The following essay contains potentially upsetting material related to a fatal motorcycle accident.
As a Cub Scout, I learned to count the seconds between a lightning flash and the subsequent thunderclap to assess how close the strike had been. Every five seconds represents one mile, so a ten-second lag meant the lightning had struck two miles away. A delay of just a second or two indicated a much closer strike, and therefore far greater danger and more urgent need to seek shelter. Lightning of a different type just struck closer than ever before.
One of my best riding buddies, Jeff, died in a motorcycling accident last week. I won’t eulogize him here, but he was an affable, smart, multi-talented guy, a great friend and a highly competent rider. The cause of his crash is unclear, but the lone eyewitness reported seeing Jeff hit a telephone pole near the edge of a minor road, then tumble some yards further into a fire hydrant. His new top-shelf ADV helmet, still buckled, was somehow knocked off his head and recovered from a considerable distance away. His high-quality, full-coverage, armored riding suit was no match for the immovable objects in his path. He was killed instantly.
All this occurred at a slight dogleg near the crest of a mild rise with the evening sun low in the sky. The eyewitness didn’t notice any other vehicles, but he also hadn’t been paying attention to the scene until Jeff struck the pole and hydrant. The most likely explanation seems to be an oncoming car had drifted into Jeff’s lane, but may not have been visible to him until it was too late to take more effective evasive action. The car driver then continued on, perhaps unaware of the tragedy in their wake—or aware and uncaring. There was no stationary hazard to have prompted Jeff to veer off the pavement. He may have thought he could squeeze between the oncoming car and the telephone pole, but clipped the latter with his right handlebar. Jeff’s wrecked motorcycle is being examined for any mechanical failure that might have caused him to lose control, but that’s unlikely. He maintained his bikes meticulously and was never the least bit reckless riding them.
Jeff had just finished a weekend of dual-sporting at a rally in the nearby mountains. He may have been tired and less vigilant than usual as a result, or he might have felt especially in-tune with his bike and hopeful he could shoot the gap with the necessary precision. Or maybe there was plainly no way to avoid a collision and he chose what seemed like the lesser of the two evils: the telephone pole instead of the car. Many details will never be known. Regardless, my mind keeps replaying the event I didn’t witness, filling in all the blanks and focusing on that final moment before impact, when Jeff would have realized—for a split-second—this would be very, very bad. These episodes are akin to having flashbacks, though obviously from my imagination and not my memory.
I know a little about such moments. I’ve had a handful of incredibly close calls, as has anyone with decades of riding history. Just as these experiences are often depicted in movies, time slows down and expands. At least that’s how it seems when the brain suddenly kicks into overdrive, processing a lot more data a lot faster than it does in less harrowing circumstances. It’s astonishing how much can go through the mind in a millisecond. Things take on a surreal quality, with abject terror and eerie calm co-existing simultaneously. As deliberate procedural thought locks up or can’t keep pace with immediate demands, whatever reflexes have been developed take over and either save the day or don’t. In the meantime, there’s a wordless sense of resigned paralysis—an awareness it’s too late to think through any actions; consciousness is merely along for the ride at that point, hovering in suspense, waiting to see what happens. Fear registers dimly but can’t manifest quickly enough to take any familiar form. That happens later, with surging heart rate, sweating, gasping breath, and maybe even a muffled scream all erupting a few seconds after the acute danger has come and gone, when I’ve already pulled off the road to recover in safety. Adrenal glands react with amazing speed, but it still takes time for their secretions to circulate throughout the body.
I find myself in Jeff’s helmet, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes against my will. I see the oncoming vehicle suddenly block my path and I dart to the right, only then registering the telephone pole’s presence. I instinctively brace for impact, but maybe there’s not even time for that. Instead of the past flashing before my eyes, I envision the future. I know terrible physical pain is coming—and maybe worse. Disability? Death? The judgment and dismay of others who’ve been uneasy with my motorcycling and wished I wouldn’t subject myself to such risks? The heartbreak of friends, family, and my wife upon learning of my catastrophe? Then—lightning-quick—an unimaginable nothingness.
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This account isn’t meant to be a horrific warning, though it certainly contains one. We who ride must reckon with the high stakes of our gamble. We need to wear the best safety gear and get the best training we can afford, frequently practice essential skills, carefully maintain our machinery, maximize our conspicuity, and ride only when our mental and physical capacities are truly up to the task. We must cultivate and exercise good judgment and disciplined self-control, and learn as many tricks as we can for anticipating and contending with hazards. But even with all such measures taken, we lack total control over our environment. If the late Larry Grodsky, one of the most revered riding safety gurus of all time, can be taken out by a deer, then we, too, can encounter challenges beyond our defensive capabilities. No matter how diligently we stack the deck in our favor, a roll of the dice is also included.
We can argue the same is true in any activity, or even tucked into a lifestyle of frightened retreat; accidents and disease strike the timid and homebound on a regular basis and no one lives forever. We can argue many motorcycling accidents involve riders impaired by alcohol, drugs, or excess testosterone in their bloodstreams, lousy or non-existent rider education, or garden variety immaturity and distractibility. And we can argue motorcycles, for all their exposure to risk, also deliver extraordinary acceleration, maneuverability and stopping power, theoretically facilitating our evasion of calamity. Such arguments have irrefutable merit, but they don’t eradicate the equally irrefutable fact we add surplus risk to our lives every time we climb into the saddle. Yes, there are countless other risks in everyone’s life, but I’d argue infinity plus one is still greater than infinity alone.
What I most want to explore here is something oddly lacking in my reaction to Jeff’s fatal crash: I have not entertained the slightest hint of reservation about continuing my own tenure as a motorcyclist. Such a thought—that I should reconsider exposing myself to the myriad horrible possibilities riding could allow into my life—exists only as a remote abstraction, something I can imagine taking shape in others’ minds, but not my own. I find this curious and worth trying to understand. With lightning striking so very close, why wouldn’t I feel any compulsion to take cover?
One factor is my familiarity with thunder. I’ve read and heard this kind of story too many times over the years to be surprised, although there’s no denying I’m shocked to near disbelief at the completely unexpected loss of my friend. On a personal level, it’s more than I can take in, but as a long-recognized aspect of riding life, the event’s basic outline was already deeply engraved in my mind. From my first day on tight mountain twisties, I learned to fear cars crossing the centerline on blind curves. Riding mentors warned me about this and I soon got my own first-hand experiences with it; they continue to this day. Much as I might want to maximize my cornering speed, I never outride my line of sight on curvy public roads. Likewise, I approach every intersection on red alert for the dreaded left-turning vehicle. Images of a head-on or broadside collision have occupied center stage in my mental theater of threats since I first pursued rider education—halfway through my half-century as a motorcyclist (how I survived that long without such training, I’ll never comprehend). I know Jeff was well aware of these possibilities, too. Alas, awareness is necessary but not sufficient.
Situational specifics aside, I’ve had riding buddies suffer serious injuries on their bikes from all sorts of mishaps and crashes, some of which I’ve watched happen right in front of me. Several others have lost riding buddies of their own (whom I never knew) to fatal accidents. I ride Deal’s Gap/Tail of the Dragon much less often than I did decades ago, when it was a local secret, but it’s sadly almost routine now to come upon an accident scene up there whenever I do make a pass. I, myself, am extremely lucky to have never crashed on the street, but I’ve taken severe beatings off-road since the start of adolescence, some of which involved broken bones. I’ve been hearing the rumbles of thunder the whole time I’ve been a rider.
I’ve also been digesting and managing and making peace with this reality all along the way. It’s never been far from consciousness, even to the point of sometimes increasing danger by generating fearful distractions. This has only grown more problematic with age, as I’ve become more cognizant of my slowing reflexes, physical limitations/vulnerability and ultimate mortality, whether I’m on or off a motorcycle. I’m more likely now to turn around and return home when my head isn’t quite right; riding in that state of mind is neither safe nor enjoyable. But again, it never leads to the notion I should quit altogether. Rather than prompting a recoil from motorcycling, my acknowledgement of its risks inspires redoubled devotion to mitigating those dangers with knowledge, skill and gear. Jeff’s death only adds to this resolve.
The transcendent joy of motorcycling is simply monolithic in my psyche. There are other treasures and obligations that compete with it for priority in terms of what I might do on a given day, but I’ve yet to consider anything capable of displacing or replacing motorcycling on more than a very temporary basis. And if there were to be such a competition, it would be a struggle of epic, mythological proportions—a genuine Battle of the Titans in my soul. I’m profoundly grateful no such contest has been necessary thus far.
Motorcycling has been the most consistent feature of my entire existence, a through-line longer and more durable than any interpersonal, academic, professional or ideological attachment. It has been The Constant in a multitude of monumental changes, spanning periods of both gradual evolution and violently transformative upheaval. Parting with it is as inconceivable as losing my ability to walk or see or speak. I know such losses could occur, but my life without any one of those faculties would be unrecognizable, and I certainly wouldn’t choose it if I had any say in the matter. Likewise, something may take riding away from me, but I’m not going to relinquish it of my own accord. Whether that’s a matter of “will not” or “can not” I’m unsure, but the result is the same. It’s baked into who I am, not some add-on that can be subtracted without extensive damage to the rest of my identity and psychological equilibrium.
I believe this is why my intent to continue riding is unshaken by Jeff’s death. No doubt, there are many motorcyclists for whom riding doesn’t have the same meaning as it does for me, and that’s fine—I don’t mean to imply they should share my commitment. In fact, it’d be easy to argue they should not, and that there’s something wrong with me for feeling as I do. I’m not asserting my position is correct or superior or even sane. But I do believe it’s not that uncommon among my fellow riders. Surely, every one of them has good reason to leave the fold, yet many stay. Some may never ponder the risks and rewards of that decision consciously, they just act in concert with an unconscious calculus. Others do contemplate the matter quite seriously, explicitly and often, and repeatedly conclude the good outweighs the bad. Jeff was one of the latter.
Someone is bound to remark Jeff died doing what he loved. I think he died being who he was. If I do the same, I hope to be understood in those terms.
Mark Barnes is a clinical psychologist and motojournalist. To read more of his writings, check out his book Why We Ride: A Psychologist Explains the Motorcyclist’s Mind and the Love Affair Between Rider, Bike and Road, currently available in paperback through Amazon and other retailers.
