Safety is always a concern for me--I have enough bike lights to light myself and Gamera up like a Christmas tree--but ultimately it comes down to two cycling tenets of mine:
1) From an actuarial viewpoint, the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks.
2) The vast majority of the risks come from the fact that cyclists have to share the road with cars, and a) Drivers don't see cyclists--either they're in a blind spot or they just don't notice them, having their attention either on things that they "need" to pay attention to (other cars, traffic signals, etc.) or not (cell phones, mostly). b) If they do see them, then they don't care, because, hey, they've got a ton-plus metal cocoon around them. c) Even if they do care, they might hit them anyway, because they're not used to sharing the road with cyclists and have trouble, for instance, in gauging relative speeds; I'd like to believe that most drivers who pull ahead of me and then force me to stop when they're turning a corner don't mean to cut me off, they just think that they'll make the corner before I get there.
Nothing much that I can do about 2b--that's legal, anyway--but the others require that I get out and make myself a cycling presence, which I haven't done of late.
Wikipedia says that Yellow Tara is associated with wealth and prosperity, and I think that the argument could be made that health is the most important form of wealth there is.
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1) From an actuarial viewpoint, the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks.
2) The vast majority of the risks come from the fact that cyclists have to share the road with cars, and
a) Drivers don't see cyclists--either they're in a blind spot or they just don't notice them, having their attention either on things that they "need" to pay attention to (other cars, traffic signals, etc.) or not (cell phones, mostly).
b) If they do see them, then they don't care, because, hey, they've got a ton-plus metal cocoon around them.
c) Even if they do care, they might hit them anyway, because they're not used to sharing the road with cyclists and have trouble, for instance, in gauging relative speeds; I'd like to believe that most drivers who pull ahead of me and then force me to stop when they're turning a corner don't mean to cut me off, they just think that they'll make the corner before I get there.
Nothing much that I can do about 2b--that's legal, anyway--but the others require that I get out and make myself a cycling presence, which I haven't done of late.
Wikipedia says that Yellow Tara is associated with wealth and prosperity, and I think that the argument could be made that health is the most important form of wealth there is.