sneeuwaap wrote:
There are over 9500 Strava users who have descended OLH; Claudio's best time puts him 1723rd. Since you don't know him, you wouldn't know if he is either confident or competent as a descender. I've ridden with him many times, and he is both. He is capable of going much faster down OLH if he wanted to, so to claim he is either reckless or incompetent isn't supported by the numbers or the experience of those who have ridden with him.First, we (at least most of us) don't know anything about the accident. It could be that the truck was driving recklessly and it's no fault of the rider. It could be the rider was out of control and the truck was at a full stop when the crash occurred. We just don't know. I think it's wrong to speculate either way without more info.
OLH is a beautiful narrow winding mountain road, with everything that comes with that. Sometimes you can't see around the next corner. In a couple spots, especially near the top, it would be hard to fit two cars side by side. Is every narrow road with blind corners deemed to be so unsafe that either the town has to widen it or we can't be trusted to ride it? I don't want to live in a world like that, and I don't think most ST'ers do either.
My view (Strava says I've climbed it 66 times and descended it 10 times so I know it well): like every road you have to judge your speed and braking ability and how far you can see, and ride with good judgement. It's the rider and the truck driver's responsibility to ride/drive safely given the road conditions. Again, I don't want to speculate who is at fault in this one, but in my opinion the fault lies with one or both of them. The road design itself is not unreasonably unsafe.