...That allowed me to gain enough skills, wisdom and experience to have a long life on bikes. A buddy and I were sport-touring through the city and we happened to catch up to a group ride..it was a complicated highway area in a valley with many ramps and turns. We came up on the group but we were going a different way so we were in the process of passing them on the left about to go up a different ramp and 2 people came flying from behind, didn't anticipate the 30kmh ramp the group was about to negotiate and plowed right into the back of someone. ...
I still remember being on a group ride when someone pulled out of a driveway ahead of us and
almost everyone stopped right-quick...except for the guy in the back who went up the middle of the group, but still managed to stop without colliding. I think we must've been riding staggered, otherwise, I'm not quite sure how that would've worked.
He did apply a lot of front brake to get the bike stopped, as I recall that his back wheel was off the ground as he went by.
IMO,
small group rides are worth the trade-offs, particularly as long as you're willing to check your own ego and ride your own ride, but things can quickly go haywire as the numbers of riders involved goes up. I was lucky enough that I happened to end up riding with a bunch of guys who were into riding as a sport, thus both putting in enough seat time and putting in the effort to actively improve their riding (a significant percentage of that group had track habits).
Giant group rides are...different. I rode in the Killington Classic parade to Rutland one year for the heck of it, and it was kinda cool to be in a line of bikes as far as I could see, but I don't think I'd have wanted to go any further. I did witness some scary "riding", particularly people who really struggled to make sweeping turns at parade speed.