12-31-2020, 01:49 AM
Tod, I understand your focus to be on riding situations (and not, say, getting lost or running out of fuel in the wild, or being mugged or nearly mugged on your bike), that your hypothesis is that percieved near misses are recalled as more scary than accidents, and that you'd like to collect data on that. If so, great and a very interesting question. While I've never had a real bike accident myself I've had tons of close calls on the road and on the track and I have seen friends and wife crash, at least six different occasions. I must say that although my own near misses as a rule created adrenaline rushes, I dont recall them as scaring me. Neither have they stayed in my mind. Instead, what really scared me was seeing others crash, before knowing if they were ok or not. Road crashes scared more than track crashes, perhaps not surprisingly. I also easily recall them vividly, even now decades later for some of them. And, as someone wrote, time slows down greatly. However what also scares me equally much or perhaps even more are other's near misses, e.g. seeing a buddy in front overtaking and almost running straight into an oncoming truck. These sometimes really have me shaking for a long time afterwards. But, again, being scared is for me associated with others and their , not with myself as I recall it. So, perhaps bad data but in a way I think my experience supports your idea, if I got that right.