It's hard to address this and not harming the sport. High mountain climbing and descending are fundamental to cycling and you cannot just put barriers on every steep drop off.

This incident clearly shows how fickle fate can be. Sheffield went off at the same corner and suffered almost no injuries.

There will be some soul searching: f.i. the death of Fabio Cassartelli in 1995 led to helmets being mandatory and the (almost fatal) crash of Fabio Jackobsen (indeed named after the former) lead to rethinking of crash barriers at sprint finishes.

However it's hard to make descents of high mountains perfectly safe. Falling in a ravine is a risk anyone riding those roads takes.