Quote Originally Posted by Crankin View Post
I'm pretty risk averse and ride accordingly. I stopped mountain biking because of this (and the fact that I sucked at it). However, I have had a couple of crashes, while they didn't involve cars, they did involve moderate injuries. My first crash involved me passing a water bottle to my son as he rode by me on his cross bike (like in "hey Mom, give me a drink, I don't have a bottle"). When I went to take it back, I crashed, mostly because I had visions of crashing into a phone pole that was near. This was a few months after a well known woman racer had crashed into a pole and died in a race near here. I was a very new rider and that's all I could think of. While I finished my ride, I woke up a few days later with a knee the size of a balloon. It turned out to be just blood pooled up in there, I went through it being drained, MRI, and about 6 weeks of not being able to do anything except swimming. It hurt like hell. But, I never thought about quitting riding. Heck, I crashed down a ravine in Austria (no injuries) because of my klutziness, and I never thought of stopping.
I think you are talking about Nicole Reinhart. She is the only pro women road rider to be killed in a bike race in history I think. If I am wrong, correct me. What a tragedy indeed. The only man to be killed in a pro men's bike race I think was Fabio Casatelli. Tommy Simpson died from drugs, but not from a bike accident. I'm not sure though about the men totally, since I don't follow them, too manyh druggies in the sport for men, lost interest in it. lots of men died in bike racing while training or otherwise, but not during an actual pro bike race that I know of. Getting off track here, but the Reinhart accident sure was horrible because she was just yards away from winning the largest bike purse in women's cycling history.

However, my experience was different then others. I just didn't ride for a year. For me, it was a sign to give it a break and do something else. When I went back, all ok for me, time heals all things, sometimes!