Someone shared this video in a Facebook group. A motorcyclist coming around a corner on the Old Pacific Highway, and a car that's just bounced off the wall on the far side. You can see the car still moving forward but rotating, doing a 180 across both lanes into oncoming traffic. The motorcyclist threads past it. It's wild to watch.
I've ridden that road plenty of times. A while back I was going up it and a motorcyclist coming the other way had completely blown his corner. He was wide, in my lane. I swerved. He missed me. It shook me for a bit and then I just kept going.
The thing I keep coming back to is that I can't actually picture what going down on a bike at speed would feel like. I've come off bicycles before, grazed my arm, grazed my knee, that kind of thing. But hitting the ground at 80 km/h, or hitting a car, or hitting another rider head on, my brain just doesn't render it. I can describe it in a sentence. I can't feel it.
Most of the risk on a bike isn't even yours to manage. You can ride well, within your limits, paying attention. And then someone in a car drifts across a centre line for half a second and that's it.
I keep riding anyway. I don't have a tidy reason. I just know the pain isn't real to me until it is, and when I next can I'll probably go ride that road again.