Earlier this year, I was in a serious accident while riding my bicycle. I had to be taken from the hospital in an ambulance, although fortunately my bicycle was not significantly damaged. As it happens, the accident was directly in front of an elementary school, and the police were able to impose on them the safekeeping of my bike until I was able to retrieve it.
My question is what do they do when there isn’t a convenient school or other facility which can keep the bike? Cars in the same situation are taken away by tow trucks, but I don’t think they’ll want to call one of them for just a bike. If you remove the wheels from a bike (and most have very easily removed wheels) they will fit in the trunk of many cars, including police cars. However, the trunks of police cars are used to store a lot of equipment, so there may not be enough room in one. So what do they do?
I’ve seen them throw it in the trunk of a cruiser and presume they take it to wherever they take found/stolen property. Bikes are often stolen so this is probably a regular occurrence for them.
When I had my bike accident, I’m pretty sure I asked a bystander to just lock it to the nearest sensible spot, like I would if I just stopped somewhere. Even if you’re somewhere without bike hoops, you can usually find a telephone post pretty straightforwardly.
This is what happened to mine after I had my big crash. A few days after I got out of the hospital my wife drove me to the local police station and we reclaimed it.
They usually take possession of it & get it to the station any way they can, this might mean in the back seat, or halfway in the trunk; not necessarily the way you want a high-end bike to be handled/transported.
Funny thing in my accident. I was hit in the hamstring (wheel fender) by a passing pickup/stock trailer.
I was thrown off the bike, away from the vehicles. The bike was not touched.
A few scratches where it fell but otherwise no damage.
I ran straight into the rear of a car on my bike at a pretty high rate of speed. Interestingly, the front wheel was entirely undamaged, not even the slightest wobble afterward. Yet the wheel had transferred all the force to the frame, bending the down tube enough that it was un-rideable .
The two times I’ve been in a bicycle crash bad enough to go to the hospital. In one case I was in a race and my daughter was there also racing. She grabbed the bike. The other happened about a mile from home when a car pulled out in front of me. I called home using my cell phone and my son got the bike.
I once got into a crash bad enough to make the bike unridable but I was mostly OK. A farmer gave me a ride in his pickup truck with the bike in the back. He also paid for the damage as his dog caused the crash. Nice guy.
I’ve been on group rides where someone had crashed bad. Usually one of us will stay with the bike and someone will go get their car to pick up the bike.
This is especially true of high-end carbon fiber frames. I was in a collision last year when a guy made an illegal left turn across my path and I pretty much tire- and then face- and shoulder-checked the side of his SUV; the bike looked mostly fine afterward, and the mechanical parts of the drivetrain even still worked, but the frame ended up being totaled to the tune of $4000.