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klibertp | on: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
> Some US highways

I'm sorry, but from a European perspective, this is the problem, not bikes. If your roads and driving culture encourage driving a tank for safety, that's a bit less than ideal.

I commuted to work for 5 years on a moped. I never used a highway, almost never exceeded 50km/h, and had 2 accidents during that time; both resulted in just a few scratches and bruises.

In another post, you said: "maybe speed was a factor" - actually, it's the only factor. If you never go too fast and never use roads where others may go too fast, you're safe - at least from life-altering tragedies.

If, on the other hand, it's generally impossible to get where you want to without using highways, or the sheer distance forces you to step on it - then yeah, don't buy a motorbike. Just note that it's not the bike's fault!

mothballed | parent
I lack the commenting impulse control to say this in a politically correct way so my apologies for the outrage that will follow, but to put it crudely there is someone in my extended family who became a retard after falling off their bicycle at roughly walking speed and with a helmet on. It's rare but you can easily die just from walking and slipping on a banana peel.

While you're right about slower generally being safer, you should still treat it like a life-altering tragedy could happen at any time and like you're going 200 kph.

klibertp | root | parent | next
I'm sorry for your relative, and of course you should always do things like driving (diving, cycling, sailing, climbing - or even cooking and cleaning) as if a tiny mistake could cost you everything: that's because it's actually true. These activities will never be risk-free; the best you can do is bring the risk down to a level comparable to that of alternatives (with "just don't do it" included in the set) and hope no unfortunate incidents occur to you.

It's still worth noting the relative probability: death or life-changing injury is basically what happens in every single accident when you're going 200km/h on a highway surrounded by (what could as well be) steel walls moving at the same speed; in my use case, when not exceeding 40-50 km/h and using roads where other users basically stand still most of the time, you need a pretty specific conditions and a lot of bad luck to even have an accident, much less die or become permanently disabled as a result of one. Still, not a zero probability, but the difference between 100% and 0.01% is kind of noticeable.