 2012, Lee Friedman studied the relationship between alcohol and traumatic injuries, and said that the claim is “probably grossly overestimated and false.”2 And a 2013 study of car crash patients found that “Alcohol consumption does not protect patients from sustaining severe injuries nor does it shorten the length of hospital stay.”3

So don’t go limp. Bracing for impact is correct.

  1. Invulnerable Drunk Driver Called a Myth ↩

  2. Drunks More Likely to Survive Injuries, Study Suggests ↩

  3. Does Alcohol Intoxication Protect Patients from Severe Injury and Reduce Hospital Mortality? The Association of Alcohol Consumption with the Severity of Injury and Survival in Trauma Patients ↩