Yes, if you aren’t careful this could happen to you. They say a picture (in this case a series of them) is worth a thousand words. So I will show the pictures and save myself a whole lot of typing …
Ouch! If nothing else happened here there is definitely a bad case of road rash. You can tell by the expression on his face that something is hurting. All I can say is … “been there, done that … and not anxious to repeat it”. Preventing this from happening is a matter of either leaning in sufficiently or slowing down sufficiently or perhaps both. You can see in the first picture that the rider is leaning in, yet this wipeout still happened. I am not sure what happened. I don’t know if leaning in more would have prevented it or not. This can happen so very fast and there is nothing much one can do to prevent it once it starts. Sometimes all it takes is for a tire to go into something (such as a dip, depression or ripple in the pavement … or something sticking up above the pavement) as it is moving laterally and the tire will sort of grab and the trike can readily flip over. It could be a wet slick spot on the pavement that allows the tire to slide and then grab as it hits dry non slick pavement. On a bicycle this is extremely dangerous as the bike can be violently thrown down to the pavement when the tire suddenly grabs.
Keep in mind also that the higher off of the ground you sit the higher the center of gravity is. And this equates to the easier it is for the trike to tip over. Also if you have a trike which allows the seat to be adjusted to various locations including the seat back angle these adjustments change the handling characteristics. Seats that can be adjusted forward and backwards are the most concern in this regard.
Tadpole trikes have their limits and so do we. Soooooo …. be careful out there! I am fairly sure that we all want to …
KEEP ON TRIKIN’
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Tadpole Rider 