Boy, I was thinking about the whole premise of the original post and
reflecting back on my last 20 lyears of bicycle racing and I have seen
people crash into fixed objects, curb stones, slide under cars, strike
cars from behind, get t-boned after falling, smash into parking
meters, roadside trash containers, newspaper vending boxes, people,
dogs and whole families. I have seen sliding crashes, end over ends,
bikes spining around and whacking people, and great big pile ups and
little silly ones. Some races have multiple crashes and sometimes a
month will go by without a mishap. Shoot, I can think of four crashes
I have seen just in team time trials, go figure.

My observation is that the cat 5's crash just as much as the p1-2 and
even the euro pros seem to stack it quite a bit in the major tours.

I can say that in my time of bike racing, I have seen many hundreds of
people hit the deck, including plenty of good shots to the head. Most
of my time has been in the post leather hairnet days, so who knows if
the helmets made a difference, but I have sure seen a lot of people
hit their heads on all nature of fixed and moving objects as part of
the sport of bicycle racing and just feel a little uneasy with the
characterization of it as just isolated mayhem. If you just ride
around on your bike, chances are you won't be going over the bars this
season, but if you are out racing every weekend, chances are you will
be on the floor at some point in the year.