Mountain Biking With Grizzly Bears
Mountain bikers occupy a conceptual middle-ground between pedestrians and people on or in motorized transport. They do not employ noisy mechanized equipment that potentially gives advance warning of their progress, but at the same time they move at potentially high speeds. Unlike people enclosed in hard-sided mechanized vehicles, but like people riding off-road-vehicles (OHV) or on foot, they are exposed to the risks of physical injury from an attacking grizzly bear. Given these provisos, mountain bikers qualify for extrapolation of research that is otherwise focused on pedestrians, primarily because of their comparative silence as well as vulnerability.
Emblematic of this point, Brad Treat was killed by a grizzly bear in Montana during June of 2016 after essentially colliding with the bear while he was traveling at high speed on a mountain bike along a trail with limited visibility. This incident elevated the profile of risks for both people and bears posed by mountain biking, although a number of similar incidents in Canada had highlighted the hazards of mountain biking as much as 20 years earlier. Concern about risks have also been magnified by the fact that mountain biking is becoming more popular in areas occupied by grizzly bears, reflective of the 28% increase nationwide in this activity during the last 10 years.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/26/traveling-fast-silent-mountain-biking-with-grizzly-bears/
Freedom of contract. We sell them guns that kill them; they sell us drugs that kill us.
