BobAjobb wrote:
.....Or bring in some minimum body fat and upper body muscle requirements - roadies snap like twigs when they fall off because of their emaciated upper bodies have no strength).
It's unclear if you're serious?
Are you suggesting muscular strength and general bulk would prevent injuries?
While you may get some shock absorption from additional fat and muscle between the points of contact and bone, I think it's doubtful it would reduce harm in most crashes. Kinetic Energy = 1/2 m v2
m is mass
v is velocity
Since more mass means proportionally more energy must be absorbed in the impact, and since most of the likely points of contact in a crash, such as skull, face, elbows, knees, hands, don't actually have a significant covering of fat or muscle regardless of body fat% or musculature, I'm not sure there's any rationale to your assertions.
In fact it's much easier to argue that higher body fat and muscle make you more prone to injury in a fall. As mentioned above higher body mass contributes proportionally to kinetic energy, but in addition, low mass is most advantageous to performance when climbing, whereas more massive riders
may reach higher speeds in sprints and on descents (especially if non-technical). Kinetic energy increases in proportion to the square of speed. The high speeds in sprints and descents lead to the most energetic crashes where padding might be most helpful however for more massive riders, the kinetic energy is higher still due to mass and potentially because that's where they'll perform best (fastest) so they are likely to be at a huge disadvantage to start with.
If you were to argue that low bone density in serious cyclists posed a risk you might have something to work with, but as it is I think you're talking nonsense.