Ultracycling

Interesting thoughts...

I do like the route-planning aspect of TCR as I like maps and planning routes (I was the kid who would spend hours reading an atlas instead of playing football). But the safety argument is a powerful. Some thoughts:

After 8 TCRs, the best ways to get across Europe have kind of been discovered now, so - other than fairly minor tweaking in France and Germany where there are loads of route options, it's hard to get big advantages from routing. The big variations, like the ferry across the Adriatic or skipping the Alps and TTing the Po valley are very rare. It is still possible to screw up by not checking your route - like Bjorn going the wrong side of Lake Balaton and then up a mountain in Bosnia, and loads of other people in less dramatic fashion.

The ideal of total self-reliance is not realistic. I expect many / most riders to collaborate informally on their routes. And it's not a level playing field:

• people who live in, say, Switzerland, have a big advantage, as they will be more familiar with the key routes that come up every year.
  
• some people (eg Christoph Strasser) are able to go to Romania and check it out, but not realistic for most (I don't criticise him, it's good preparation and perfectly allowed, just not possible for most).
  
  

Coming back to safety, do we see many people end up on roads that are unsafe and get into a bad situation? It must happen but I haven't heard of lots of examples - your road in Romania is the one that stands out.

Another factor is that people are not always great judges of what is a safe and a dangerous road. For example, a guy who lives in Bulgaria told Anna the main road into Sofia was dangerous, but it's wide, big hard shoulder, good sight lines (and most people were on it on a Sunday and there was a screaming tailwind) - I felt it was just about the safest road I was on the whole ride. What I fear are narrow, smaller A-roads with no shoulder, lots of corners and lots of traffic.

Finally, the people who have been killed have mainly been distracted drivers on roads with good visibility (I don't know about Frank Simons / hit and run, but definitely for Mike, John Egbers and Olga) - not road sections that I would consider particularly dangerous. And two were on defined route events so, while thankfully the numbers are too small to conclude, there's no hard evidence that defined routes are safer.

I think it ultimately comes down to there being a driver out there who is going to kill each one of us because looking at phone, etc, if we are unlucky enough to be at the same place as them at the same time - ie we can't control it by making the route safer because it is the distracted or careless driver that is the threat.