Originally Posted by
cerewa
You link to some news articles that point out that people really do die from lightning strikes. The thing is, although these events are noteworthy (in the sense of, they make the news and people find them interesting) they are partly noteworthy because they are so unusual.
I don't know the statistics, but I would be interested to see...
is the difference between your chances of being killed riding in a rainstorm without lightning versus riding in a rainstorm with lightning negligible / insignificant?
It's not that I think it is all that safe to ride in a lightning storm - it's that I think perhaps most of the
risk comes from getting on the road and sharing it with cars (cars kill 40,000 per year in the usa), rather than
the lightning (kills ~58 per year in the usa).
*DINGDINGDING* We have a winner.
While I agree with a previous poster that riding alone in a major storm along a treeless plain is probably a poor decision, the risk of being struck by lightning is so low that you shouldn't be worrying about it.
This isn't to say you shouldn't take precautions when riding in inclement weather—visibility is still poor, roads are still slick, winds can still gust and (
most importantly) cars will still have a much harder time seeing you—but lightning itself is more or less a non-threat.