Huh - I seem to remember commenting, on the way to Tan Hill, that it was amazing that your hair didn't get caught in your rear wheel.
I've been quite careful about it, since narrowly avoiding an incident when I unthinkingly test rode an ICE Vortex (the first recumbent I tried where my hair could easily reach the wheel) some years ago.
It flaps about a lot but never quite reaches the wheel on the Streetmachine - main issue there is velcro on rack bags, which is tangly but harmless. It can just about reach the wheel on barakta's ICE Sprint if I have the seat fully reclined, so I tend to tie my hair up if I'm using that in winter (if I'm just testing or using it to haul a trailer, I'll keep the seat upright). The Baron has a headrest which doesn't play well with tied up hair (it tends to come undone on long rides), so I decided the safest option was to completely enclose the top half of the wheel/gears rather than fighting with hair, which has the added advantage of less overheating.
I checked for hair entanglement risk with the wheels/brakes when setting up
[1] the pedal car, and it was fine. The drivetrain appeared to be enclosed by the fairing, so I didn't have a proper grope around for hidden gaps behind the seat.
ETA: Thinking about it further, it seems likely there was airflow into to gap when the car was in motion.
Jes says it's the first time one of his cars has tried to eat somebody.
Anyway I'm feeling much better having had eleventy hours sleep and some of barakta's finest painkillers. Shoulder's a bit stiff, there's bruising on the back of my head (I assume from where the adjusty bit of my helmet was crushed between my head and the top of the seat), and a grazed knuckle from applying I-don't-care-where-the-car-goes-just-lock-the-axle-NOW amounts of braking when I worked out what was going on (which didn't work, but possibly scrubbed enough momentum that I still have a scalp/spine) and that's about it. I think it'll take longer for my legs to recover from the exertion, even if I only did a little over half the race.
Felt fairly shitty about it yesterday morning though. I went into shock while the team (quickly and efficiently
[2]) extracted me from the car, as I realised the seriousness of what had just happened. Then had the uncontrollable crying thing as the adrenaline wore off, followed by several hours of digestive woe
[3], exhaustion and general inability to relax. I don't think I've had that before without a painful injury to focus on. It's a bit like how I felt after I was queerbashed on the tube as a teenager - wasn't seriously hurt, but by the time I'd got home and scrubbed myself clean several times (there was spit etc), I was on edge and useless with nothing I could do about it. At least this time I had plenty of people looking after me (and it probably helped that I cycled home).
[1] Read: Working out how many layers of extra seat padding I'd need to be able to see and reach the pedals at the same time.
[2] They got plenty of practice rebuilding the diff mid-race last year.
[3] Which may well have been coming anyway, due to general body abuse over the preceding 18 hours.