I have seen a lot of hard-versus-soft-case discussions but haven't encountered any that deals with the risk of injury from the hardcases.

I have read a few stories where people got injured because the foot jammed behind a rock or was stuck in a rut then the case guillotined the foot/lower leg.

The case, on the other hand, could save your foot, in a slow crash, as it keeps the bike off your foot/leg when the bike is hitting the ground.

Is this a real risk or were these cases just freak accidents?

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Poul
May you enjoy peace and good health !

Hi!


I had never problems with the aluboxes. On one crash the boxes and the zylinder saved my foot... sliding under the machine ( around 10m...) on hard surface, stand up after that and everything was allright ( appart from scratches..).
Might be a lucky one

Yes, i heard the horrible story's too. But i never met someone who had an accident in which the box broke the leg.........

If i could i would prefer to travel with soft lugagge..less weight!
But i can't ..i'am still carrying fare to much stuff


Werner

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Just traveling
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didnt ted simon break his ankle (the second time around) cause his foot got trapped?

just make sure you wear decent boots, but i think its pretty rare that something like this may happen (touch wood).

I had alu boxes on for a trip this summer that included more than 6,000 miles away from sealed roads, on loose tracks of dubious passability and quite a bit totally overland (or overswamps really!). Sibirsky Extreme

Invariably there were tumbles. Many, many tumbles. Fortunately all at slow speeds.

The boxes, being rigid, sometimes kept my bike sufficiently raised from the ground that my leg/foot was not damaged and I could pull it straight out (or once in very soft sand, I dug it out with my hands). However on a couple of occasions my foot/ankle was pinned to the ground by the box and I was immobilised, completely unable to drag it out and had to wait for assistance.

Despite wearing strong riding boots and double thickness waterproof socks I had a badly bruised and twisted ankle once - and on another occasion a damaged big toe, where the blackened nail eventually fell off.

Further pain often followed while the bike was being lifted to release me. The bike's weight was transmitted to the lower edge of the box as it cut down onto my ankle/foot.

On each occasion, on coming to rest, my first thought was to instantly assess my position in the realisation a box could so easily have broken a leg.

I think at higher speeds it would have been an unfortunate inevitability that would have destroyed my trip (possibly my life) and really inconvenienced my companions.

The only advantages of boxes are security and capacity - both unnecessary in the tundra and taiga. Small capacity had the advantage of enforcing less weight. Boxes are OK for road trips to the south of France - where security is paramount!

I now favour the idea of soft luggage for serious off road trips.

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I've had good and bad with boxes. Good was when I was sideswiped by a car and the box took the impact. (Driver then wanted to know what I was going to do about the scratches on her car. When she drove off I saw a "drive carefully - baby on board" sticker in the back window )

Bad was falling off in sand in Mauritania and having one of the box trap my leg. Fortunately my boxes are diy and, anticipating this problem, the edges are only semi hard. Even with mx boots it hurt and would have been a lot worse if the boxes were sharp edged ally.

For me, it`s soft luggage if I`m off road. Hard luggage if I`m sticking to the tarmac.
I`ve not been trapped under my hard luggage, but have been run over by it a few times when taking a life saver "dab"

Soft - Off
Hard -On

I think it's important to buy the boxes without sharp corners .
Only Jesse boxes and Vern boxes seem to have this feature .
A sharp corner will snap a bone much more easily than a radiused corner .

Many people seem to think it's a good idea to make racks out of aluminium plate .They can be extremely dangerous in a spill [- think of a bacon slicer ].

But the best [worst ] idea has to be the tank top racks on fifties and sixties Triumphs - makes my eyes water just thinking about the possible damage you could do to yourself if you exited over the handlebars !!

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"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

i went with hepco & becker alu standards. they are designed to come off if you knock them hard. if you drop the bike they will hold & stop the bike falling on your leg. the vertical corners have a good radius. i'm doing +70% road on my rtw though...

I would be more worried about falling off ....than about what panniers you are useing.

If you intend riding fast off road then fit soft panniers ,if however your just riding off road at a steady pace then it should be OK with alloy panniers.

Yes they can catch a rock and be a problem if you take a big Dab...but remember lot's of riers that don't have any luggage fitted get hurt riding on and off road.

I have done my leg in taking a big dab and catching the foot peg.

Don't worry about it

Dazzer

There is a thread here somewhere where Colebatch rants on soft vs. hard.
Tony was Colebatch's partner on that ride.

Lots of riders have broken legs and ankles due to hard panniers. Check out World Rider and his epic S.America ride report on ADV rider.

Ted Simon WAS wearing good boots. Broke his leg anyway. Cost him a few months stuck in Africa. After this he jettisoned all his TourTech bags, took
100 lbs. off the bike!

Hard bags add needless weight, rattle your stuff to pieces off road on washboard, mounting racks and hardware cracks or falls off. Hard bags are an out moded concept. Hard bags are not secure, this is an illusion. Most end up over packing.

I think there are pro's and con's to both set-up's and it should be up to the individual to decide on what the best set-up for them would be. We express our opinions here, and the readers should decide what to choose. There is no right or wrong, like what bike to take etc.

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So what is your opinion? After all, that is what the OP has asked for.
I suggest a re-read of the OP's 1st post:
How can one decide without pro/con input? He is asking for specific incidents of injury and opinions. But seems to me the OP has pretty much answered his own question.
I summarized my opinion of hard bags in my final sentence:

I believe many riders ask opinions to hear what other riders have to say. I'm following four or five ride reports on ADV at the moment. ALL are using hard bags ... and only ONE of these riders has any riding experience beyond a year. The fact is, new riders seem to use the copy cat method of travel and bike prep.

Very few have put in the hard miles on a variety of bikes using various luggage systems to really have an informed opinion. I always consider the source.

When I see guys like Colebatch (read his BAM road report on ADV) and TonyP, Austin Vince, Chris Scot and Ted Simon going with soft bags, that pretty much says it all. If one never goes off pavement then, by all means, hard bags are fine.

The other thing that sways me is a pic Ted magnum posted on another pannier thread. Since I've "been there, done that" I can admit I would not want to repeat riding in that sand carrying all that extra weight. Crashing sucks.



"After this, I swapped to Cortech Softbags for the rest of the jouney and it was BLISS !!! Lightweight, easy to pack, totally waterproof, easy to load/unload and worked as a great buffer when the bike toppled !"

I've traveled approx 150kkm with boxes and crashed a lot of times and I've never got hurt.
In fact I've never met anyone personally who has been hurt, just heard/read the stories.

Most people I've met who are on long trips seem to prefer hard-boxes.

And I'm over 100k km on my current hard cases (front, rear and topbox) with no negatives yet, weight aside. I can work up a good rant as well as anyone, on almost any subject, but the objective facts seem to involve a small proportion of actual injury to actual riders due to hard cases....with a small proportion of presumed injuries avoided by actual riders due to hard cases. Put me in the later group.

Besides, where are you going to put all your stickers, fifty or sixty countries from now?

But that's just me. Mileage varies.

Mark

I have to second that point of view.

I have Vern's panniers.

Never got hurt by them: not saying it would never happen, but personally I value panniers keeping a heavy bike off my leg, keeping my luggage intact, keeping my luggage in my possession, more than the (I would say) realtively low risk of the bike catching my leg...

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