Mountain biking is lots of things: fun, exhilarating, exciting, but it can also be dangerous. But just how dangerous is mountain biking? The answer is that depends on your experience, how and where you ride, the protective equipment you wear and many other risk factors.
Mountain biking injuries: What do the statistics say?
By the numbers
A British Journal of Sports Medicine study looked at the overall injury rate for downhill mountain bikers in a prospective study. It found there were 494 injuries that occurred during 29,401 hours of downhill MTB, for an injury rate of 16.8 injuries per 1000 hours of riding, or put another way, 1 injury sustained for every 59.5 hours of riding.
The same study higher injury rates for downhill mountain bikers in competition at 20 injuries per 1000 hours, as compared to when practicing, where the injury rate was found to be approximately 13 injuries per 1000 hours.
Statistics on types and severity of mountain biking injuries
The most commonly injured areas of the body found in the study were the lower legs at 27% followed by the forearms at 29%. The most common injury types were abrasions at 64% and contusions at 56%.
As far as severity goes, 65% of the injuries reported in the study were considered mild, 22% were moderate, and 13% of the reported injuries were considered severe. 41% of the total injuries reported led to riders being restricted in their ability to ride for greater than 28 days.
Most common mountain biking injuries
- Cuts and abrasions – cuts and abrasions from mountain biking are fairly common injuries that most mountain bikers will face at some point if they ride a lot. Most falls riders have will result in minor cuts or abrasions unless the impacted area is covered by protective gear.
- Hand, arm and wrist injuries – a natural and instinctive reaction to falling from your mountain bike is to throw out your hands to brace your fall. While this can be helpful in protecting your head, face and torso, it can result in sprains in your wrist area or possible fractures in your hand, wrist or arms.
- Broken collarbone – a broken collarbone is another relatively common injury that can happen on hard falls. This can result from hard falls where you land on your shoulder, like if you go over the handlebars. It can also result from falling on an outstretched hand.
- Separated shoulder – a separated AC joint (or acromioclavicular joint), the joint which connects the collarbone to the shoulder blade, is another common MTB injury. This happens when the AC ligament is torn and can result from hard falls landing on your shoulder.
- Concussions – One of the most serious and dangerous types of injuries you can sustain from mountain biking is a concussion, which is a type of brain injury that results from head impacts.
Mountain bike injury causes
Trails and conditions
The trails you do your mountain biking on, and the condition of those trails, can be a major factor in injuries sustained while riding.
Difficulty level
The more difficult a trail is, generally speaking, the easier it is to make a mistake that leads to a fall and resulting injuries. Trails with lots of rocks, roots and other obstacles to avoid can lead to falls if you hit something your bike can’t roll over, which can cause a loss of control, or worse, if your bike suddenly stops from hitting something, you could be thrown over the handlebars (OTB).
High consequence trails and features
Another thing to consider beyond just the difficulty of trails you hit is the consequence level of the trails. What we mean by this is regardless of how difficult a trail or feature (like a drop or jump) is, what could happen if you don’t pull it off properly?
This is something to think of if you do or are considering doing a lot of downhill mountain biking at high speeds. High speed obviously ups the level of consequences you could face if you make a mistake, such as colliding with a tree if you fail to handle a turn properly. The high speeds many downhill mountain bikers hit is a key factor in making mountain biking dangerous. Also any falls you have while riding at high speeds will be a lot more likely to result in injuries, and those will tend to be more severe than injuries that happen at lower speeds.
Drops and jumps can also be high consequence features in mountain biking, and often times these will go hand in hand with downhill mountain biking, but not always. These types of features will often be found at lift access bike park.
Drops are when you ride off a section of trail, and fall or drop in to the next section down below. Mountain biking drops can range from small and relatively easy, to big drops where riders fall 20 feet or more before regaining contact with the ground. While drops are not always super difficult from a technical standpoint, any time you’re falling any distance through the air, a mistake, botched landing, or falling can lead to serious injury.
Jumps also get you airborne, but in a different way than drops. Jumps will usually send riders up higher than the takeoff before coming down for a landing. In this way jumps can be more difficult because being sent up into the air rather than simply dropping down can tend to throw riders off balance. MTB jumps can range in sizes, and the speed they are hit with can vary how much airtime you get.
Relatively smaller jumps will tend to have smaller consequences, and bigger jumps can have larger consequences if not pulled off properly. It is important to note though that because of the many factors involved in landing a jump safely, even small jumps can have serious injury consequences if you fall the wrong way.
Wet trails
Riding after a rain storm or when trails are wet can make them slick which makes it easier to fall and sustain an injury. This is especially true if you ride trails with a lot of exposed roots, which become extremely slippery when wet. Man made wooden features are no better when wet, and wet rocks are often a bit slippery too.
Even just hard packed dirt trails can become hazardous when wet because your traction can be reduced by a lot.
Dry, dusty trails
Dry and dusty trails can be short on traction too. While its easy to think that you’re in the clear to ride aggressively if it hasn’t rained in a while, that might not be the case if the top layer of your trails is too dry and loose. The reduced traction this can cause can sneak up on riders who are taking turns too fast without realizing they don’t have enough traction until its too late and they take a fall.
Snow and ice
Riding in the winter on snow packed trails can be a lot of fun, but it also ups your risk factor of sustaining an injury. Obviously you will have lower traction in these conditions, and there can be ice patches that are hard to spot, which can make things dicey and increase your chances of getting hurt.
Equipment
Faulty equipment can be another cause of riders getting hurt, and is one of the most preventable risk factors.
If you’re serious about mountain biking and want to get the most out of your rides, you should be maintaining your mountain bike, and most serious mountain bikers do just that to get the optimal performance out of their tires, brakes, suspension, and other components of the bike.
Beyond just the performance of the bike, though, safety is a key reason to make sure your gear is in good working order. You should be giving your MTB regular tune ups to keep things working properly, and this can either be done by yourself if you have the know how, or your local bike shop can handle it.
If you are not someone who knows a lot about bike maintenance, make sure you talk to your local bike shop about this including safety considerations. The last thing you want is to be doing downhill mountain biking at high speed and have your brakes malfunction or have a component break loose.
Keeping your bike in proper working order will help to keep you safe on the trails.
Rider error
Just about every injury that mountain bikers will sustain has some element of rider error. It can be a mistake and bad landing off a jump or drop, a poor line choice, a poor understanding of the conditions you’re riding in, or even a poorly maintained bike.
Mountain biking is a sport of calculated risks, and all riders should be aware of the risks involved. Risk taking and the adrenaline rush that goes with it is part of what can make mountain biking dangerous, but its also a huge part of what makes it so much fun.
Because of the risks involved in MTB, you should always take a calculated approach to riding and do so with the understanding that you most definitely will make mistakes. Make sure you understand the potential consequences of those mistakes.
Injury prevention and safety tips
Thankfully, there are things you can do as a rider to make mountain biking safer for you and to mitigate risks that the sport poses.
Wear the right protective gear
Wearing proper safety equipment is very important and goes a long way to make mountain biking safer for you. What safety gear you should wear will depend on your experience level, the types of trails you ride and your own personal preferences.
A helmet is one piece of equipment that you absolutely must wear while you ride. If you do a lot of downhill mountain biking, or want to hit big jumps and drops, a full face helmet is advisable for you. If you stick to more moderate trails and smaller features, you should be okay with an open faced helmet.
Other pieces of protective gear you might choose to wear include MTB gloves, knee pads, elbow pads, padded shorts, armored jerseys, and even a neck brace depending on the level of risk associated with the riding you do.
Practice your riding technique
A good way to reduce your risk of injury is to fall less. And a good way to do that is to improve your MTB riding technique. Learning how to properly shift your weight, lean into turns, ride over obstacles and pick better lines will all go a long way to keeping you on your bike and shredding the trail instead of picking yourself up from a fall.
Ride within your skill level
Riding errors become a lot more likely if you are attempting trails or features that you have no business trying at your current skill level. Advanced trails are not for beginners, and if you are new to the sport and try to ride trails or hit jumps you aren’t prepared for, your chances of serious injury go way up.
It’s good to push yourself to an extent to improve your abilities, but the key to pushing yourself to try new, harder trails is to do so gradually. If you want to hit jumps, start off on the smallest jumps you can find. Once you’ve mastered those, work your way up slowly.
Trying to hit large jumps, drops, or doing fast downhill riding before you are ready is a recipe for disaster.
Ride with others
Not only does riding with other mountain bikers make the sport more fun, its also a good safety practice. The last thing anyone wants is to take a hard fall and injure themselves to the point where they can’t leave the trail under their own power. But to have this happen to you when you’re alone out on the trails could leave you in a seriously bad spot.
Frequently asked questions
Compared to many other sports, mountain biking is high risk. However, the level of risk associated with mountain biking depends on the type of riding you do, and how aggressively you ride.
For example, downhill riding is one of the higher risk types of MTB you can do because of the speed, jumps, and consequences associated with making a mistake. By contrast, cross country mountain biking is much lower risk because it is done at lower speeds and on lower consequence trails.
Based on a 2011 prospective study on downhill mountain biking injuries, 1 injury is sustained for every 59.5 hours of downhill riding on average.
Yes, mountain biking can be safe if you ride within your limits and wear the proper safety equipment. Injuries can occur in any sport, including mountain biking, but the mere fact injuries occur does not mean we consider a sport dangerous.
Mountain bikers who engage in higher risk riding including hitting big jumps and extremely steep and fast trails are at greater risk of injuries and severe injuries compared to riders who stick to less extreme trails.
The bottom line is mountain biking is as safe or as dangerous as you make it for yourself based on your trail choice, aggressiveness, abilities and choice of safety equipment. There is no way to eliminate all injuries and risks from the sport, but they can certainly be reduced and mitigated.
Conclusion
Mountain biking is considered an extreme sport for a reason, and it is definitely not without its risks. The more intense and aggressively you ride, and the riskier type of mountain biking you do, the more likely you are to hurt yourself. That doesn’t mean riding a mountain bike can’t still be a blast to do, and reasonably safely too, if you wear proper protective gear and ride within your abilities.