Originally Posted by
RTDub
A well-stated point of view, but I have to ask why on this one point. Peril doesn't care how far you are from your house. My rabbit encounter (commute, low traffic, non-pack) was a mere 500 yards from my point of origin. I do not believe anymore that there is a thing called 'low-exposure.' To say that your risk is lowered, sure, I can go with that, but the unexpected can happen anywhere, and at any time. It's not like wearing a helmet is asking someone to endure excruciating torture while riding. It's a freaking helmet: A kind of hat for cycling.
Surviving a crash isn't about "peril", it's a probability game. The shorter the ride, the less probability of a catastrophe; or put another way, the shorter the ride, the less need to ride aggressively. You aren't going to reduce the probability to zero... it's acceptable to increase your risk slightly to accommodate convenience. We do it all the time in every facet of life. You can say all you want that it's not "excruciating torture" or it's "kind of a hat for cycling", but the fact remains that if I am just going out for lunch, I don't want to wear special shoes, I don't want to wear special cloths, and I don't want to wear a hat.
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Cat 2 Track, Cat 3 Road.
"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --
the tiniest sprinter