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Stories From The Road
Nothing Crazy
Story From: Don C
Two BMW riders stopped at a bridge over a small creek. I pull the V-storm over to check. “Need Help?”
“No. We just stopped for a smoke,” one says. “There's a motorcycle accident back up the road. Pretty bad. Guy must have been killed.” They're shaken.
I continue through the hills of Dutchess County. Then my curiosity gets the better of me, and I loop back toward the crash site. Through a hamlet, onto a short straightaway, tight left turn ahead. And here are road flares, the patrol car, an SUV, a 954 and a GSXR 1000 parked in the grass, and people milling. I pull over, stop, walk the turn. There's a Ducati 996 wadded on the outside, the front of the Pathfinder stove in, windshield in pebbles. Trooper talks to the driver. Other two in riding gear look shell-shocked.
“What happened?” I ask them.
“We were coming this way,” points in the direction from which I came.
“Nothing crazy. Reasonable pace. We were leading, so didn't really see, But our friend took the turn wide, managed to slow down, but still got the SUV head on.
“Did he survive?”
“He could move everything. Wanted to get up but we kept him down. He sailed right over the top of the Pathfinder of it would have been worse. Driver's been really great about it. Says he rides a Goldwing. We're about to head for the hospital.
Running home I'm thinking of the time I once took that very turn wide myself. The sigh is too far back, and after doing a mild right-hander, you think you're finished, but it's the hard decreasing radius just ahead you have to worry about. Thank God there was nothing coming the day I did it. I had relived that experience many times and analyzed it.
Conservative entry speed, setting body up, getting head turned, not overriding line of sight. “Nothing crazy” should include all those things. Anything else is nuts.
