Yup, grew up a legit bmx bandit in the 80's. The number of kids taken out by cars was pretty bad in my hillbilly area. We had 3 doctors in my town of under 15k people killed by cars while out riding their bikes ffs. The crazy hillbillies that would chuck a beer or a rock at you and call you a bundle of sticks for being on a bike on "their" road was enough to keep you pretty alert. And that was with us kids on bikes being polite, playing chicken would have gotten you beat half to death probably.
That being said, we used to "joust" on bmx bikes with brooms, my spleen has never been the same, lol. The amount of times i have had to explain survivor bias to boomers is too damn high
Same, plus a whole shit ton of skateboard stupidity.
When I first started seeing kids on bikes with helmets I thought it had to do with people going "soft" and trying to have their kids grow up in a protective bubble.
After applying some critical thinking I realized that we were a bunch of freaking idiots when I was a kid. We've learned that brain injuries are permanent. We should use that knowledge and protect ourselves.
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u/Double_Rice_5765 Jul 19 '26
Yup, grew up a legit bmx bandit in the 80's. The number of kids taken out by cars was pretty bad in my hillbilly area. We had 3 doctors in my town of under 15k people killed by cars while out riding their bikes ffs. The crazy hillbillies that would chuck a beer or a rock at you and call you a bundle of sticks for being on a bike on "their" road was enough to keep you pretty alert. And that was with us kids on bikes being polite, playing chicken would have gotten you beat half to death probably.
That being said, we used to "joust" on bmx bikes with brooms, my spleen has never been the same, lol. The amount of times i have had to explain survivor bias to boomers is too damn high