Originally Posted by TheKillerPenguin

Confidence helps. Racing scared can be a self-fulfilling type thing. You get overly twitchy and over react to things. My impression is that newer riders take the crits are thunderdome stories they hear and ride accordingly (nervous as hell) ...which makes them more dangerous. My worst crashes have definitely come from road races, but I think I've seen more crashes in crits, so it's kind of a wash.