Witnessed a crash - shaken up

[FZ09Bandit]

Never witnessed an on road bike accident, but my buddy and I were dirt biking on a MX track we built on the farm. We stopped and he said he was pretty thirsty. I said ok let's go up to the house. He said maybe a couple more laps. I told him it was up to him, so we ended up going again. He was ahead of me and I had just come off the first jump, I look up and his bike is flipping through the air like on the bike crash shows you see on TV. My heart stopped. The bike landed partly on him, he fell in kind of a sitting position and the bike was still on. The scariest part was the tire was still spinning, he went limp and his helmet hit the tire and it just kicked his lifeless body away.

I ran over to get the bike off of him and see if he was still alive. He was thank god. But very unresponsive. I asked him if he was ok and he said yeah I'm okay but then he kept saying it over and over again even though I only asked once... Well he finally snapped out of it and looked around like he'd just woken up. Looked around, looked at me and just said "what happened". I told him what I saw and he's like really?- he didn't remember a thing.

Anyways he went to the hospital to check for any damage, concussion etc. Nothing of that nature but he was dehydrated :spank:

Scariest thing I've witnessed in my life. What I took away from it is NEVER push it if you think you need a drink. We concluded he passed out right before the 3rd jump and consequently bad stuff happened. I was shaken up for weeks even though he was alright.

He may or may not have passed out if he wasn't dehydrated. But it's good he was limp through all of it.

 

[Ssky0078]

Just a few things that happened during the downed rider during my California trip that I thought were important

1. First person to the down rider keep them calm and try to keep them down. Don't ever fight or force them.
2. Second person assist the first person and one person take over the c-spine stabilization responsibility and the other can face them and talk to them.
3. Depending on the severity of that crash try to remove anything that is preventing the person from bein in a full neutral supine (on the back position). The down rider in my trip had a backpack on that was making it difficult to hold his head neutral. We removed the straps and a team of 3 of us (one at the head, one at the shoulders and one at the hip) made him roll to his side to get the bag out. Then we were able to get him neutral on his back.
4. While people are attending to the rider hopefully there are 2 other individuals to help with traffic and calling 911. If there are say only 2 riders with the down rider, it may be best to only have 1 rider attending to the down rider and 1 guy helping with traffic till more.
5. Someone should hopefully have phoned the paramedics. The 911 operator is going to want know your location, the nature of the accident (car-motorcycle, motorcycle - street/cliff/guardrail/etc. they may ask for the injured persons name, age, any medical problems. Any information that may help the medical professionals that are coming. The 2 riders can be askin these questions while waiting.
6. When the paramedics show up, let them run the show, answer their questions as clear and direct you can.
7. Several of those other comments before are good as well.

Hope that helps a little. There are some YouTube videos about this topic as well

 

[FZ09Bandit]

+1, NEVER straighten the head if resistance is felt. You need to wait for well.... ME can't wait to get out and serve the community again.

 

[FZ09Bandit]

What I mean is, do not attempt to straighten you as a normal person or first responder. If the head is straight and the back pack is in the way. On head mans count keeping contro of the head rolling with the body. CUT yes, CUT. Everything that is doing harm. I would rather the rider be pissed i cut his 300$ jacket and pants than him be In a wheelchair.

But I digress. Do the best you can! It's better to do something than nothing, but better to do nothing than worse. Where are my pre hospital providers at??

These are just guidelines and if you don't not feel comfortable doing then don't. Indeed the good simaritans law, you are covered. If I make a mistake it's loss of license and these procendures (even the smallest log roll) takes practice.

 

[lytehouse]

Saw that in comments, but I cannot see it in the video and while sidestand-down would certainly prevent a motorcycle from leaning to the left, it would not cause an endo, would it?

If you look at the road closely right before she crashed, you can see a white line appear...like the stand is scraping the pavement.
Then she grabbed a bit too much front brake.....

Hope she's ok now

 

[Cloggy]

A rider crashed pretty bad right in front of me yesterday - super scary situation. I had the very unfortunate experience of lifting his bike off of his lifeless body and checking for signs of life. I think he's going to be okay, but he didn't look in good shape right after the crash.

A car made a sudden-ish lane change in front of him and he yanked on the front brake and flipped his bike is what really happened. Thankfully the car stopped as soon as it realized what was going on. The rider did end up beside/under the car, but was barely touching it - if he hit it at all it was on the way down. What made it bad is that he went over the handlebars and the bike landed right on top of him - wheels up. I can't imagine what that would feel like, but at least he was unconscious.

He was first in a line of 6 bikes. All 5 of us stopped and helped him. There were enough of us to do all the jobs: talk to him, divert traffic, call 911, etc. Thankfully he came to after several minutes and was able to tell us his name. Everyone there knew the don't take his helmet off rule. He was pretty dazed still by the time emergency services got there and could only tell us that his wrist hurt. I hope that's all - I'm worried about a pelvis fracture the way his bike landed on him.

No point to this - I am just shaken up about it all and needed to share. I originally thought he impacted the car and by the way he was laying feared the worst.

Alright, two more things.
Don't be critical of the guy. Yes he panic braked, but there is no need to bash/criticize. Just be glad he's alive and send good thoughts his way.

Practice your emergency braking. Just have the muscle memory to know how hard to squeeze that front brake without flipping your bike. I had a similar situation months ago and did a stoppie without making contact. It was about as fast as I could have possibly stopped, and squeezing the brake much harder could have resulted in a similar situation. Instead I was just really upset at the person for not using an indicator and making a sudden lane change.

Sorry that you had to witness this accident Travis but it was a good job you was there and not a noob who might have done the wrong thing. As has already been said it might take a little while to get your head around it but the way I see it you could see the mistake the rider made which may somehow help to put it in perspective.

This! And don't forget, sometimes swerving is a better or only option. It's a .10 second decision you have to make. So don't forget to practice your swerves, it will not come to your mind if you never do it.

I agree with this and it was one of the exercises we did on the KNMV course I did last year, first brake and then swerve. Apparently it has now become compulsary for the european biking test (although member states do it in different ways).

I realise that this remark is not relevant in the states but it is especially important when doing these sorts of manoeuvres on a bike with ABS as you may not know what to expect.


....On a slightly different subject the spin doctor helped start, and now gives free "Biker down" lessons together with the local fire department to explain what a fellow rider should do at the scene of an accident (safety and medical), this idea seems to have caught on in more area's in the UK and it even won the "Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Award" :thumbup:

 

[Motogiro]

If you look at the road closely right before she crashed, you can see a white line appear...like the stand is scraping the pavement.
Then she grabbed a bit too much front brake.....

Hope she's ok now

I saw that white line appear and knew there was something hanging and making contact with the road, preventing lean. Who bypassed the safety! maybe it was a malfunction safety switch?

Not a bad idea to test this on our bikes!