It's not just that you generally
die when you and and your
motorcycle part company at any speed over ten miles an hour, it's
that you die in such
agonizingly interesting ways. I thought it would
be informative to
catalog and
define the top five types of
motorcycle accidents so that you'll have something besides
insurance rates to think about on the showroom floor. Besides, I'm
going riding this afternoon and noding these terms individually could
take a lot of time.
Statistically, according to the Hurt Report (yes, the Hurt Report,
University of Southern California, 1981), the most frequent motorcycle accident
is the
- T-BONE. This is when an oncoming vehicle
turns left directly in front of you. Pretty much no matter what you
do, the physics of the matter result in you and your bloody bike forming the
(considerably smaller) leg of the Letter T. People just don't see motorcycles
when they're making left turns. It's Darwinian. Something happens
when a cage driver switches on his directional signal.
The Cloak of Invisibility descends upon the motorcyclist and then
there's a Bang!.
Next up, assuming we've gotten through that first
intersection, is the
- LOW-SIDE. Basically caused by a loss of
traction during a turn, the low-side accident is the one that produces
"squids," pink and puce-colored 150-foot-long trails of entrails,
as it were, glistening down the freeway semi-attached to a totalled
motorcycle. The 600 pound bike slides on its side, with luck out
from under the rider, hence the term. A well-trained cyclist rides it
out--jaw and sphincter no-doubt tightly clenched--on top of the rapidly
decelerating motorcycle, making sure his body does not come between
the bike and the pavement. If he fails to do this, well, his arm, leg,
torso--whatever-- becomes...a...lubricant? Some riders say they do
this defensively, that is to say on purpose, when faced with
no other choice, but I don't know...sounds like an accident to me.
Let's say you're on top of things. You've noticed the traffic in front of you
is slowing, but the curve you're gliding around so beautifully is tightening
(should be a
warning sign to you already, but...) you
apply the
brakes. Unlike in an automobile, sometimes braking on a bike can be
hazardous to your noding.
Improper Braking can cause a
- HIGH-SIDE. This is a biggie. Definitely don't want
mom and dad to be explaining this one at the funeral because it's such a
stupid way to die. You've hit the brakes, but in a turn, with
the wheels already making less contact with the road, and the bike
starts to slide. You're immediately thinking low-side!,
so you release the brake. THE WHEELS GAIN TRACTION AGAIN, but
the bike is not pointing down the road. It spins on its
longitudinal axis and you, like a chicken tearing free from the barbecue
spit it has been rather enjoying up till this point, are thrown over the
bike into a tree, an abutment, the pavement, it doesn't really matter, it's a
high-side accident.
Note that a
low-side can
become a
high-side. To make the
unfortunate transition all you need is something to SNAG the bike
during the
low-side, an object, say, or the curb, or simply
more traction
again. A high-side death is somewhat more
aesthetic. You're not all
tangled up in the bike and there might not even be any
blood, but still....
Let's say you're into wheelies. Or maybe you're not even
into them, you just twisted the twister a little too quick on a bike
with a lot of torque. The hundred horses between your legs leap
into instantaneous action and you've produced a
- FLIP. Not so impressive, maybe, as the others
so far. The front wheel of the bike comes up off the pavement
before your astonished eyes, puts even more weight on the back
wheel, and just keeps coming back at you in the most gorgeous arc.
Maybe you did this on your tricycle once. Your tricyle didn't weigh a
quarter of a ton. The bike ends up on top of you in a not-very-good way.
The mirror image of the
flip is the
- ENDO. This is the one from the movies, where
the rear wheel goes vertical and beyond, pinning you under all those
horses again. The disadvantage here is that you're now facing the
way you came, with absolutely no way to tell where you're going
(except in the most general sense), or how messily you're going to get there.
It's important to note that each of these terms describes the
beginning of a
motorcycle accident. Once your beautiful
machine is headed in an unpredictable direction, any of these accidents
can become any of the others. The ensuing nightmare I guess
could be termed some sort of
compound motorcycle accident, and
that's something I don't even want to
think about.
Think safety. I know I will.