Tejay van Garderen: "Reducing a peloton from 9-rider teams to 8-rider teams hasn't made a single difference, reducing the gears wouldn't make a difference"

Limit speed in a race? Why even race then? The only solution I can imagine is a mandatory safety course starting at grass roots. Or, it has to come down to safety equipment. Will there ever be a safe equivalent for cycling like the exploding chaps for motorbikes?

To summarize many things: the peloton is often separated by mere centimeters through all sorts of terrain, road furniture, and turns (the point of saving energy is to be in the slipstream), the speeds are high from the start in every race and every stage (the points system requires points for the non-dominant teams), riders are more professional these days (there is no personal training, anymore, the team determines the workout regimen, etc.), everyone is stronger (see previous point), and younger folks are more exuberant (I have kids without fully developed frontal lobes, this is my positive spin on the situation). Asking individual riders to be safer is honestly plain old BS. What people are asking for is a change in the culture, and the culture is driven by the dividends: points and wins. Rider safety only exists within systems that honor it, and the points and wins system does not. Then again, it does in the way that some teams try for a bunch of top 10s without contesting the win, and fans hate that, which means... wins more than points... and who determines the culture? fans. My biggest gripe about putting responsibility and agency on riders is that it's a peloton, it's a team sport, it's a blob of a slipstream, and you individually cannot control what happens in front of you, you just can't. Tell me how to avoid a bunch sprint crash when you're in the wrong place at the wrong time - and nobody has an answer.

This narrative of blaming the rider or the bicycle setup needs to stop. The issue is that the UCI has done nothing to improve the safety of the courses or punish the race organisers for the poor setup of course routes. Instead, the UCI has encouraged this alternative narrative of blaming others - need proof? UCI did nothing to punish the race organisers after the devastating crash at Itzulia Basque Country. Need more proof? UCI did nothing to improve the safety of sprint finishes after the life-changing crash of Fabio Jakobsen in Poland.

Can’t say for sure it would be safer, but we can say for sure it would be slower

Pretty much sums it up. Races today are often fast from the go as many know it’s their only chance of an upset. GTs are basically fast EVERY day now, whereas in the past there were stages you’d consider asking your money back (if it was a paying sport) so slow and uneventful were they. One of numerous reasons the average speeds jumped up, that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is speeding downhill any faster, even Pidcock with a huge chainring is going to brake before a bend, it’s not the top speed that matters, it’s your racing experience that knows what the limit is for each situation and many just don’t have enough of this experience for the races they’re doing or no longer care collectively like in the past with its unwritten rules of the peleton. The prize money and cutthroat employment market is also leading to more risk/reward acceptance among the peleton as a whole.