Derek Teel of Dialed Health Suffers Extensive Injuries After Being Struck By Driver in Hit & Run

 youtu.be/yQO4Dnlwcg0?si=ylCLX0Ed9M4VVQRP

Reminder to everyone to watch and share Phil Gaimon's "Please Share This When I'm Killed by Someone Driving a Car" video.

 Hard to say from the photo, but those tail light sure looks like an '05-06 Camry in lunar mist.Front end looks short though.

 @SacAssassin: Acura TSX

 @SacAssassin: IA could be helpful in these cases to identify precisely what car it is.

 @SacAssassin: Cadillac Catera? Maybe?

 @SacAssassin: maybe an 03 or so Mitsubishi Galant. The roof line and C pillar really match it.

 @Superburner: That's pretty close. Could also be a Plymouth breeze which looks pretty similar.

i.redd.it/p6trzyjrwnr61.png

 @Superburner: None of those run anymore...

 @SacAssassin: It's an Accord.

 If you have ever read the comments on social media about incidents like this, drivers absolutely hate cyclists and often even wish death upon them/say they deserve this type of incident.

 @mcleodpulaski: I recognise this,but think/hope most are trolls

 @SacAssassin: Chrysler Neon?

 @shimanodx: The car would have fallen apart. Tail lights look close though

 @SacAssassin: and the odd shaped C pillar

 fucking sucks.... this is why i dont hit the road, fuck sharing it with grandpa on oxy and ozempic

 I've edited that now, thank you! I was actually just scrolling through the Adventure Stache episodes the other day as well and put Derek's double everesting episode on my "to listen to" list. So awful, wishing him all the best with the recovery.

 I very much support "struck by driver" over struck by car or cycling accident or anything else. The driver did this.

 @sarahmoore: Thank you!

 The normal news articles about this are insane. "Involved in a crash".

It's not a crash, Derek was literally almost killed by another human and they are acting like the car had a mind of its own and accidentally bumped him.

 I honestly wonder how this thing will work out when people start to rely more on these self-driving or self-correcting vehicles. Some say the cause of the majority of accidents is human error so taking that out of the equation would reduce the number of accidents. Nice and all but I once rode in a Tesla (as a passenger) and the onboard screen beautifully depicted the majority of traffic around, but fails to recognize the essence. It doesn't spot kids wanting to cross the street from between parked cars even though I could clearly see them through those car windows and their reflection in the next parked car. Cyclists seemingly appear and disappear out of nowhere. A colleague told me that when there is a queue on the highway, her Tesla doesn't allow her to shift to the side of her lane to create that channel for motorcyclists to safely pass through (or at least it constantly gives annoying beeps which can't be turned off). No one was able to confirm me that they'd be able to distinguish between the permanent and temporary lines on the highway in case of road work.

So yeah for sure in this case it was definitely the driver who failed and struck, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there'd be a day when people are indeed being struck by cars, not drivers.

 @vinay: self-driving vehicles don't entirely remove the human error factor, it concentrates the human error back to the software engineers, designers and fitters back at the factory, who are ignorant of the exact circumstances the vehicle is in at any given point. They have to make assumptions and best-guesses about what how the vehicle should behave in any combination of influencing factors

 You know what else has been climbing for more than a decade? Vehicle weight, size, and hood height. It's so much harder to see pedestrians when you're behind the wheel of a massive truck or SUV.

Such a negative feedback loop where people feel they need bigger cars to feel safer. Then the next generation of cars are bigger . . .

 @GTscoob: People love to buy the biggest, "bestest" thing available to them and that they can "afford". See; houses, trucks/SUVs, bulk food items, guns etc. We're well past the point of education, what we need is regulation.

 @GTscoob:

This is a good article that explores reasons for the spike. It isn't entirely clear that it is simply due to larger vehicles.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nighttime-deaths.html

 @GTscoob: tires and suspension are better too, cabins quieter, masking that tactile feel of how fast you're actually going ("I had no idea I was doing 50 in a 25 officer"), combine that with mindless driving (eating, texting, paying attention to the data displayed on the 30" screen mounted on the dash instead of the road) and it's no surprise

 The past 40 years have seen a massive rise in right-wing media vilifying cyclists also.

 @IsaacO: I'm not an ebike lover or apologist but this just isn't backed up by any stats.

 @GTscoob: eh, I’d say it’s drivers on phones. I learned to drive in a cargo van. Pretty big and high and have yet to hit a pedestrian. I now drive a lifted F-150 and can still see pedestrians pretty easily. Additionally this one was a car. A older, small car. Let’s put the blame where it lies, on the driver.

 @Chief2slo: Agreed, it's the phones. And the numbers on this will literally NEVER be accurate because how many people are going to hit a pedestrian and when asked "were you on your phone?"...will be like "Why yes, I was breaking the law in a way you cannot prove when I killed that person."

 @plyawn: Its actually pretty well documented. Phones are probably even more responsible for the surge in cycling related deaths, absolutely not giving drivers a pass in any way. Just saying its an interesting part of the discussion, the roads are a lot more dangerous these days for everyone that isn't driving their lifted Bro Dozer

www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2024/E-Scooter-and-E-Bike-Injuries-Soar-2022-Injuries-Increased-Nearly-21

a simple google search will give you dozens of articles discussing the increase in injuries stemming from ebike travel. Overall id rather see more people on ebikes than more cars on the road..but cities aren't creating the infrastructure to keep cyclists safe. Anyway thats a discussion for another thread. This was a shame to hear.

 Bro, it’s cell phones 100%

 @jeremiahwas: I was hit by a driver going freeway speed, and he never hit the brakes. This is by his own admission. I was at a dead stop. I walked away.

I was in a Ford Fiesta.

Of interesting note, he admitted to falling asleep at the wheel. Even though I witnessed him use a turn signal to change lanes into me.

 @Explodo: I live and ride in San Francisco every day. Almost all drivers in the city hate cyclists let let alone mountain bikers. This is definitely not a one-sided issue.

 @chacou: your not wrong. I had a rental for an insurance claim. Brand new off the forecourt Merc SUV. I called it the Enterprise cos it was white an the tech was amazing. Driving home from riding an I went the 'long' way home. Chilling on the motorway with one hand on the wheel playing with the features. (Looking at the road, obvs) look at the clock, FK!! I'm doing 90! Felt as smooth an controllable as if I was doing 40!
Instantly down to the limit 70... It was actually scary how smooth it was. My ol ford Kuga would feel like an old shoddy sea side roller coaster at that speed.

 @yupstate: except it can be proved. The Po just have to check call logs on the phone or with the network provider

 This is a good listen. freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-u-s-so-good-at-killing-pedestrians

 @Chief2slo: you lost me at “cool guy bronco” Weird flex but ok. Only dude I know who has a souped up F-150 lives the “Ford vs Chevy” life and pours additives and crap into his gasoline so he can race other bros at stop lights. And the kicker is he literally hit and killed a person while on pills years ago and went to jail. I have no sympathy for it. I’m glad the car market is tanking hopefully we see more bro trucks at auction

 @Chief2slo: Randian philosophy at its very finest; the entitlement, the arrogance, the sense that negative consequences are only for those who get it wrong.

 @GTscoob: It's also generally not true that a bigger car is necessarily safer than a smaller one.

 @Durtwrx: Yes. Vehicle size, vehicle mass, minimum protections for people outside the vehicle in the case of collisions...
There are lots of things that could be controlled, or at least limited, which would reduce harm and have no real impact on user experience, except bruising a few fragile egos.

 The woman that killed Magnus White was driving a Toyota Matrix. Not a large vehicle by any measure. Apparently she fell asleep at the wheel. www.denver7.com/news/local-news/magnus-white-charges-filed-against-driver-accused-of-hitting-killing-young-boulder-bicyclist-in-july

Our next door neighbor has caused 2 separate accidents on I70 from falling asleep at the wheel. It’s amazing she is still alive and hasn’t killed or injured anyone. Yet insurance pays out and she has had 3 different vehicles in 9 years of living next door. Drives our residential mountain road at an average speed of about 30mph, posted limit is 10 due to blind switchbacks and being residential. Some people just don’t think about responsibility and consequences, the world revolves around them.

 @Explodo: Pretty much every non-cyclist I know, left or right, hates cyclists. Definitely not a political issue.

 The US/Canada have skyrocketing rates of pedestrian and cyclist deaths caused by vehicles in the last decade. These are much, much higher than in other modernized countries with similar demographics. In Europe the rates of vehicles striking pedestrians and cyclists have remained relatively steady during that period.

For anyone interested in why, I strongly recommend the book "there are no accidents." Spoiler its not cell phones. It is mostly horrific road design in north america, coupled with modern vehicle design that prioritizes occupant safety.

 @theconorcons: Good point, there's many factors including vehicle, roadway, and urban design as well as human factors.
Totally anecdotal, I think a big factor is that many people perceive driving as a trivial chore and don't weigh the responsibilities of being an operator with the consequences when shit goes wrong. Very similar to falling into heuristic traps with backcountry skiing (or really anything with risk exposure) such as familiarity (i've driven this road thousands of times), social facilitation (everyone else is speeding), etc. www.summitpost.org/human-factors-in-avalanche-incidents/188636
Personally, I'd like to see better roadway and urban design that prioritizes pedestrians. I don't see that happening in many places though or think that our culture would stomach that. I'd like to see stricter licensing requirements with more frequent training/education and testing involved, but I don't see that happening here anytime soon. I don't know what, if any, solution is. I just know that what we're doing now is not sustainable and regularly learning about people being seriously injured and killed because they were walking, running, or riding (or driving) and another person operating a motor vehicle failed to take their responsibilities seriously really sucks.

 @theconorcons: This. If it were just the phones, we'd be seing similar trends in Europe, but we aren't. Road design, vehicle design, the ongoing prevalence of manual transmissions in Europe that require more driver engagement, cultural differences,

It's the phones too, for sure. But putting it all on the phones is reductive and counterproductive to coming up with effective solutions.

 @BrambleLee: Its for sure street design. When I ride my road bike in Sun Valley, there is a 25 mile bike path that keeps me away from cars. The only time I share a road is on rural mtn roads. Now, when I ride in Boise I have to ride with cars and often its sketch

 Living in The Netherlands I think I'm lucky in this respect, but safety is and will always be an ongoing process. The goal is zero cycling deaths in traffic and except for some main arteries many bigger cities are now decreasing the speed limit from 50km/h down to 30km/h. The thinking being that a collision at these speeds will cause less serious injury and obviously it also decrease the stopping distance for motorists making it easier to avoid a collision in the first place. Obviously combustion engines aren't efficient at these speeds but then again there already is a shift towards electric cars (which perform better at low speeds and whose resource efficiency is questionable for highway use) and obviously cars don't really fit in the city streets anyway.

As for the change (in terms of driving education, road design and regulation) that has to be realized, remember that it can be done if enough people want it. It happened here in the seventies after all though I have to admit it can be harder now to make such a shift nowadays when people lose track of what has been and what can be. Last Summer at the world premier of (The Anthil film) The Engine Inside I talked to a lady from Scotland who mentioned that the people in The Netherlands pulled the brake just in time as now it is or would have been too late. Even though I think she may be right, it is seems like a depressing thought that we wouldn't be able to realize safer traffic in our own homeland. I know there have been a few instances where some progress has been made. The corona-crisis having been one of them where urban designers tried to create a safer infrastructure. As sad as the recent Middle East conflicts are, I can imagine it could trigger another oil crisis. Inconvenient, sure. The best way to decrease the oil price is to decrease the demand. Increased road safety is a nice side effect.

 @naptime: Doesn't have to be a call. Can be a text, checking instagram, Google Maps, weather, Tinder, STRAVA, etc.

 @yupstate: Strava in a car , I know Strava heads often cheat but, that's a bit much
Either way there'll still be data transfer for authorities to investigate...?

 @naptime: Ha, I can't lie I've been guilty of changing the title of my ride, uploading pictures, etc. to Strava while starting my drive home. I know it's not right but I bet I'm not the only one. TBH I'm not sure how often in accidents they are getting a subpoena or request full phone records. I also feel like phones are so dynamic now with all the apps and what is happening they can't always tell the difference between a phone sitting a cupholder or on a lap vs. the person actually looking at it. There can be 20 apps going in 20 directions all at the same time and you may be looking at it or you might not be. Your screen might be locked, it might not be. There's a ton of factors.

 @yupstate: unless someone is killed or very seriously injured, or maybe a party sues. The police response is likely very similar to youtu.be/FMdWmls2m0Y?si=-z57FZlpT40rZ8zn
"leads? yeah, sure I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab. They got 4 more detectives working the case, they got us working in shifts! leads..."

 I feel the need to add to the discussion that when our suburban streets are 45 mph superhighways littered with conflict points, lifted f-150 or civics are both going fast enough to equally maim pedestrians. Yes, vehicle size needs to be addressed but so do our streets.

 @vtracer: What is the speed limits in these streets? As I mentioned earlier, the limit here already was 50km/h (30mph) and in more and more places it is going down to 30km/h (20mph). It may appear slow to some but remember the streets need to be safe for both kids and elderly to ride their bikes and go places.

 @vinay: doesn't matter what the speed limit is when all the streets in America are designed like interstates even in quite neighborhoods

 @vinay: I live in a mid-sized city. Neighborhood streets tend to be 20mph, surface arterials maybe 25mph. Wider surface streets 35, surface highway 45, freeway 50 thru the city. I'm not sure that our speed limits are too high, for the most part. But people don't drive the speed limit. Tack several mph onto any of those limits, and you get a sense for how people actually drive. People often drive 30-35 on those 20mph streets, 35-40 on the 25s, 45 on the 35s, 65 on the 45s. I live in a generally quiet neighborhood—tons of kids, peiple walking their dogs, etc.—but every evening at rush hour, you get people absoultely tearing up and down our street using it as a thru street trying to move faster than the traffic crawling on the arterials. It's nuts.

A really common pedestrian strike scenario in my city is that you'll have a ped crosswalk across a 4-lane major arterial (like a 35mph zone). The xings are well marked, but they aren't at a light controlled intersection—traffic is supposed to stop. The pedestrian will be waiting to cross from one side. A car in one of the lanes will see the pedestrian and stop, they'll start to cross. Meanwhile, a car coming up the outside lane in relation to where the ped is crossing from won't be able to see the ped with the view blocked by the stopped car, and won't tune into the fact that stopped car means a ped is moving thru. The outside lane car keeps plowing ahead at 45 in this 35 zone, and strikes the ped.

For cyclists, right hooks by cars are very common, as are drivers turning left without looking thru an intersection. The city has been installing more bike-specific lights to give cyclists a chance to move through intersections when no motor vehicles are moving at all, but these exist mainly in the city core. Areas outside of the core, which tend to be 4 lane higher speed arterials, with tons of shopping centers where cars are turning in and out of are just death zones for peds and cyclists.

Someone up above linked the recent NY Times piece about pedestrian deaths and how the spike in ped deaths is especially concentrated after dark. It's a really worthwhile read. We get dark here by about 430pm in the depths of winter, just in time for rush hour. It rains a ton. Visibility is f*cked by the glare and distortion of headlights reflecting off wet pavement, rain on windshields, etc. People are stressed and distracted. You've got can collecting hobos on bikes unlit and riding against traffic. You've got peds and bike commuters everywhere. Traffic crawls, but then people will speed into every little gap they can just to get home 30 seconds sooner. It's such a broken morass of form and function, culture, urban design.

All this in a city that's ostensibly on the bleeding edge of ped/cyclist friendly urban design. I don't doubt that we are, but even with that, it's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 @BrambleLee: The only US city that can claim to be anything close to the "bleeding edge of ped/cyclist friendly urban design" would be Bentonville Arkansas? Not that anywhere in the UK can claim to be much better, but Copenhagen, and the Netherlands are looked on with envy by the rest of the world.

 @ROOTminus1: Is that true outside of mountain bike trails? I think most of Northern Arkansas is still unfriendly for riding road bikes. Denver and Minneapolis are probably more friendly for road biking and commuting.

 Wow, this sounds pretty hopeless indeed. It really needs to come from the people, they have to want it. Introducing rules top down doesn't work and it is pretty much impossible to enforce. Solutions I've seen here and which actually look pretty is to make the road more narrow and less straight in places by means of big heavy crates with plants leaving narrow passages between crate and curb for cyclists to pass through. Cars can no longer speed and have to negotiate with oncoming traffic whereas cyclists are safe on the other side of the crate wherever it gets tight. Basically, if cars have too much room to keep their speed in check, give them less room. Though I also now also realize fire engines are pretty big over there too. Other solutions I've seen is to also narrow the driving lane but line it with grass, flowers etc. Regular traffic probably won't smash through your greens but when need be, the fire engine will be able to straightline and rip it apart. But again, end of the day people really need to want safe traffic.

 @HB208: My understanding is that the MTB influence has created greenways which serve as a decent active travel network isolated from vehicular traffic.

If I'm mislead on that, I'd love to know better.

@BrambleLee: What is it that your city is doing so well for cycle infa, my city has 2 disused railway lines converted to bridleways and everything in between is crap

 @HB208: I'd say Denver is not very friendly to road biking, aside from maybe the climate and topography (ie: it's flat). There's a large cycling community in Denver (and the front range in general) that makes some strides but this stereotype that Colorado is some haven for bicyclists is just not true. Connectivity is horrible once your outside the 2 main dedicated bike paths (which nowadays might as well just be campgrounds) and the infrastructure is severely lacking; you're lucky to have a shoulder or a sketchy bike lane (glorified shoulder) to ride in and driver behavior is just not very pro-cycling, considering that it's an extremely pro-O&G state it's no surprise that people hate the idea of sharing the road with cyclists.

 @ROOTminus1: I’m in Portland Oregon—are we bigger than mid-sized?Maybe we’re on the small side of big? When I said that I don’t doubt that we are on the leading edge of bike-friendly urban design, I think I could have more accurately said I don’t doubt that it’s better here than many other places. During the ‘00s and the ‘10s, we very much had that reputation as being innovators in bike infrastructure. Now, I think maybe we’ve stagnated. Still, some of the things that have been implemented here have been bike specific traffic controls so that bikes and motor vehicles aren’t moving thru high risk intersections at the same time; we’ve got a bridge over the river as well as some freeway overpasses that are bike/ped or bike/ped/transit only; bike lanes separated from traffic by various means; two-lane bike lanes so that faster and slower bike lane users can pass each other without moving into traffic; we have an extensive network of “bike boulevards”—neighborhood thru-routes that parallel major arterials and have favorable stop sign configuration so that users flow efficiently along their routes with minimal need to stop, while keeping off the busier higher speed main thoroughfares. I’m sure there are loads of other things I’m not thinking of.

 @BrambleLee: Yeah, I believe that at the end of the day everyone wants a safe and efficient infrastructure so if Portland Oregon is on the leading edge off bike-friendly urban design, it wouldn't hurt if other cities would learn from them. I also realized that it is pretty complex, but the knowledge is definitely out there. Consult the experts, it eventually pays for itself. It took a foreign video for me to learn how our local traffic lights work and I think it is pretty cool indeed.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4&pp=ygUTYmlrZSB0cmFmZmljIGxpZ2h0cw%3D%3D

 @yupstate: this isn’t data, but I was struck by a driver in a Mazda 3 going 50mph through a red light. I was in a lifted ram 3500 going through a green light. The Mazda 3 driver was on his phone, self admitted, and didn’t see the light change. He was injured but only minor even though his car looked like a beer can that had just been stepped on. There was a pedestrian using the crosswalk on the other side of me who narrowly escaped death when my truck was pushed sideways into his path from the impact. The size and weight of my truck could’ve killed the driver of the Mazda, but it clearly saved my life, and the pedestrians life. What I learned is that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in an incident, the pedestrian or cyclist will always lose.

 @ROOTminus1: Yeah they have a ton of MTB trails but the roads are southern roads.

 Your opinion is totally valid, but I'm so fucking sick of hearing this sentiment more and more these days, it's incredibly sad that shitty drivers and car focussed transportation infrastrucure have taken the joys of bike commuting and cycling away from people. Fuck cars, and fuck the self centered negligent pricks that are too often driving them. The amount of shitty driving in my area has soared the past few years. I experience it on foot, on a bike, and when I'm driving. It's starting to feel like there's no humanity left in people, given the way they choose to operate 3,000 lbs of metal around people that have zero protection.

 Sold my road bike after having kids. Wasn't even a choice if I wanted to stay alive.

 @rpdale: Agree - I got hit by a distracted driver in 1994 that was doing 80 k/h (~ 50 m/h) - direct hit from behind and I was in a bicycle lane. I'm still feeling the affects. The law in the Province I lived in at the time doesn't allow for suing the prick unless you are in a wheelchair for life or dead. If I happened to be walking on the side of the road or simply parked in a car this jerk still would have hit me - distracted drivers can destroy peoples lives.. Fortunately I eventually got back on the bike - both MTB and road. I hope Derek recovers and they get the driver who did this.

 @rpdale: while I do occasionally drive, I still mostly bike commute. Most people would firmly agree that my route is absolute shit, worst infrastructure you can imagine (and I pick the best route). But every time I drive I feel a little more dead inside.

 I've got one of the Garmin radars for my gf, gotta say I'm using it too if I'm about pedal few kms on road and I hate riding without one

 @konadan: same

 @bok-CZ: those things are amazing. Was blown away at how well they work.

 @RevedOut: Sometimes the option to take a Bike path was available, but most of the time it was not. Mostly just country roads with a very small, glass filled shoulder. One year I had two friends shot at just for fun, lost three friends/acquaintances to hit from behind incidents, and was run off the road by logging trucks twice. I sold the Soma and built a bike that was far less efficient, but capable of quick off pavement maneuvers. Thats my road/gravel machine now. A 90's mtb with a basket and rear brake. best swap I ever made.

 @konadan: Wow!! That is a crazy story. I did not know that road biking could be that hostile. I would have switched as well. I think I’m going to stick to Mountain Biking. At least I know the trees are not going to hit me from behind. I do tell my friends that they step out in front of me from time to time. Lol

 @Chief2slo: yep, really worthy investment. I am not sure if it´s just because I know how it looks and works, but while driving a car and approaching a rider using one I can feel the "connection" like hey I know you´re there.
It was a game changer for me.

 I'm 95% sure it's a silver 2010-2012 Ford Fusion. The window line is a dead giveaway, no? Keep your eyes peeled!

 @TurboDonuts: pretty sure it's a 06 era accord coupe

 @TurboDonuts: agreed. A reddit poster agrees it's a 2010-12 fusion. The rear window pillar and the side of the body appear to be the giveaways. Despite being far away, you can still make out some of the side body lines, and they're extremely similar to photos of a First Gen fusion.

 Hopefully you won't find this MFer driving, ever, anywhere. Errors are human, hit and run isn't.

 @nicholkid: It 100% is an accord, I saw an instagram from Derek's wife saying the police have identified it as such.

 @theconorcons: It 100% is not an Accord. Look at 2006-2012 silver Ford Fusions. The rear window line matches perfectly, plus the wheel arch. And it’s hard to see any tail light shape in this blurry picture because Ford used clear rear light housings (red reflector aside) for Mk1 fusions. I’d put a lot of money on this being a Fusion.

 @Rokcore: Thanks for sharing that. Here to recommend Reddit/r/namethatcar for this and other tragic automotive crimes.

 @TurboDonuts: I think you nailed it. The 2006 Ford fusion is the closest match I've seen. You can even find a photo of a red one on Autoblog at nearly the exact same angle.

 @TurboDonuts: his mom posted on instagram that it has been identified as a Honda Accord, I am just relaying that.

 Here's the interesting thing: US auto pedestrian & cyclist deaths took off in 2007-08 while EU countries remained largely the same. In the US 95% of cars sold are automatics; in the EU 80% of cars are manuals. With one hand free, the mind wanders, we all know that, don't make that "convenient mistake".

 @hevi: a new Prius makes 24kpl and weighs 1400kg. Can't be push-started with a depleted battery tho. Bluetooth allows the mind and the other hand to wander

@Portland-maine: thanks for the tip

 Minneapolis was impressive on this front. Cars and Bike are for the most part segregated. It works very well. They have bike overpasses in freaking neighborhoods.

 What about passengers though? Would need to be linked to operation of the vehicle somehow.

 Eyes peeled for that silver sedan. Agree it looks Honda-like. Catch this scum!

 fuck bad drivers

 I road bike but only on roads I know are pretty low risk. Derek rides all over the place. It confirms my decision to not get overly into road biking though.

 @HB208: This! The area he was hit is a well known country road with little to no shoulder and dotted with wineries. Its a beautiful area to drive/ride and often times not much traffic. Flip side is it can lead to people driving at higher speeds or are intoxicated.

 Yup. I love mountain biking but I will not ride on the road (aside from a quiet dirt road that goes from my house to the trail, sometimes) for exactly this reason. Too many drunk a*sholes in cars, too little bike infrastructure. It's crazy that flinging myself off of rock drops in the forest is SAFER than just riding a bike on a smooth, flat road, but it is.

 +1

 Not sure how you could possibly decipher it being an EX model from Touring That photo is so awful people can't even tell what make/model it is.