That was a great clip. How’d you find it?
I’ve never seen someone ride a farthing that way before, it looks fun, but it’s gotta suck falling from that high up.
By the way, that file was huge so I compressed it down to 10mb. Here is the file:
http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albums/album105/jacksCrashclip.mpg
43.5 megs! no way…
i could download 200 sig line images faster than i would ever get that.
do you mean 10 meg or 1 meg? your link download is only 1 meg long thus showing no crash. if you can get it compressed completly that would be cool. i’ll award you a “no razzing from jagur” award for a month for your efforts 
Sorry about that, I thought the whole thing had uploaded, but it hadn’t. I’m re-uploading it again now. It’ll take a few minutes. I hope this works.
43.5 MB is a big download for a 54 second clip. 
Daino’s recompressed version should be a more friendly download. But 10 MB is still a bit big for a 54 second clip.
It looks like the rubber came off the rim as he was coasting down the hill. It’s hard to tell if it was the front wheel or the rear wheel that had the tire separation problem.
Here’s the web site that the clip came from:
http://bikeroute.com/HiWheelers/index.html
I stepped through the video a frame at a time. The rubber comes off the front wheel just two seconds before the UPD.
I dont know if its normal at those speeds or not but you can see the rubber off the rim right before where the wheel makes contact with the ground. The whole video it seems to be doing that. Then he falls from it coming off.
I’m not sure why I can’t upload this vid correctly. Anyway, John is right about the tire separation. If you look closely, you can see the rubber separating several times throughout the vid. Just look at the wheel about eight inched above the ground and you can see it separate from the rim.
EDIT: It’s working fine now http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albums/album105/jacksCrashclip.mpg
John? 
Yeah it didnt sound like it was going to work for you so I gave a go at it but I come back to see that you got it working. Here’s mine anywho.
http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albums/tim/pennyupd.wmv
Haha yes! I’m glad to amuse you.
Mine’s special adition. Extra black screen time has been reduced from both the begining and the end! Making it have slightly more quallity! Watch now before this amazing offer ends!
Also nothingness is proven to be less fun. Video found here!http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albums/tim/pennyupd.wmv
thanks daino
i wonder if was really hot that day and the tyre heated up, then came off. not much you can do once you get the speed wobbles even if you do have a spoon brake on a high wheeler.
That guy’s tire was just too loose. He got what he was asking for. Zooming down a hill while sitting on top of a wheel (with your feet off the pedals) is just a recipe for disaster. I wonder why nobody built penny farthings with the rider seated farther back? Maybe too much weight on the rear wheel made for a bad ride.
But that guy was just asking for it. A properly tightened tire would not float away from the rim at any temperature. Those tires work the same as the one on my Tom Miller big wheel. Solid rubber with a hole through the middle, and a thick steel wire, hooked to itself, to hold it tight to the rim. Because unicycles turn sharper than penny farthings, you need the tire generally a little tighter than what they use, which is a lot tighter than what a wheelchair uses. My big wheel uses wheelchair rubber. But from what I’ve been told, wheelchair tire attachment tools aren’t designed for the much tighter tension we need for our big wheels. The size of the wheel also forces a higher tension in the wire, because it’s easier for the tire to get over a less-curved rim.
I watched the high-res version (not reading down the thread first can be a disadvantage). You can see very good detail in there. You can see the tire floating away from the rim, you can see his speed wobble building up, then you can see the tire come off and momentarily keep its circular shape. Lastly you see his knee whack the pavement pretty hard (ouch!), followed by the bike apparently hitting him after he goes down.
Too bad the guy in the car didn’t notice the tire’s looseness as they were going. I like to think I would have checked it before trying something like that!
they did twords the end of their high point of popularity. with Starley using a chain to drive the rear wheel and putting the rider in the middle of two same sized wheels plus maketing it as the “safety bike” they had to do anything they could to make high wheelers feel safer or die as an industy.
they put the seat farther back but that made it harder to steer and less power went to the wheel. the chain drive safety was just better so the high wheelers died no matter what they did. STAR (not Starley) even put the little wheel in front to keep the market going
and in one of the biggest marketing stunts ever ,they had some guy ride down the Capitol steps to prove it was safe but everyone wanted the Safeties anyway especialy after the freewheeling coaster brake hub was invented.
I’ve read elsewhere that the feet over the handlebars was actually considered the safest way to go down a hill at speed. The idea being that in a crash you’ll be thrown forwards and be able to land reasonably well.
The alternative of a high speed crash whilst feet are on the pedals would result in the legs being trapped under the handlebars and being dashed face first into the ground at high speed from a great height.
But you’re right that the guy was asking for trouble, it looked well shaky even before the crash.
I wonder if it’s possible to idle on a penny farthing?
I bet it is very possible! And probably wouldn’t be too hard after a couple tries…
Re: Penny Farthing crash movie
“daino149” <daino149@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> wrote in
message news:daino149.1etqe4@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com…
>
> That was a great clip. How’d you find it?
>
> I’ve never seen someone ride a farthing that way before, it looks fun,
> but it’s gotta suck falling from that high up.
>
An impressive vid: notice the wobble induced by the pedal high speed
revolutions!.
Two things come to mind: does he have brakes? Could he actually slow the
thing down…certainly not by putting his feet back onto the pedals!
Was he out of control and hanging on for his life? Shame about the tyre
though.
Also anyone tried to work out his speed? I did a rough calculation and
came up with about 25 MPH.
Anyone know where this was?
Naomi
Re: Penny Farthing crash movie
“onewheeldave” <onewheeldave@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com> wrote
in message
news:onewheeldave.1euyd9@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com…
>
> I wonder if it’s possible to idle on a penny farthing?
>
>
The following video demonstrates that it is possible.
http://www.bikeroute.com/SuttonTrackstand.AVI
Naomi