Motorcycle fatalities with/out helmets?

[The Haymaker]

OUCH!!!! it hurts to see the forks like that!!!

Until I found out that you weren't serious, I was looking for the photos my missus took of me using my XR650 as a towing device... with a small front pinion and a massive rear cog I used it to tow large branches for a year!

Spent most of my time on the back wheel, but to be fair that's hardly different from the norm

"I wasn't serious"? Huh?

I often joke about using my 650R for a skidder in the off season. Torque!

 

[SensibleNick]

Torque!

I'm not a religious person.... but every now and then a little "Amen" fits rather well

It's not a MotoX bike, it's a device for moving dirt from one side of the field to the other.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

While I will say if I was lucky, I'd have been three feet to the left instead of three feet to the right, I was lucky in the fact that the injuries the x-rays show were my only ones. Rattled my brain pretty hard even with the helmet. I saw all straight lines (such as a wall ceiling junction) in an "X" pattern for a month and had memory issues for quite some time. I lost a lot of things from the 5 years prior. Very weird. Anyone that says "you're gonna feel that when you get older" gets the answer "I consider myself lucky I'm getting older"!

No real aches and pains yet. It's been 8 years come summer. I started leading my "normal" life 10 months after the lesson on Newtons Laws. It took a few years before I could say I was "back". I started riding in less than 12 months. I'm doing everything I was doing prior to the crash and would get p.o.'d any time someone told me I'd be less than 100%

Anyway, I still bauble around without a helmet on a quad or on the street bike, but the vast majority of my riding has my head covered. No one will ever convince me helmets don't work, just as I'll never be convinced that the battle cry of "loud pipes save lives" is nothing more than a way for those who don't understand defensive driving to get themselves smeared under the front bumper of some ignoramus driving a Volvo.

Of course, gotta include a short vid of me a few weekends ago on the resurrected 650R. That is one tough bike!

I understand about the memory loss issues. I lost the week previous and including the accident. I know what happened because my friends who were with me have told me many times their version of accident. Forty years and it hasn't came back, one week gone.

As for the aches and pains, I've broken a few bones, pulled a muscle or two, and even had a doctor want to know what I had done with my life to get so many calcium deposits on my upper spine. I explained to him that I had raced motorcycles, cars, and always worked like a dog. Now I get a heads up from all those incidents when a weather front approaches. I had my pelvis fractured in a military vehicle accident over seas when I was nineteen. I don't know if it hurts because I think about it or I think about it because it hurts. But I do know that I know it happened and where, especially this time of year.

I'll be sixty two in a couple of months. I didn't start having issues with muscle and old injury pain until I was in my late forties. Every now and then something will hurt and I'll have to stop and try to remember what that was all about. I look at it as evidence that a life on the edge has its ups and downs.

I wouldn't change a thing btw.

 

[Dargo]

No real aches and pains yet. It's been 8 years come summer. I started leading my "normal" life 10 months after the lesson on Newtons Laws. It took a few years before I could say I was "back". I started riding in less than 12 months. I'm doing everything I was doing prior to the crash and would get p.o.'d any time someone told me I'd be less than 100%

I'm just over 30 years out from the injuries and they're starting to get my attention again. The hips seem to be the worse. I've had recent surgeries to rebuild an elbow and a 3rd on my right knee, but those were from recent injuries. You'd think I'd learn faster when pain and my blood is involved, but I suppose not. According to any current X-Ray physicians assume I have a lot of back pain. I really don't. I'd say 99% of the time I have zero back pain. That 1% when I do have an issue really sucks, but I can deal with that and am not considering surgery on my back. Hey, you can look at it this way, even if your injuries do come back to hurt later in life, you should still have over 20 something years left before they wake up.

 

[SensibleNick]

I look at it as evidence that a life on the edge has its ups and downs.

I wouldn't change a thing btw.

Good to know.

I've lived my life on the edge so far, always thinking "if you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space". I no longer race moutainbikes downhill, and freeclimbing is now forbidden by the missus, but I always enjoy calculated risk.

I like to think that if I manage to double my current age I'll look back on it and grin like an idiot.

Good to know its possible

/N

 

[The Haymaker]

I understand about the memory loss issues. I lost the week previous and including the accident.

I look at it as evidence that a life on the edge has its ups and downs.

I wouldn't change a thing btw.

I tell people it's like Christmas all the time. "I read that book before? Really? Don't remember it." Sure saves money at Barnes and Noble!

As for the pains, I call them reminders that I'm alive.

 

[The Haymaker]

I'm not a religious person.... but every now and then a little "Amen" fits rather well

It's not a MotoX bike, it's a device for moving dirt from one side of the field to the other.

yeah, not very religious either, but this definitely taught me what was important in life.

I've never seen a bike roost with the ferocity that this thing does. The others "roost" sand and pebbles. This thing seems to create small boulders from thin air and launch them with the ferocity of a dark ages war machine. Watch the attached video. My sister had griped about me hitting her with a rock, turns out the wife got it on video. I've already bought her a new headlight in years past. You'd think she'd learn to keep back! :laughing:

Anyhow, to keep on topic, helmets do their job well. We've heard all the excuses, "I can't hear", "I can't see", "They're hot", "it's not cool", and "Don't tell me what to do". None of these excuses really matter if your grey matter is slopping out your ear or some orifice that wasn't there ten seconds ago. On a typical off road ride, my helmet does it's duty at least once. On a street bike, I've been lucky and never gone down. To not temp fate, I'll just say when it happens to me, I'll need a helmet.

 

[SensibleNick]

To not temp fate, I'll just say when it happens to me, I'll need a helmet.

I used to race DH mountainbikes and bounce my head off trees every other weekend. Helmets are the reason I'm still walking and talking.

I've not stacked the XR yet, but it's only a matter of time. Whenever it happens I hope the helmet I'm wearing will do the job that it's designed for.

 

[Yankee]

Interesting perspectives. The only time I've ever been hurt riding was on dirt bikes. I always wear a helmet riding dirt bikes. I also literally broke a helmet in half once while mountain bike riding - still got a concussion, too.

 

[smfcpacfp]

Any miles driven statistic, would be based upon an assumption, not actual miles ridden. No one has ever asked me how many I drove in a particular year and I have been riding for 48 years. I imagine the starting point or such a statistic would be motorcycles registered for which there are accurate statistics.

The most comprehensive study of fatal motorcycle accidents was the Hurt study in California in 1981 (it doesn't seem possible it was almost 30 years ago). I really recommend that you read it. It is fascinating. They looked at the accidents from every possible angle (e.g., did the rider have tattoos). It is a long and detailed report with many tables. I am sure it can be found on the internet.

I remember reading an interview with Dr. Hurt in a motorcycle magazine. They asked him to summarize his study in 25 words or less. His response, "always wear a helmet, a cheap helmet is better than no helmet, but a good helmet is useful." They had quite a crew that worked each accident - all riders and none wore helmets before the study, all wore helmets after the study. On the first fatal accident they visited there was a 10' strip of goo on the road that used to be the rider's brain. It had a permanent affect on the participants. I believe the study was based upon every fatal motorcycle accident in the LA area for 2 years, so it was a good sample. I think it was funded by the DOT