bigeyedfish said:
Gosh. You're right. Plenty of people have died from car accidents too, I better stop riding in those, I'll just walk. Crap, I've seen plenty of people who got creamed walking across the street. I better just stay home. Everything is too risky. Seriously, everything has risk involved. You minimize it on a bike by wearing gear, driving defensively, and avoiding dangerous situations/intersections.
Well, thanks for you comments. Actually, I'd love to say I appreciated them, but on the other hand I feel they are a way too drastic and simplistic generalization of the actual message of my original posting, even though I do see from where you're coming.
But, by no means, did I try to recommend what you're implying, and I think that your reaction is kind of typical for someone who's passionate about his hobby (no offense intended).
If you carefully re-read at least the first paragraph of my posting, you'll quickly notice that I didn't try to talk everybody out of this hobby (how could I?). Given my own background, any biker ought to be entitled to lots of understanding from my side.
Rather, this was merely meant as some sort of 'support' for those users among us who are already pondering about the pros & cons of this *hobby*.
Obviously, you don't belong to that group of people, and frankly I don't think anybody here would really mind it whether you ride your bike or not, nor do I.
Indeed, a couple of years ago I would've probably reacted in a fashion similar to yours to a posting like mine.
Back then, probably nobody would have been able to talk me out of this (biking, that is).
So, I've been where you are and I can still fully understand your point of view, to be honest looking at motorbikes still makes me want to take a ride and I bet some other users here felt similarly when viewing those images.
However, regardless of that I noticed and recognized some pretty familiar reflections (not to say concerns) in some of the previous postings, so I felt that some users might actually benefit from sharing the above anecdote in order to re-affirm their decision.
I don't know you or your background, so I don't how old you are or whether you're married and maybe even have kids yet, but if you look at some of the previous postings in this thread, you'll quickly see that for most ex-bikers (as it's the case for most people who pursue more 'dangerous' hobbies), it's often indeed these 'factors' that are usually contributing to a pretty tough dilemma sooner or later in life: having to decide between one's passions and one's family.
I really don't feel like advocating a certain decision, I can only say that I can personally fully understand anybody who's having a very hard time with such a decision, even though I've personally made the experience that it may ultimately be really helpful to try to switch perspectives and imagine what your spouse/family may be going through in a worst case scenario or how you'd feel in such a situation where you put your life unnecessarily at risk (to pursue a *hobby*), in order to try to set priorities accordingly.
At this point it doesn't matter anymore whether we're talking about biking, climbing, racing or parachuting (btw: another thing that I loved to do and can highly recommend to any adrenaline junkies out there who've got the balls for it).
Anyway, usually it comes down to a pretty simple question:
"Am I willing to accept the risk to possibly put the burden on my family of either being handicapped or dead ?"
But as you've already rightfully (even though quite cynically) pointed out, there's plenty of other risks out there, so there's still a good chance to put said burden on your family even without accepting additional risks. However, in the above scenario we are talking about *unnecessary* risks, specifically a risk that can usually be statically proven.
So, often this is not about avoiding everyday hazards: I really don't mind getting on an airplane or driving on the highway after seeing an MVA or airplane crash on tv.
It's quite simply about avoiding generally *unnecessary risks*.
With that in mind, it's quite typical for someone who's passionate about something to go for a simple generalization (I'm still prone to that, too), but I don't think you'd really argue with me that it's much less likely to get involved or even injured in an motorbike accident if you don't ride motorbikes ? ;-)
Likewise, I don't think there's any need to argue about the level of 'protection' that you have to depend on when riding a motorbike, compared to most (if not all) cars, regardless of any protective gear.
I'm not sure if you now fully understand from where I'm coming or are still inclined to downplay the risks, but I'm quite confident that you might find yourself one day actually pondering about the aforementioned issues and possibly even remember this discussion, one way or the other - with men maturity often is a matter of a decrease in testosterone levels ;-)
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