I live in the inner city. Most of my rides take me towards the outskirts of the city. I do many group rides.
My greatest fear on a group ride is:
- on the way back after an early morning ride, we strike the Sat/Sun morning shopping run - read weekend rush-hour,
- as the group transitions through three lanes so that it can make a turn,
- we are all in the middle lane with traffic at 70kph on either side - the roads are twisty, very narrow (making up for poor planning by cramming more lanes onto the road) and absolutely frightening,
- we are traveling slowly looking for an opportunity to merge,
- everyone is tending to look back towards the rear guide, looking for his raised hand to signal that it is safe to merge,
- so to my fear; that something happens ahead and I lose balance and fall outward into the passing traffic - still clipped in. This is easy to do in a distracting, slow moving environment.
You might say, why not unclip a foot? Because you need to react quickly to merge across to the next lane - so it is not really an option.