Reasons not to ride?

I decided to boycott the Snowbird Race last weekend because,
well, that course just sucks. It’s a
steep, boring, dusty climb rewarded with a steeper, gravelly fire road
descent. Nobody would actually ride that
course for recreation. I think the only
reason they still hold the race is tradition; they’ve been racing on the same
course for 20 years. 

I was lucky I didn’t race. Instead my brother and I decided to ride up the Tibble Fork trail to
some of the best trails found anywhere. Just
30 feet into the ride my rear brake blew up. It was clicking like I had a baseball card in my spokes. I stopped and futzed with it for 25 minutes before
deciding I couldn’t fix it. I took the
pads out and rode with only my front brake. I felt OK going uphill but decided it was unsafe to ride back down.

In the past week I’ve had two other strong signals that it’s
unsafe to ride. First, this article in
the New York Times says that exercising in low levels of pollution causes similar
lung damage to sitting around in high levels of pollution.  Something for me to think about while I ride in Salt Lake's bad air. 

Then Ben, my friend in Spokane,
got hit by a truck while he was waiting at a stop sign on his bicycle. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong
time, but he’s lucky to be alive. It’s
caused a bit of a stir among cyclists in Spokane
since the driver, who had run the stop sign, wasn’t even charged with
negligence or recklessness.

So what do I do? Are these valid reasons to quit
riding? 

Ben had this to say
about his incident:

I am reasonably OK with a very sore back and lots of
bruises.  I fractured 3 transverse processes on the vertebrae in my lumbar
spine and chipped my iliac crest.  I haven't been back to work
since.  I will probably ride the bus until my back heals.  And then
figure out which bike to get back on.

My helmet got smashed and my bike is ruined. Ride safely, watch out for mowers, and
wear your helmet.

And Dr. David Newby, as quoted in the New York Times article
above, sums it up nicely with a different perspective:

“I ride my bike back and forth to work every day,” he said.
“If everyone else did that, too, we wouldn’t be having this problem at all,
would we?”