Ouch. That was Mark Cavendish, going down after touching wheels with a fellow sprinter. Note how his front wheel breaks and pancakes after the touch, triggering the chain-reaction pile-up.
I have long maintained that people who ride bicycles on the road, whether for transportation, recreation, or racing, just don't have an intuitive grasp of statistics. On a per trip basis, the odds of being killed or injured while bicycling are greater than rock climbing or sky diving, but a little bit less than cave diving. Or as Lance Armstrong says, "There are two kinds of cyclists: those who have crashed, and those who are going to."
And of course, we have our helmet laws backwards. Kids can recover from traumatic brain injury much more easily and completely than can adolescents and adults. If we were really interested in protecting people, we should require the adults to wear the helmets, and leave the kids to their parents' best judgement. Besides, helmets cut down on the number of potential organ donors.
Not that I have anything against cyclists, mind you. In fact, here is my ride, tricked out with light weight components, so I can chase my buddies up the local hills:
It's a Lightning.
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