The Risk of Riding Mountain Bikes

I think you are partially correct, you point out some of the reasons experienced/ higher skilled riders get injured less often. The frequency of injury goes down as the skill/ experience level goes up. The problem is that when something bad happens whether it is a momentary lack of focus or a mechanical failure or other issue, because the better rider is going faster the risk for serious injury is greater. 

I'm making some absolutely huge assumptions, so I could be completely wrong. 

I wear ALL the protection I can when I ride park. Drives me crazy to see people not even wearing knee pads! Eventually they will, or they will not be riding (or at the very least as often as they could). Most older riders seem to wear more amour than younger riders, which I wonder if this is just more "experienced" riders wearing more protection because they have learned the lessons. 

I would love to see mandatory neck braces (and more body amour, etc) at the World Cup, Enduro, Rampage, etc, level just to see what impact it would have in a few years.  I think the influence would be hugely positive. The augment that a neck brace break collarbones is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard, who would trade a broke neck for a broke collarbone??  I have had so many crashes that I have walked away from without a major injury because of the protection I am wearing.  When my wife broke her back she was wearing a neck brace and body amour and wouldn't be walking today if she wasn't.  

I trail ride with a full face and chest protector (local areas are pretty gnarly). I also crash a lot and am often limping along with niggling injuries despite all attempts to minimize my injuries and still push my limits. 

I also would never ride a motorcycle without a helmet, ride in the front seat of a car without a seatbelt but will free solo, skydive and cliff jump. 

Speeds may be higher on modern bikes, but I believe they are quite a but safer than the bikes of the 90's with their super short frames and super long stems that seem well optimized for OTB crashes. Make no mistake about it though, we were hauling serious ass on our ridiculous bikes in the 90's too. My Cateye computer told me so, and I often was pushing to beat personal top speeds attained on some sections of trail. But I see far less OTB wrecks these days than in the early days. There is also a heck of a lot more traction than there used to be. Also way more people participating in the sport than there used to be. Is it dangerous? For sure. So is skiing, climbing, auto racing, surfing, unprotected sex with stangers and binge drinking, not to mention soccer, football, and the monkey bars at the playground where people get bonked on the head all the time. So much of the fun stuff comes with real risk. Its worth discussing but also falls into the "sometimes ya gotta pay to play" and "proceed at your own risk" category. 

One thing I do sometimes ponder is the decrease in use of body armor. Racing DH all through the 90's, those of us that could afford to or were willing to pay usually wore suits made by Dianese. These were modelled after road moto racing suits. They had huge back plates, shoulder pads, elbow pads, knee pads, shin pads, and small hip pads. That back plate saved me from massive hits directly to the spine several times on OTB crashes. Those big shoulder pads saved my shoulders countless times. The pads I see in the pro DH field these days are tiny in comparison. Just an observation- I am in no way suggesting you or anyone else should do it one way or the other- proceed at your own risk. 

I also agree with the points about flow trails made above. Flow is often fast. The jumps these days are frickin huge even on green and blue park and flow trails. The potential for heavy crashes on these things is the same as the size of the jump- big. You go OTB on a flow trail table or easy double and for sure the potential for a head plant or spinal compression fracture is real. 

I've always found the concept of "gaps" in jumps that could easily be made into tables to be stupid.

There's this weird mindset that I've never understood in this sport that, just because there is a gap between the lip and landing, it's somehow cooler (I guess because its more risky?). But you could still fill in the gap, make it a tabletop (or whatever) and the distance from take off to landing would still be the same....The majority of injuries I've seen (thankfully none too major) happen when someone doesn't quite make the gap and gets bucked, and I'm speaking as someone that hits both doubles and gaps (within my limits)....but I just think that the general risk to everyone could be reduced so much by just filling in the gap...

TLDR: My opinion is that making a double a table, doesn't make the jump any less impressive, but that's just me.

Obviously, I get that not all gaps can be filled etc. 

Doubles and gaps are made to save time, effort and dirt. It is substantially less work and that why you usually see it on hand built trails. 

The gap also means less maintenance as punters don’t roll the lip and ruin the shape. It also filters out people who should not be hitting it. You could see more injuries on a table than a gap, albeit potentially less serious. 

That being said, people case tables all the time and bounce to their face in the bottom of the tranny.

Once you get to a certain size jump a table makes no real difference over a case pad if you are actually jumping it.  No casepad (especially a really hard surface like a log) is certainly more dangerous on the other hand.  But tables take an insane time to build (and take a shitload of dirt) and no one should be riding on the majority of it.

On smaller jumps a little technicality is a lot of the fun.

I found out recently that over summer we had an older man break his neck and become a quad, he lives in town and is familiar with the trails. It wasn't on a fast, flowy jump trail but riding the machine built trail up the hill, his front wheel dropped off a low bridge and he went head first into the ground. He ended up in Vancouver at the hospital. Backs up my idea that more of these types if accidents happened going slow by less skilled riders because if your going fast you slide, if your going slower you stop.

It seems that the higher speeds facilitated by flow trails could likely result in more severe injuries. I guess that's why I like to ride steep, technical trails where there's quite a thrill, but the speeds are low enough that the risk is reduced.