Although I don't know the details of his incident it would seem to me that riding a horse at a reasonable pace,while wearing a helmet,might be a low risk venture.If his injury was a fluke,rather than one that could easily have been predicted,then one can chaulk it up to bad luck.Riding a bike at 70mph,OTOH,must be considered a medium risk activity and driving *any* automobile at 139mph on I-95 must be considered an act of attempted suicide.I didn't read the article in full but it just occurred to me...what might a full toxicology screening of that clown have turned up at the time he was stopped?
You and I see risk differently. Fact is, a LOT of people ride motorcycles over 80 mph on a fairly regular basis without a helmet and are not the worse for wear. To be clear, I would not do it.
But I remember the first time I ever rode my own bike. I bought a used 1983 Honda Magna V45 in 1997. I was doing 50 mph on I-405 in Bellevue on a nice sunny day and I thought I was going to kill myself. Within a few weeks I was topping off the speedometer on a regular basis (85mph).
No, I was not suicidal. I understood the risk. Over my riding career since then I’ve had cars on the freeway try to occupy my space on numerous occasions. There was never really a risk because I assumed I was invisible and always had an escape route.
I’ve been hit by cars three times while bicycle commuting, but I never went down. I just tore up the side of the car and kept going (people going the same direction as me deciding to take a right).
There is risk of death and injury whenever one works with machinery and/or speed. When you work at the place where the ones that are hurt end up going, you end up with a biased perception of the danger. My nurse sister-in-law calls motorcycle riders “organ donors”, yet I’ve been around a lot of bikers, both as a biker myself and in a band that plays at a lot of biker events. I’ve never knew one that actually donated an organ, though I have beed aware of “fallen friends” that have been. Not that many, though.
And my son has been to two funerals for bike messenger friends in downtown Seattle that were killed in mishaps with cars running red lights.
Life is risk - and very short indeed. Eternity is, well, eternal, if you are the Lord’s.
I need to add one thing: Not all riders and drivers are created equal. The lions share of motorcycle fatalities and injuries are young guys on 600 cc crotch rockets. And it isn’t just their age that causes it. Fact is, a lot of people do not have the hand-eye coordination and spacial reasoning ability to handle a bike safely. Older people know their limitations more than young people do. It is my personal forte. It is for a couple of other riders I know personally.
I’ve also seen guys on bikes that have no business riding. I watched a guy in front of me trying to adjust his helmet while riding around a corner and he went wide, straight into the side of a boat being pulled by a large truck. He had no business doing that on a corner. He had no business riding a bike.
Bikes are kind of a darwinian gene pool cleanser.