I'm not part of the fan club for that crowd, these guys give everyone on two wheels a bad name.
Years ago I knew a kid named Joe R. who at the time was 22 years old. He had a Kawasaki Ninja sport bike, his pride & joy. He rode it like that everywhere he went and was completely immersed in that mindset that so many of these young guys have; That he was ten feet tall & bulletproof and would live forever.
One day he was out racing another sport bike on a rural road, side by side. His challenger was in the right lane and Joe was on the left, in the wrong lane.
Things happen very quickly at 140 mph (that's where his speedometer was pegged when the bike was found). Neck & neck like that racing and a pickup truck backed out of a driveway.
Joe torpedoed that pickup in the driver's side rear wheel and it rolled over completely, coming to rest back on it's wheels. The driver was ejected and suffered only a concussion but his truck was totaled.
Joe rag dolled for 100 yards down the ditch. The pickup driver's wife witnessed the accident and called 9-11 but it took awhile for the ambulance to arrive being out in the country. At the time I worked with several of the local volunteer firemen and the next day at work the ambulance driver who responded told me Joe never lost consciousness. He was screaming all the way to the hospital "what happened? What the @#*% happened!"
Another friend of mine, Glenn who was also a friend of Joe's told me what happened shortly after. Joe broke both legs below the knees, folded back. He broke his pelvis. Worst was his heart, basically he split his aorta off his heart and spent eight hours on the table getting that sewn back together in emergency surgery. It goes without saying that it was a miracle he survived at all.
A little while later Glenn told me some more that he heard from Joe's brother (Joe's brother would die on a sport bike a few years later, but on a real track in a drag race at Lancaster Speedway). He said his brother told him that after the accident when Joe was in ICU following surgery his dad was there when he awoke. Supposedly Joe woke up, just opened his eyes and turned his head to his dad and said very matter of factly, not in any fog or anything, "dad, if I had a faster bike I would have made it".
Shortly thereafter I divorced my first wife and moved out of the area, I didn't personally see Joe after the accident for almost two years. One day I got a call from Glenn. He needed a ride to court, "Mr. speeding ticket" that he is he got another speeding ticket that put his points over the top and got his license suspended. I came and took him that night. The place was packed with about 100 people so I left Glenn to hit a drive through and come back in awhile. When I walked back into the courthouse there was Joe sitting there in a chair in the lobby with his mother. I almost walked right by him because I honestly didn't recognize him until he said "hey, man!" and put out his hand.
By now he was still just 23 or 24 but he looked to be 50. He had a cane beside him, whitewall grey hair on both sides of his head and was maybe 120 pounds, a wraith. We talked for a few minutes but seeing him like that was tough. I was glad that he was alive but at the same time aghast at the hollow shell that used to be Joe. His eyes were sunken and he had an overall ashen look about him. His voice was shallow and I noticed he was wearing those cloth clogs that the hippies where. He noticed that I noticed and said "I still can't bend down to tie shoes but I'm getting better and I'm going to get another bike" and grinned. I just said well, I'm glad you're doing good these days and shook his hand and smiled at his mom. She wasn't smiling along with the "get another bike" remark. She looked to be in more of a hurt than Joe was.
I haven't seen him since in more than ten years now but did see the story on the local t.v. news of his brother getting killed at the track and that he did in fact get another sport bike. All I could think of when I saw the story of his brother on the news was the look on his mother's face back there in the courthouse lobby.
I also have an uncle who is a university physics professor who moonlights as a crash investigator for the state he lives in. He has a dim view of these young throttle jockeys too and no shortage of horror stories about them, almost always a single vehicle accident at extreme speed by white males in their early twenties and almost always fatal.
Sometimes they take other innocent people unaware with them too.
Before I forget, the guy Joe was racing that fateful day? He had no clue who he was. Never saw him before he came upon him on that road and the two decided to race and he didn't bother to stop and help Joe either. The wife that called 9-11 reported that he did in fact stop, just long enough to take a quick look back and then he bolted.
I'm not part of the fan club for that crowd, these guys give everyone on two wheels a bad name.
