Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Motorcycle Wreck (Not Me)

I saw a guy wreck on his motorcycle on the way into work today. It kind of freaked me out. I was coming down Hwy 6 and this guy on a Suzuki Intruder came flying by me. I remember thinking that he seemed to be riding awfully agressive. This was all just before the intersection where the McDonalds, KMart and Blockbuster are. Well the light at the intersection changed and I was a little surprised to see that he slowed down like he was trying to stop only it didn't look to me like he had enough time to stop.

In the meantime, the cars turning left from the other direction saw that he was slowing down and tried to turn before the light changed. The first car made it through just fine. But then after that it was like the guy on the motorcycle realized that he couldn't stop all the way so he was going to just run the intersection. Unfortunately, by then a second left-turning car decided to go and ended up pulling out right in front of the motorcycle. The guy on the motorcycle locked up his rear wheel and the bike slid out from under him and went careening into the left-turning car. He ended up tumbling on the ground for a couple of feet. Traffic stopped and people came swarming from their cars to check if he was alright. I don't think that he died, but I'm willing to bet that he broke a whole bunch of bones.

The sad thing was that the guy looked like a twenty-something who probably had a young wife and kids at home. Even sadder is that I think that the accident could have been prevented in half-a-dozen different ways. First of all, if he really had control of his bike it shouldn't have been a problem to stop at that intersection. Second, if he had just decided to run the intersection instead of slowing down he would have made it through just fine and the cars would have waited for him to pass before turning left. Third, if instead of locking up his rear brake and turning he were just to apply pressure to both brakes he probably could have stopped without hitting the car. Fourth, had he just steered around the car instead of locking up his rear brakes it would have been trivial from him to avoid the car.

I've spent the last 30 minutes being mortified by the whole experience. But the more that I think about it, the more that it just pisses me off. It was really irresponsible for this guy to be riding like that without the proper experience. It's just so frustrating to think that this was a very avoidable accident.

I do my share of screwing around and riding agressively on my motorcycle. But I would like to believe that I have the experience necessary to avoid pointless accidents like this one. Who knows, maybe I don't. I hope that I never have to find out. I think that any time that you get on a motorcycle you're risking your life plain and simple. I don't have any delusions about that and I have come to terms with that. But if my time comes while riding a motorcycle I hope that it's the result of a situation that is completely and totally out of my control and not something that I could have avoided by not riding like a jackass.

2 comments:

FoxyJ said...

Last night a guy on a motorcycle really pissed me off. Not only was he riding like a moron (cutting me off, no signaling, etc.), he was wearing a black t-shirt and dark shorts at night. I could hardly see him.

SenecaSis said...

Svoid, I am SOOOOOO glad it wasn't you. I know you're a skillfull and carefull rider--but I still can't help but hold my breath when I hear of a motorcycle accident.

Keep riding safe!

p.s. when do we get to read the post about your travels?