But in general it is true that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
Yep. But sometimes it does kill us. I had a friend killed at 15 fooling around with a motorcycle that he did not have permission to ride.
We lost a couple friends along the way as well. Two adults got killed in front of my house on separate occasions when horses they were on got spooked and ran into the road. The speed limit was 40 but people typically drove about 60. My parents made us walk our horses across the road to the trails on the other side. Then we would ride the horses into town to get ice cream cones at the "Little Holland" hamburger stand.
The side street across from my house went up to the concrete factory and had a dirt embankment that formed a perfect bicycle jump. There was a long hill that went down to the embankment that allowed you to get up to 20 mph or more. You could fly almost completely across the road. It was a miracle that no kids got hit by a concrete truck... They eventually put chain link fence on both sides of the road after some close calls.