I see your point, I probably got pulled into being to black/white about it in response to the other post.

Your topic is whether crashes happen. You are right that like car crashes bike crashes do sometimes happen and we don't seem to be able to eliminate them 100%. It would have to get into a more complicated model just like cars where people new to it are more likely to crash, people racing or doing riskier driving would be more likely to crash, etc.

But the other poster claimed "Don't blame the clipless. Falling is an inevitable part of cycling, clipless or not" and that's heading into both territory I think is so awful I can't use the words I want to use or the mods would delete my post and ban me. There's a guy in my dads senior bike club that tries to convince the elderly biking that they should switch to clipless - these are people who are at an age where their bones have gotten brittle and when accidents do occur a lot of times they can never bike again and sometimes they die. I actually consider the risk of biking in genertal to be an ok tradeoff (as long as you're not being overly aggressive) because there's also a risk to your health as you get older and sit around doing nothing. It's one risk vs another. But telling people in a high risk category if they fall to use clipless because it's fashionable? Horrible.

You mentioned your wife broke her elbow, can you imagine telling her "Honey, I need you to break your elbow so some people on the internet think we're cool" directly? That would be awful right?

That's what I feel the people who are trying to cover up falling with clipless are doing. I wouldn't tell someone with balance problems that they should be biking, I wouldn't tell someone with issues clipping in and out that they should keep falling over.

If you're having issues or think you might have issues with getting clipped in or getting clipped out I think there's 2 ways to go:
1. Take your pedal to somewhere with stationary bikes, put them on the stationary bike, and practice clipping in and out until you find it easy and can do it without thinking.
2. Don't use clipless. If you're not racing clipless is basically fashion. If you're not racing they provide no substantial benefit over flats but they do provide a lot of extra risk if your brain and feet don't adapt to them well. I mentioned specific flat pedals and shoes you can use in an earlier post in this thread that give you good grip on the pedal with flats.

Falling off your bike is dangerous. How dangerous is a matter of debate but it's certainly not safe. There's no way to transport yourself without taking some risks, but some of these posts are like "It's totally normal to hit a tree with your car every week, just don't worry about it" and that to me is crossing way over the line into promoting stupidly dangerous advice.

I hit the ground when I was younger because I rode over a sewer grate the wrong way and caught my front wheel in it. I didn't stop biking, but I did keep a very conscious eye out for sewer grates aligned the wrong way after that.