Presidents Corner
By Dave Seslar

As many of you have heard by now, the COP and TOSRV family got a little smaller last Mother's Day. Dr. William Crowley - of Northville, Michigan - was struck and killed early that Sunday morning while cycling north from Portsmouth. A registered TOSRV rider and a 20 year veteran of TOSRV, he was cycling on US 23 near Piketon (instead of the tour route on SR 104) when he was struck by a solitary motorist. The incident apparently was not observed by others, and it remains under investigation at the time of this writing in early June. While he was not on the tour route, Mr. Crowley and other cyclists do have the right to use this roadway and he should have been at no greater risk on this roadway than he would have been on SR 104 or any other roadway. Bicycling does have risks, though; sadly, those risks caught up to and overtook Mr. Crowley that day.

Everything we do has some amount and type of risk. As a caver/whitewater boater/road cyclist/etc., I am often asked by others (who don't do those things and usually in a doubtful tone), "Is it safe to do that"? A common meaning for `safe' is `you can't get hurt (or worse) doing that', so my simplest answer would be "No," but that doesn't frame the issue properly. Instead, I usually ask in return whether they know or know of someone who was badly injured or killed in a car accident. When they answer "yes" uncertainly, I then ask "You still drive and ride in cars don't you?" So far, everyone I ask this looks uncomfortable as they say they still do.

This frames the issue: as long as we are alive and well, we are at some risk for injury or worse, whether by our own actions/inactions or by the vagaries of the world around us. Each of us has to decide what risks we are willing to accept to meet our needs and desires. Obviously, Mr. Crowley and the other TOSRV riders that morning were not meeting basic needs (food, shelter, warmth) but were instead fulfilling some of their desires that bicycling can meet by experiencing the world around them. This is what COP is about: enjoying the world around us and learning to recognize and manage the risks inherent in the activities that we pursue. My mantra for this viewpoint is "There is no such thing as safety, there is only risk management". Not everyone is going to agree with that, obviously, but it does offer a useful frame to one's thinking about risk sport and what balance of risk/reward one wishes to make.

Let me know what YOU think about this if you see me at a COP event, or by email: president(at)outdoor-pursuits.org.

See You On the River/Road/Trail

Dave, 614/334-9352, president(at)outdoor-pursuits.org

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