I love to ride fix gears on hills. Unclipping at 200+ RPM scares the **** out of me. (That pedal hitting my ankle might well do me more long term injury than getting thrown from the bike.) I also know I have no clue how my foot is sitting on the pedal when I am pedaling that fast and I sure as heck am not going to look down and see. The ONLY pedals I trust are old fashioned rattraps with toeclips, quality straps and cycling shoes with old fashioned aluminum slotted cleats in good shape. In exchange, I fall over about once a year at a standstill, strapped in. I'll take a couple dozen of those over one of the former.

The other plus - climbing. If the hill gets steep, on a fix gear you pull really hard. A cleat letting go (perhaps for the same reason - you are working too hard to pay attention to details) may mean slamming your knee on the handlebars really hard.

In both of these scenarios, I do pull cleats out, even with good straps and cleats. But the huge difference is my foot goes no farther. Downhill it is just a big heartrate kicking scare, a dab on the brakes, a slide back into the cleat and "whew!". (I've done this at 45+.) I've pulled my foot clear of the straps uphill, but it isn't instantaneous and I have never gotten hurt.

The fix gear I had for a few years with LOOK fixed cleats was scary to ride downhill. It was purely a flat ground bike so that didn't happen often, but still ...

I don't tell others what to do but I have been doing this fix gear gig a long time and am still around to do more.

Ben