(no subject)
On January 25, 2006 I witnessed one of those events that a rider hopes never to see. I saw an accident that resulted in a fatality.
I have been trying to decide how to approach this post since it happened. As of right now, I'm still not sure.
My friend evildorkgod was visiting from Ireland. I had not been out riding with 5150 in awhile and thought I'd spoil Michael with a close up view of a handful of talented stunters. This Sunday there was a much larger group of bikes than usual since people from other crews in the area had also joined. My rough estimate is that there were about 50 bikes. It's a fucking awesome site to see that many sport bikes together.
Seeing a huge group of cruisers is not particularly unusual. Seeing a group larger than 5 of sport bikes is.
The plan had been to ride to one of the areas they stunt (the larger more open one) and then go to SF, presumably for lunch.
We never made it to SF. We had been at the spot for a little while when the accident happened.
The area they stunt is a five lane road. 2 lanes going one direction, 2 going the other and a suicide lane in the middle. The shoulders are reasonably wide. The rules are that high speed stuff happens in the 2 lanes furthest away from where people park and slow stuff in the lanes closer. For those who don't know what sort of stuff that means, let's say higher speed wheelies, drag racing, would go on the far side and burn outs, 12 o'clock wheelies, etc, on the closer side. This is a very logical set up and seems to generally work pretty well.
Anyway, there was a new rider who came in with one of the other crews who either didn't hear the rules being stated when everyone first got there (every time I've been there, someone has called out what the rules are, this particular time it was Kevco who let people know) or chose to ignore them due to being excited or whatever else. I didn't see the guy at all but other people who saw him said that he was doing a wheelie and started to veer to the side so he brought it down and Kevco was there doing a circle burnout, which is a slow controlled burn out where the bike turns in a circle. I was walking past Kevco and had just taken a picture of him.
I was just past my bike looking ahead of me when I heard that sound ... it's a sound that anyone who has ever crashed their bike knows ... only it was way more intense. I turned to see bikes and bodies. I followed the two guys with my eyes. I saw the new kid bounce, tumble and stop. He landed like a sack of tomatoes. He looked broken. I knew he was dead. I walked to Kevco who was laying not 2 inches from my bike, someone was moving my bike and I saw that his foot was sitting in the wrong direction. Several people came to him and held him down to make sure he didn't move too much and damage himself more.
The kid's bike t-boned into Kevco. Kevco's bike had almost no damage as a result of the high speed collision because Kevco's body took the impact. As far as anyone can tell, the kid tried to stop, used too much front brake and was working his way towards flipping his bike forwards. They say his head(helmet) hit Kevco's leg. Chances are that's when the kid's neck broke. This is why I hate the "I have a sport bike I don't need the rear brake" attitude. Newbies don't learn how to use their rear brake and end up crashing as a result of it. If I had been in his position, due to my experience, I would have had enough time to try and avoid the accident or lowside my bike to minimize damages. Of course, I have the annoying attitude that new riders shouldn't even try to stunt since it takes having a good amount of control of the bike and being able to react to things going wrong to stunt. I don't think stunt groups should support new riders learning right away but push them to gain more experience ... anyway ... *steps off soap box*
There was a group of people around the dead guy arguing about what to do. He was laying on his side, his helmet was broken all across the bottom and looked the way a detached jaw bone might look, his face was turning blue. No one wanted to move him but they decided they had to so they tried to move him without moving his neck/spine as much as possible. They began to administer CPR on him. [I'm not going to say much about this kid nor even mention his name. Other people have chosen to forgive him for his mistake and feel sorry for him because he died. I'm too much of a realist to be able to do that. It's unfortunate but I didn't know the guy to begin with and feel no obligation to start talking about him like I did.]
Kevco wanted his helmet off so once he proved to everyone his neck was okay enough for that they took his helmet off so he could breath. Frank put his jacket across Kevco to help keep him warm. I put my jacket under his head and propped my helmet under his right arm as his hand/arm was hurting him. He dislocated his thumb pretty badly. I sat above him, barking at people who were being noisy and bossy who had no idea what was going on. Most of the people helping Kevco handled it well. It brought back vivid memories of when I broke my leg/foot.
It took awhile to get through to 911 because people were calling with cellphones. Kevco was calm and collected. He systematically checked his body, making sure he could feel his fingers and toes. He did exactly what I would have done. He concentrated on his breathing. People stayed with him and interacted with him to make sure he stayed awake. Once the EMT arrived they removed Kevco's gear (he was wearing dirt bike style shin guards under his pants, boots, the upper body armor under his riding jacket, gloves, etc). He had a compound fracture at the bottom of his leg. It didn't look like he had bled much but I guess the fabric for the shin guards had absorbed it.
Kevco and the other guy were rushed away. Cops asked a lot of questions as is to be expected but they did not issue out any citations to any of the spectators. I got a bit pissed at one cop who was questioning Kevco just at the moment the EMT were straightening his leg out and complained at another cop about it. One of the guys said that that is a cop's job and I said that it's not a cop's job to be an asshole. He just needed to wait 30 seconds. That guy ended up being sort of an jerk anyway. I guess he was just doing his job, he was just doing it with flare.
Later some of us went to see Kevco. The end result of his damage is that he broke the tibia/fibula and femur. They put titanium rods in. He's currently in a Post Acute center learning how to get around as a newly gimped person.
When we were leaving the hospital, the dead boys mother approached the group and thanked them for trying to help her son. She asked everyone to not stop riding and to come to the funeral on their bikes. Until that moment I had been fine, a bit stunned but emotionally stable. Seeing that boys mother crying ... just broke my heart. She was so brave and strong to come up to us like that. *sigh*
Later that night I called my mom and told her about it. Of all the people I know, she's the one I feel could understand the gravity of the situation and respond to it in a way that I could cope with. She said she was sorry I had to witness that and that was sort of that. I told her I loved her which is very rare for me. We both ride. It felt important.
At first I felt completely unaffected but as the days creeped on, as I began putting together my idea as a gift for Kevco ... I started feeling this pressing tension coming from somewhere. I began to feel ever so slowly trapped inside a room that was growing smaller incrementally, hour by hour.
My idea was to print up a picture of Kevco from the stunt show in 2005 and have people sign the matte around it. I was pretty nervous about it, partially because I don't really know many people in 5150 that well, including Kevco (though he seriously is one of the nicest guys in the group) and no one was responding with any sort of energy about my idea. I got two different pictures printed. The guy at Costco helped me right then and there, I didn't have to wait which was nice. I went over to the spot and showed people the picture and they were non-responsive and a few people said, "You should use the picture that one girl took that is on the site". So I felt a bit defeated and let down. I was making the effort and people just wanted to be negative. As usual.
Anyway, I picked up a frame and the picture looked AWESOME. I had Emily set up a time for people to come and sign it. I snapped a bunch of pictures from both times I had people sign.
I took the picture to Kevco on the day of the funeral. I decided not to go to the funeral for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I don't find funerals useful for me. I thought it'd be better to go see Kevco.
When I was handing him the picture I had to hold back tears. I had not expected the surge of emotion. Thankfully I held them in. He's got his own emotions to deal with and having someone feeling bad about something he's going through in a far more intense way just doesn't seem necessary.
Later that night I broke down and cried for close to an hour, that raw sort of sobbing where you have no words in your head. I've felt a lot better since then.
I learned a variety of things from this experience. The most important one is that I need to make a choice about my involvement with this group and any others I ride with. I have a whole life of group riding experience thanks to my parents and every group I've ridden with has lacked organization that is necessary for making rides safe. This accident is the result of someone not following the rules and it happened in a situation that is probably the most organized the group gets. There are other situations I have witnessed that could result in death just as easily as this one did that there is no organization whatsoever and now that I realize my lack of involvement could mean I'd be witnessing an accident I could have prevented ... I've got some decisions to make.
I also learned that news articles give horrible depictions of what actually happened. Is it the police officers that cause this or the reporters? Here is the BARF thread about it as well. It's not too bad for a BARF thread.
I've ridden my bike several times since then. Unlike the time when I witnessed my friend being hit by a car on the freeway (some drunk asshole pulled into the carpool lane during carpool hours even though he was the only person in the car and side swiped my friend, we were not lane splitting, just riding along), I don't feel afraid or nervous but I can't stop thinking of all the different ways I could break my neck if I were to go down. I think, "If that car pulls out and smacks into me I might go down and hit my head on the center divider ... it could break my neck". It hasn't changed my riding. I do everything I can to avoid everyone else. I can only do so much before the result is not riding which is simply not an option.
Getting hurt is a probability for any rider. Death is a possibility. I like to think that when I get on my bike I'm prepared for the worst but I'm not. I'm prepared for minimal damage. Can you really be prepared for anything more?
*on a lighter note*
... what I forgot to mention is that I went out and dragged raced a three times. First time I hit my rev limiter, the second two times I kick the other guys asses. It so rocked. Even after the accident I couldn't help but smile about that. One of the guys came up and grabbed my arm and yanked it up like they do to boxers. hehe.
Also, something many of the guys from the group have been saying is that they aren't going to ride without their gear anywhere. After seeing the accident and knowing that Kevco would have been hurt so much more if he hadn't been wearing everything he was (the EMT was all "Geez, how much gear is this guy wearing!?" when they were cutting it off). The guy that hit him wouldn't have survived either way but he was only wearing the basic gear: jacket, gloves, helmet. He was out doing wheelies in tennis shoes, which came off of him almost right away. I always wear my gear. I feel like an idiot when I don't. Please do the same.
Gallery:January 15, 2006
I learned this day that my S400 sucks for taking these sorts of pictures. I'm sort of glad it broke so I can get something more appropriate since I don't want to carry the 20D around when I'm riding.
Kevco shaking evildorkgod's hand. Michael said he was the only guy to go up and introduce himself.
It's hard to see how many bikes are parked there. It was a long ass line. Unfortunately, I didn't take another one.
This guy was hella nuts. I haven't seen a cruiser wheelie since I was a kid (and then I saw it quite often). Rad.
Looks like his bike flipped all the way over and landed on it's tail.
Gallery: Signature, people pictures
I was pushed into signing before I was ready so they could take a picture (it was a thoughtful gesture, it just resulted in me writing something completely retarded)
I just like this picture
I have been trying to decide how to approach this post since it happened. As of right now, I'm still not sure.
My friend evildorkgod was visiting from Ireland. I had not been out riding with 5150 in awhile and thought I'd spoil Michael with a close up view of a handful of talented stunters. This Sunday there was a much larger group of bikes than usual since people from other crews in the area had also joined. My rough estimate is that there were about 50 bikes. It's a fucking awesome site to see that many sport bikes together.
Seeing a huge group of cruisers is not particularly unusual. Seeing a group larger than 5 of sport bikes is.
The plan had been to ride to one of the areas they stunt (the larger more open one) and then go to SF, presumably for lunch.
We never made it to SF. We had been at the spot for a little while when the accident happened.
The area they stunt is a five lane road. 2 lanes going one direction, 2 going the other and a suicide lane in the middle. The shoulders are reasonably wide. The rules are that high speed stuff happens in the 2 lanes furthest away from where people park and slow stuff in the lanes closer. For those who don't know what sort of stuff that means, let's say higher speed wheelies, drag racing, would go on the far side and burn outs, 12 o'clock wheelies, etc, on the closer side. This is a very logical set up and seems to generally work pretty well.
Anyway, there was a new rider who came in with one of the other crews who either didn't hear the rules being stated when everyone first got there (every time I've been there, someone has called out what the rules are, this particular time it was Kevco who let people know) or chose to ignore them due to being excited or whatever else. I didn't see the guy at all but other people who saw him said that he was doing a wheelie and started to veer to the side so he brought it down and Kevco was there doing a circle burnout, which is a slow controlled burn out where the bike turns in a circle. I was walking past Kevco and had just taken a picture of him.
I was just past my bike looking ahead of me when I heard that sound ... it's a sound that anyone who has ever crashed their bike knows ... only it was way more intense. I turned to see bikes and bodies. I followed the two guys with my eyes. I saw the new kid bounce, tumble and stop. He landed like a sack of tomatoes. He looked broken. I knew he was dead. I walked to Kevco who was laying not 2 inches from my bike, someone was moving my bike and I saw that his foot was sitting in the wrong direction. Several people came to him and held him down to make sure he didn't move too much and damage himself more.
The kid's bike t-boned into Kevco. Kevco's bike had almost no damage as a result of the high speed collision because Kevco's body took the impact. As far as anyone can tell, the kid tried to stop, used too much front brake and was working his way towards flipping his bike forwards. They say his head(helmet) hit Kevco's leg. Chances are that's when the kid's neck broke. This is why I hate the "I have a sport bike I don't need the rear brake" attitude. Newbies don't learn how to use their rear brake and end up crashing as a result of it. If I had been in his position, due to my experience, I would have had enough time to try and avoid the accident or lowside my bike to minimize damages. Of course, I have the annoying attitude that new riders shouldn't even try to stunt since it takes having a good amount of control of the bike and being able to react to things going wrong to stunt. I don't think stunt groups should support new riders learning right away but push them to gain more experience ... anyway ... *steps off soap box*
There was a group of people around the dead guy arguing about what to do. He was laying on his side, his helmet was broken all across the bottom and looked the way a detached jaw bone might look, his face was turning blue. No one wanted to move him but they decided they had to so they tried to move him without moving his neck/spine as much as possible. They began to administer CPR on him. [I'm not going to say much about this kid nor even mention his name. Other people have chosen to forgive him for his mistake and feel sorry for him because he died. I'm too much of a realist to be able to do that. It's unfortunate but I didn't know the guy to begin with and feel no obligation to start talking about him like I did.]
Kevco wanted his helmet off so once he proved to everyone his neck was okay enough for that they took his helmet off so he could breath. Frank put his jacket across Kevco to help keep him warm. I put my jacket under his head and propped my helmet under his right arm as his hand/arm was hurting him. He dislocated his thumb pretty badly. I sat above him, barking at people who were being noisy and bossy who had no idea what was going on. Most of the people helping Kevco handled it well. It brought back vivid memories of when I broke my leg/foot.
It took awhile to get through to 911 because people were calling with cellphones. Kevco was calm and collected. He systematically checked his body, making sure he could feel his fingers and toes. He did exactly what I would have done. He concentrated on his breathing. People stayed with him and interacted with him to make sure he stayed awake. Once the EMT arrived they removed Kevco's gear (he was wearing dirt bike style shin guards under his pants, boots, the upper body armor under his riding jacket, gloves, etc). He had a compound fracture at the bottom of his leg. It didn't look like he had bled much but I guess the fabric for the shin guards had absorbed it.
Kevco and the other guy were rushed away. Cops asked a lot of questions as is to be expected but they did not issue out any citations to any of the spectators. I got a bit pissed at one cop who was questioning Kevco just at the moment the EMT were straightening his leg out and complained at another cop about it. One of the guys said that that is a cop's job and I said that it's not a cop's job to be an asshole. He just needed to wait 30 seconds. That guy ended up being sort of an jerk anyway. I guess he was just doing his job, he was just doing it with flare.
Later some of us went to see Kevco. The end result of his damage is that he broke the tibia/fibula and femur. They put titanium rods in. He's currently in a Post Acute center learning how to get around as a newly gimped person.
When we were leaving the hospital, the dead boys mother approached the group and thanked them for trying to help her son. She asked everyone to not stop riding and to come to the funeral on their bikes. Until that moment I had been fine, a bit stunned but emotionally stable. Seeing that boys mother crying ... just broke my heart. She was so brave and strong to come up to us like that. *sigh*
Later that night I called my mom and told her about it. Of all the people I know, she's the one I feel could understand the gravity of the situation and respond to it in a way that I could cope with. She said she was sorry I had to witness that and that was sort of that. I told her I loved her which is very rare for me. We both ride. It felt important.
At first I felt completely unaffected but as the days creeped on, as I began putting together my idea as a gift for Kevco ... I started feeling this pressing tension coming from somewhere. I began to feel ever so slowly trapped inside a room that was growing smaller incrementally, hour by hour.
My idea was to print up a picture of Kevco from the stunt show in 2005 and have people sign the matte around it. I was pretty nervous about it, partially because I don't really know many people in 5150 that well, including Kevco (though he seriously is one of the nicest guys in the group) and no one was responding with any sort of energy about my idea. I got two different pictures printed. The guy at Costco helped me right then and there, I didn't have to wait which was nice. I went over to the spot and showed people the picture and they were non-responsive and a few people said, "You should use the picture that one girl took that is on the site". So I felt a bit defeated and let down. I was making the effort and people just wanted to be negative. As usual.
Anyway, I picked up a frame and the picture looked AWESOME. I had Emily set up a time for people to come and sign it. I snapped a bunch of pictures from both times I had people sign.
I took the picture to Kevco on the day of the funeral. I decided not to go to the funeral for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I don't find funerals useful for me. I thought it'd be better to go see Kevco.
When I was handing him the picture I had to hold back tears. I had not expected the surge of emotion. Thankfully I held them in. He's got his own emotions to deal with and having someone feeling bad about something he's going through in a far more intense way just doesn't seem necessary.
Later that night I broke down and cried for close to an hour, that raw sort of sobbing where you have no words in your head. I've felt a lot better since then.
I learned a variety of things from this experience. The most important one is that I need to make a choice about my involvement with this group and any others I ride with. I have a whole life of group riding experience thanks to my parents and every group I've ridden with has lacked organization that is necessary for making rides safe. This accident is the result of someone not following the rules and it happened in a situation that is probably the most organized the group gets. There are other situations I have witnessed that could result in death just as easily as this one did that there is no organization whatsoever and now that I realize my lack of involvement could mean I'd be witnessing an accident I could have prevented ... I've got some decisions to make.
I also learned that news articles give horrible depictions of what actually happened. Is it the police officers that cause this or the reporters? Here is the BARF thread about it as well. It's not too bad for a BARF thread.
I've ridden my bike several times since then. Unlike the time when I witnessed my friend being hit by a car on the freeway (some drunk asshole pulled into the carpool lane during carpool hours even though he was the only person in the car and side swiped my friend, we were not lane splitting, just riding along), I don't feel afraid or nervous but I can't stop thinking of all the different ways I could break my neck if I were to go down. I think, "If that car pulls out and smacks into me I might go down and hit my head on the center divider ... it could break my neck". It hasn't changed my riding. I do everything I can to avoid everyone else. I can only do so much before the result is not riding which is simply not an option.
Getting hurt is a probability for any rider. Death is a possibility. I like to think that when I get on my bike I'm prepared for the worst but I'm not. I'm prepared for minimal damage. Can you really be prepared for anything more?
*on a lighter note*
... what I forgot to mention is that I went out and dragged raced a three times. First time I hit my rev limiter, the second two times I kick the other guys asses. It so rocked. Even after the accident I couldn't help but smile about that. One of the guys came up and grabbed my arm and yanked it up like they do to boxers. hehe.
Also, something many of the guys from the group have been saying is that they aren't going to ride without their gear anywhere. After seeing the accident and knowing that Kevco would have been hurt so much more if he hadn't been wearing everything he was (the EMT was all "Geez, how much gear is this guy wearing!?" when they were cutting it off). The guy that hit him wouldn't have survived either way but he was only wearing the basic gear: jacket, gloves, helmet. He was out doing wheelies in tennis shoes, which came off of him almost right away. I always wear my gear. I feel like an idiot when I don't. Please do the same.
Gallery:January 15, 2006
I learned this day that my S400 sucks for taking these sorts of pictures. I'm sort of glad it broke so I can get something more appropriate since I don't want to carry the 20D around when I'm riding.
Kevco shaking evildorkgod's hand. Michael said he was the only guy to go up and introduce himself.
It's hard to see how many bikes are parked there. It was a long ass line. Unfortunately, I didn't take another one.
This guy was hella nuts. I haven't seen a cruiser wheelie since I was a kid (and then I saw it quite often). Rad.
Looks like his bike flipped all the way over and landed on it's tail.
Gallery: Signature, people pictures
I was pushed into signing before I was ready so they could take a picture (it was a thoughtful gesture, it just resulted in me writing something completely retarded)
I just like this picture
