SCHOOL OF HARDKNOCKS. (please feel free to add yours too those are the best safety messages in my opinion)

[Packard V8]

I've never been risk adverse, as I have a motorcycle, horses including several stallions, use to own a single engine airplane and flight instruct, etc, ...

Safe is not an absolute. Having flown and ridden, you're no doubt aware there are the rare few who can routinely accomplish maneuvers which would leave the vast majority of those of us less talented/less experienced in a smoking ruin.

Recently, I watched a professional arborist walk up a 100'-tall pine and in thirty minutes, have it limbed and on the ground in 10' sections. Same day, I also watched a neighbor put himself in the hospital while cleaning leaves out of his gutter.

Back when I thought I was a racer, I attended a Porsche-sponsored track day. I was going as fast as that car could lap when I was passed by one of the instructors with a student driver beside him. As any racer knows, him loaded with an additional 200# should have made that impossible. I tucked in behind him and could keep up for one lap, but I scared myself too many times doing so. He had so much track time, he knew that car and that track; he knew what, when and where and I was just hoping and guessing. As Harry says, "A man's got to know his limitations."

jack vines

 

[Suzuki4evr]

Only use it without the guard when there's no other choice and under extreme caution.

Not even then.