Leonardtown Crash from Bryan Vaughan on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever seen those cartoons where someone tosses thumbtacks on the road and a car or bicycle runs over them and gets flat tires, it seems both funny and harmless. But that wasn’t the case at a local bicycle race over the weekend.

The Post’s The Crime Scene blog has a story of a race in Leonardtown, Maryland on Sunday during which tacks were thrown on the road surface, causing a number of crashes that left both bikes and bodies injured and broken.

I raced the course at Leonardtown, a technical .7-mile criterium that featured high speeds and tight turns. That no one in my race went down because of the tacks was a miracle, considering what happened in the race right afterward. (A helmet-cam video is above.) This isn’t the first time local races have suffered this type of sabotage. Last year the popular Jefferson Cup in Charlottesville had to contend with local teenagers breaking bottles on the course the night before the race, and the 2009 installment of the Tour of Walkersville in Maryland had to deal with tacks on the road.

Local police are investigating, and have indicated that anyone caught could be charged with assault and reckless endangerment.