Originally Posted by
Doohickie
Or maybe not pushing the envelope. If the guy was doing a group ride where riders are up against their limits, and he has no insurance, he was a fool. There's lots of riding you can do that is not nearly as risky.
Actually, I never said he was pushing the envelop, racing, or riding to the limit as you assumed. The guy that broke his collar bone (delivery truck driver) was simply getting off the front at the end of the ride. He was rotating to the back, went to stand on the pedals to stretch and one of his feet slipped off the pedal. He went over the bars and rolled a few times. He was doing 25 mph at the time, which is nowhere near "pushing the limits" by any means in that ride. He has been riding for 20+ years by the way.
Originally Posted by
Doohickie
Actually, I did say he shouldn't ride, although that was basically the short version. There's lots of riding he could have done that was lower risk.
I ride for exercise. Most of my miles are on commuting to and from work. When I ride with a group, it's a loosely packed social ride. Given all that, I still ride fast, but not too fast for conditions. I slow down for corners or for water or leaves on the road, that sort of thing. There are still plenty of times I get the thrill of speed, and especially when I'm commuting, I am in a bit of a hurry to, especially homeward. But my primary goal is to ge through a ride in one piece. So I don't engage in risky maneuvers.
This guy who crashed- there's lots of riding he could have done that would have been far less risky than a tightly packed training ride. From the sounds of it, people from the OP's group go down pretty frequently. That's a foreseeable risk. If you don't have the resources to suffer the downside, avoid the risk.
Again, you made assumptions about it. Truth is that there have been 4 crashes in that ride in the last 5+ years, 3 of which happened to have occurred this year. All of them have been "freak of nature stuff". Mine was caused by a guy 3 spots in front of me that slipped in some loose sand (everywhere in coastal FL) on the road. Experienced rider, not going very fast or pushing/attacking each other, etc. The second was described above, and the last one this weekend was as a consequence of a puncture. Not avoidable stuff really.
Also, you missed the point. Crashes will happen to anyone, but accidents can happen in a number of ways. Being in medicine I can tell you that most people would be amazed how debastating and frequent stupid little things and accidents can be. You can be stepping out of your car, slipped in some minor oil, break your ankle in 3 different places, need corrective surgery, develop a blood clot 2 days later that turns into a pulmonary embolus, end up in a ventilator and with massive right heart failure that progresses to kidney failure, sepsis, and death all within a week. This is not extreme really. We all are far too naive, for our own good really, of how fragile we are as human beings.
Originally Posted by
crhilton
(Term) Life insurance he should get, it's cheap (as in: about the cost of cable tv, for mom and dad). Health insurance and unemployment insurance aren't cheap...
I don't think people should be skipping activities that aren't especially dangerous over it. But yea it's a bad situation to be in.
Some of us are fortunate to only need fingers and eyes to do our jobs.
Try selling insurance to someone that needs to decide between food for a week or life insurance, and come back to tell us how well it went. You are very correct in your last statement. We are far too spoiled to see it though.