LAI wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
One of the reasons I want to go and ride in the Alps next year is that I won't have any texting drivers there. i don't think it is possible to text and drive on those technical climbs without putting the car into the side of a mountain or into a ravine.
You know that is one of the reasons I ride the rural roads I do. None are straight line of sight, all are windy, and most are up and down.....the issue here is that drivers do take unnecessary risks to make the pass (e.g. cresting a hill, blind turn, etc). I figure this is probably the case in the Alps as well. While distracted drivers are a thing it's still the car and the driver's choices that will kill you here.
Riding outside is a blessing: the landscapes, the serenity, the feel of the air rushing past on a descent, none of which I get on the trainer nor on a bike path (which around here is just as deadly). However, fear is a real thing for people and no matter how irrational one's fears are they are hard to impossible to overcome. It saddens me that so many will not venture out and enjoy riding outside due to past instances or even the thought of something occurring.
I've been blessed to have never been hit by a car, but I feel my time is coming. I've crashed exactly once training and it might as well been a vehicle strike as it was on a narrow gravel descent where an oncoming vehicle blocked my line. I took my eye off of my line to see where I needed to go and in that instance my front tire found a nice hole and washed out my front end. I don't recommend laying your bike down at 35mph on gravel, it's a bit messy. Took some time to get my confidence back when descending, but it came and I certainly was back on the bike as soon as I was able. I've also crashed too many times to remember while racing crits and road races and never hesitated to remount and join back into the fray, whether immediately or the next race once I was able. My injuries have all been pretty minor and maybe I would have a different perspective if they have/had been major, but they have impacted my ability to earn (I am a blue collar type of guy), so, there is that.
I'm not sharing to belittle others, their fears, or their irrational behavior, because I understand it. I am merely sharing to let them know if I can get past it then they can too. I'm no superhuman and have lots of those same irrational fears that I overcome (sharks in the ocean anyone?). I believe the bike is/was meant to be best enjoyed outdoors, hopefully those of you that are currently unwilling will someday find yourself back out on the open road.
Full disclosure: I am Married, a Business owner (others outside of my family rely on me), and the father of three kids. I've been riding since the late 90s.
While fear is real its as irrational as the fear of flying. And this is coming from someone who just got run over by a bus this year. It makes no sense to be afraid of something for which the odds are low.
Every day I walk out the front door, not for an instant worried that I will die of a heart attack or cancer, but it is 50% probably that myself, and the rest of my family will die from those two killers. But we don't worry about it. We just ignore the high probability of those two like they are benign when they are really much more likely than a random school bus running over a cyclist. But I get the fear, I truly do get it, but it does not make it rational.
We all have the option of letting math and logic decide what risks we want to take or just let irrational fear drive how we live. It's the same reason people are scared to go to Israel (because they think there are suicide bombers around every corner, when in reality the place is more like California minus the fires).
Most people are probably going to die from the sugar and sat fats they put in their mouth long before some cycling related accident takes them out. But now one is doing the math when they take in that heart attack in the package protein bar that they think is so healthy. Do we see the irony in this? Because in an instant that protein bar is not going to cause a heart attack nor cancer, but in an instant with very tiny odds, we may fall into traffic just like oru airplane MAY blow up in the sky. But many bad nutritional decisions later, the person is dying from all that adding up, but the sequence of bike miles outdoors does not change the odds of the next accident (one's chances of an accident don't go up the more we ride....the chances are exactly the same on every ride (n occurrences per million miles whatever n is where you live...you could be on your 1st or millionth mile and the odds are exactly the same for every mile or minute out there....they don't go up the longer you ride....but they do entirely go away if you do ride indoors, but we're talking about ridiculously low odds).
Because of the internet, we're just hyper aware of the cumulation of bike accidents around the world, just like we're cumulatively freaked about to let our kids play in the park because now we think because some weirdo who did something to a kid is Yellowstone Wyoming might be around the corner in our neighbourhood.
Some guy reads that i got run over by a bus and thinks that he's going to have the exact same accident at his place 7000 miles away. Back in the day, we would not know that a random guy got run over by a bus. Only a few of his close riding buddies and family would know and we'd just carry on with life oblivious of the risks and enjoy or rides.
I'll concede that there is more distracted driving with phones and assorted electronics, but in your riding group (directly locally, not someone you heard about over the internet), how many people do you know who got mowed down by a driver. I actually don't know any and we live in a very rider dense city. We do have a lot of bike paths and bike lanes or north of town technical hilly riding where a driver would have a tough time staying on the road fiddling with a phone.