One of my closest friends finally got his motorcycle endorsement — originally we were going to take the MSF course together, two years ago — and so we made plans to ride this weekend. He’d spent a few days tooling around his neighborhood on his father’s Harley Road King and our plan was to get out on the backroads for a little tour by the big lake. We went a couple exits down the highway and then headed down a nice country road that was straight for many miles, with a stop sign in the middle and a curve just before the end.
My friend missed the curve. If there is anything worse than crashing, it has to be looking for your pal in the mirror and realizing that he ain’t coming.
Initially I thought he’d committed the classic sin of the curve: feeling that your approach is too fast, panic braking, and forgetting to actually turn. There weren’t any witnesses to the moment he left the pavement but there was a skid mark pointing in a direction that he could have taken.
But when we finally got a chance to talk privately at the hospital his story was completely different. There was another motorcyclist in front of me, we abruptly slowed down, and he went off the road because he wasn’t sure what we were doing and thought he was going to crash into us. My friend didn’t see the sign with the lower speed limit ahead of the curve, didn’t see the many signs along the curve, and basically didn’t see the curve at all until it was too late. He also didn’t notice the unpaved road that he could have swerved down instead of going into the ditch.
His accounting of what happened, and what was missing from his account, was surprising as he was riding far enough behind that if I had actually been making a panic stop he should have had plenty of time to react safely. So the reality is that there were a combination of classic sins. Clearly he was paying too much attention to the riders ahead of him to the detriment of the actual road ahead — he was not riding his own ride — but also he wasn’t paying enough attention in general.
Fortunately, my friend should recover from this incident. Eventually. His gear saved his skin and protected his noggin, and none of his bones broke, but there is internal bleeding from his spleen and possibly his liver and his doctor is basically waiting to see if those organs will take care of themselves or if the spleen needs to be removed.
