I'm happy I'm not dead because of a cycling fuck-up. When I was in my teens I would go down a steep long hill where we lived reaching a maximum velocity of about 70-80 km/h on several occasions. The bike I had was ordinary bicycle and I wasn't wearing a helmet, of course, because bicycle helmets weren't a thing back then. There was a three-way intersection at the bottom of the hill. I shudder to think what could've happened if a car coming from the right had not stopped and I had run into it or if something had got stuck between the spokes of a wheel. The brakes would've been nearly completely useless at that speed. I was suffering from the same young man's illusion that has and always will make the typical young man perfect cannon fodder.