I had the opportunity to ride with a fast group the other day for a few miles... I found myself unable to MENTALLY close the gap and instead hung about 6 feet back, in the turbulence...

My situation is that I suffered a serious contusion to my brain in a car accident 2 years ago. I'm told that I'm now high-risk for reinjury; my brain is now "brittle". Plus the symptoms of another injury, should it happen, might be permanent. I can't tell you how much that freaks me out! Don't want to go back there.

There are two issues I'm having with trying to draft.

First, a residual effect from my injury is that my ability to process incoming data quickly is tangibly impinged. When I'm 4" off the wheel of another bike at 20 mph, I exceed my ability to process fast enough to feel in control. I pretty much just have to go into a fairly passive mode mentally and let things blur on by- hard to describe.

Second, I am very worried that I'll end up in a wreck because of people in front of me going down. At drafting distances, there's really no time to react.

However, if I'm going to get better, I need to get good at this, or, just decide it's not for me and let it go. So..... how common are paceline crashes? And how can I absolutely minimize my risks here?