In the months after the accident I spent a great deal of time replaying the experience and analyzing it (some might say obsessively). I apologize if it seems a little long, but it seems that it takes a world of detail to describe something which took place in just under two seconds.
While it describes errors that I made, this account is neither a mea culpa nor an exercise in coulda/shoulda/woulda for its own sake. I just want to share an experience which I believe is inherently fascinating to most riders: what is it like when the worst happens? The story is based on my best recollection of speed, distance and a very rapid unfolding of events, but as we know memory can play tricks. I have tried however to be as objective as possible, both in my recollection and my analysis, for my own benefit and for those who wish to draw their own conclusions from it.
Background
I had purchased the motorcycle in March after Diane and I returned from a vacation in Maui. During our stay on the island a shortage of rental cars had forced us to rent a motorcycle as an alternative, and for 10 days we rode around together on 2 different Harleys, a Buell and a Vulcan 1500.
We were the proverbial irresponsible 50ish couple on a Harley, riding lidless in shorts and t-shirts, and it was a blast.
Diane actually got to feel comfortable riding on the back and it was a sweet time for us. We didn't get over the whole island - there is a surprising amount of it to cover - but we were able to circumnavigate Haleakala, riding through bamboo groves and the mist of waterfalls around the 600 curves to Hana, and then manoeuvring the Vulcan along the semi-paved road which continued around the backside of the mountain. I so much enjoyed this time, the feeling of Diane holding on to me behind and speaking together as we rode. The experience took me back and it felt as though Diane were my girlfriend again rather than my wife of 31 years.
As a result, it was not long after our return that I bought a 1986 VN750 in a private sale. It was a kid's project bike that he had done for a motorcycle mechanic course. He had made good work of it, boring it out to over 800cc and giving it a custom paint job. Prior to Maui I had not ridden for nearly 20 years, but in the 2 months after I bought the Vulcan I rode it enough to feel comfortable in bringing Diane along that day for our first two up run into the city.
The accident
It had been a nice day, the first really nice weekend this year. We came in to Calgary along the 1A highway past Exshaw and through the Stoney Reserve, following the road as it wound up, down and through the breaks above the Bow River. I set an easy pace, not pushing it. These were the local twisties, much favoured by Calgary riders. We passed at least 50 outbound bikers on the way in, many in gaggles and clusters, not always in good order. After a while I stopped returning waves and began to focus on staying well clear of the centre line. Neither of us was wearing motorcycle gear except for CSA approved half helmets and goggles. The main purpose of our trip into Calgary was in fact to begin acquiring more safety gear.
Before doing so, we made a few stops and it was not until later in the afternoon that we reached GW Cycle. After much fitting and vacillating Diane found a Cordura jacket that she could live with. By that time the store was closing and there was not enough time to buy anything else. Oh well, I thought. That can wait for another weekend.
We made our way back west across town and stopped at our daughter's for supper. We chatted for awhile.
Finally a little alarm went off in my mind.
"Let's go".
I didn't want to end up riding directly into the setting sun. On our way out of the house Sarah said "I love you!"
Funny, I thought, it's not like her to say that.
Heading west on the #1 Highway, we passed the Foothills Hospital on our left and swept at 50 mph down the long easy curve into Montgomery, where we slowed for a 30 mph zone. This is a five block neighbourhood which the highway bisects in 4 undivided lanes before it leaves the built up area and becomes an open road again. There is free access from streets and businesses on both sides, though east and westbound lanes are separated by a double yellow line between the intersections.
Traffic was fairly constant in both directions. I found the westbound curb lane a little congested for my taste so I shifted to the relatively open left lane and moved on up past the line of traffic on my right. The curb lane was moving at about 20 mph, I at 33 mph.
As I approached a camper traveling ahead of me in the right lane it slowed down and a gap opened ahead of it. I continued closing and as I came up a car slipped out past the front of the camper and stopped broadside about 2/3 of the way across my lane. He had pulled out of a parking lot on the right, evidently meaning to peel across our two westbound lanes and the double line in order to beat the oncoming eastbound traffic in a left turn onto the highway. The camper had screened us from each other so he saw us and stopped only after he began his move.
I had 60-70 feet to react when he first entered my field of vision and was stuck in a rapidly shrinking box. As the car's front bumper emerged, I had immediately gone for the brakes but I knew even then that we weren't going to make it. My front wheel promptly locked and slid out to the right. We fell to the pavement like a pair of tumbling dice.....
My memory is quite clear up to the point where I lost traction. Then we went down in a blur of motion and I retain the impression of taking a single bounce which twisted my body into a roll along its axis.
Everything snapped back into focus when I hit the car. I have a freeze frame picture of flying backwards, suspended just above the road's surface and looking back the way we came. In the same instant came the shock of something slamming very hard into my upper back. I felt my body arch like a bow and for a split second all my chest muscles tightened like bowstrings.
I rebounded about 6 feet and fell forward facing east, my body roughly in a line with the car's front bumper. As I fell I saw Diane tumble head over heels past me. I remember saying "Oh!". It was an "oh" as in "Oh, this can't be good!" or "Oh, I'm shot, am I dead?"
For the first few seconds I lay on my stomach and took stock of what I saw. My left arm was covered with blood up to my t-shirt sleeve and the forearm looked and felt broken. My right pinky finger was a bloody pulp. I looked back over my right shoulder. Diane lay groaning in a fetal position just across the centre line, clutching her leg. Her goggles were knocked askew on her face.
I turned my attention back to myself. I could feel and move my feet. My head was fine. My right shoulder and chest hurt, especially when I breathed. I desperately wanted to get up and get the pressure off my chest. I knew I shouldn't, but I felt that if I could only get up on my feet I would be okay. I just couldn't figure out how to do so without hurting myself more. I fumbled for the helmet strap with my right hand, careful not to move the shoulder. I couldn't quite undo the knot. I gave up and lay there, helpless.
And then the feet came. Dozens of them came into my field of view from every direction, crowding close around until someone ordered them back. No lonely death in a ditch for us. We had gone down in the most public way, closing 3 out of the 4 lanes of the TransCanada Highway at the height of a spring weekend.
Someone knelt by me. "Hello, I'm ______. I'm an off-duty firefighter and I am a first responder. What is your name? What happened? What day is it? Can you feel your hands? Can you feel your feet?...." I could hear someone else asking similar questions of Diane and heard her responding. That was a relief! She was relatively composed though I could hear the pain in her voice.
One pair of feet approached and addressed me:
"She waved me out, but I stopped as soon as I seen ya. I stopped as soon as I seen ya."
It was the driver of the car and he was referring to the woman driving the camper who he claimed had given him an all clear sign to pull out across both our lanes.
I didn't answer. I learned long ago not to waste my anger on others' driving errors. They are a natural phenomenon, like gravel on the road. Besides, we had more pressing concerns than the question of the man's relative responsibility. That was his problem, not ours.
Analysis
Even though the right of way violation we experienced was the closest thing to an ambush that I have ever seen, I operate from the premise that every accident short of a meteor strike is avoidable on some level. There is always something that you could have done differently in retrospect. Even after the accident has become inevitable the way one reacts can make a big difference in the outcome.
a) Setting myself up
After a close call early in my riding career, I've always been aware of the risk of a right side incursion and usually scan side streets, alleys and driveways as I approach them. I tend to be most vigilant when I am in the curb lane. In this case I saw no need to look for this specific threat because I was in the left lane with screening traffic in the lane beside me.
However, one thing that should have got my attention and didn't was when the camper slowed to a near stop. Any time there is a hitch in the traffic flow in an adjacent lane for a reason I can't see I usually slow down, cover the brakes and ride as wide as I can in my lane until I can see and assess the situation. I do this whether I'm driving or riding.
Doing so in this case would have
(i) left me about 15 feet further back and about 5 mph slower than I actually was when the car first appeared.
(ii) positioned me in the left track which would have allowed me to see him coming just a little bit sooner , and
(iii) put me on a line which would have passed just in front of where his car did stop.
All of these advantages put together would given me more time to process the situation and hence avoid resorting to a panic reflex. The additional distance coupled with the better lane placement would have allowed me to come to a stop or near stop or avoid the car altogether with a minor course correction within my lane.
b) Not being in the moment
So why didn't I do this? One reason was because in my mind I was already on the open highway. I had been hyper-alert and a little paranoid riding in Calgary traffic all day, but now that we were almost out of town, the controlled access portion of the highway was only 3 blocks away and I was looking forward to unwinding the throttle and getting clear of the congestion. This little five block strip was just a one last irritating bottleneck on the way to freedom. So I think I had started to let down a bit and was not paying enough attention to my immediate surroundings.
We hear about target fixation but I think there is also such a thing as destination fixation. This is when you're mentally focused on some place you're going to down the road rather than where you are right now. For example, you're reaching the end of a long ride, you're letting down a bit and as you near home you enter familiar territory and go into autopilot, looking forward to kicking back and relaxing. You're no longer in the moment and you start missing cues that you would normally pick up on.
c) Appropriate reaction
When the car emerged from behind the screening camper, I had only two basic choices: brake or swerve to the left. I chose to brake, even though I knew as I did that I would be unable to stop in time. This choice resulted in serious injury to my wife and I. If I had swerved we would have avoided the car.
So should I have swerved?
Strange as it may seem, I think I did the right thing in not attempting to do so. In swerving, I would have given up the option of braking which would have doubled up the risk of injury if I had hit the car. I began to react as soon as I saw the car's bumper emerge into view. I didn't know at that point that it would stop. If I had waited to confirm that it had stopped before acting, I would not only have given up precious braking distance, I might have sailed into the car still revolving the options in my mind.
I think that sort of analysis paralysis helps account for the fact that many motorcyclists roll straight into their collisions without attempting to either brake or swerve, even when they have time to do so. You almost have to decide in advance what you're going to do in order to save processing time.
If I had immediately committed to a swerve and the car had not stopped, we would have hit it at speed and been ejected over it into the oncoming traffic. Really bad odds for survival. Even if the car did stop and we got around its front end, we would have committed ourselves to a line which would have brought us well into the oncoming lane before we would have the time to swing back. I didn't know if that lane was clear right then; I didn't have time to check and my peripheral vision was gone at that point. All I could see was the car rapidly getting larger.
So yes, I still believe that braking was the appropriate response in the situation based on what I saw within the time available to react, even though it may have resulted in greater injury than the alternative would have.
d) Braking technique
While waiting for the weather to warm up enough to begin riding on a regular basis, I had bought a copy of Hough's More Proficient Motorcycling to bring myself back up to speed. I read his emphasis on progressively applied front wheel braking and took it to heart. I practiced it whenever I did get out and noted that front wheel braking was much sharper and more effective than I remembered it to be back in the day. I remember riding through town on the day of the accident, as a matter of fact, mentally rehearsing front brake good, rear brake bad. But one thing I had not yet done was to practice threshold braking using the front brake in a simulated emergency stop.
As a result, I did not develop the muscle memory to match the theory and when time came to make an emergency stop, everything I knew about progressive braking went out the window. I went straight for the death grip on the front lever.
That's one way of looking at it. But to be fair to myself, the extenuating circumstance would be that I instinctively knew that we would hit the car no matter what I did. Having logged about 200,000 miles behind the wheel of a taxi in a previous life, I'm well acquainted with stopping distances. My instinctive estimate of the car's proximity at the instant I saw it was that it was just within the effective stopping range of a 1978 Chev Caprice with good brakes if they were already applied.
But let's say that I reacted in 0.5 seconds, which is much quicker than average. During that time we would have covered half the distance to the car. Added to that, the half second required to effect the weight transfer to the front wheel would have brought us almost to the point of impact. I was not mentally prepared to accept that delay. That knowledge placed me in full alarm mode and I became physiologically incapable of the fine motor skills which controlled braking requires.
It is for this reason that police officers who spend hundreds of hours on the firing range perfecting their Weaver stance consistently abandon it when they find themselves in a real firefight. (A good explanation of the panic state and its physiological effects may be found at http://www.lwcbooks.com/articles/anatomy.html.)
I believe the value of threshold braking skill therefore lies not so much in its usefulness in true panic mode (nil) as in the fact that the greater sense of control it gives the rider who possesses it makes it less likely for him to descend into such a state in threat situations. It is important however to remember that if the threat is truly imminent no one is immune to panic. The conclusion I draw is that the prudent rider will use a braking technology which will continue to work effectively even when his responses don't. I'm referring of course to ABS.
Failure to use progressive braking, check. What about failure to apply the rear brake?
If I had practiced hard stopping, I would have found that on a cruiser the rear brake does still have a significant role to play, especially in the initial application before weight is transferred to the front. I was not well served to ignore the rear brake in this case. Even in a panic stop scenario, if I had applied it as well as the front, both wheels would have been just a bit slower to lock and its possible that our fall to the pavement would have been little more forgiving. Firm or even aggressive application of both brakes together could only have helped us.
Having said all of the above, I'm not sure how much difference it would have made if I had managed a textbook braking attempt. We would have still hit the car, albeit at lesser speed and with shiny side up. Injury from the collision itself would likely have been confined to our lower bodies; however we would have then been ejected over the hood of the car. Depending on how we landed, we may or may not have had head or neck injuries. Who knows if our injuries would have been better or worse than those we did incur? (From a purely selfish point of view, that would depend on how my gonads fared in their passage over the instrument cluster!)
No matter how you go down in an accident, the extent of your personal injuries is still a crap shoot. It's fair to assume though that effective braking would have given us a better roll of the dice.
e) Gear and injuries
Visibility
At the time of the accident we were not wearing high visibility clothing. In this case visibility was not an issue as the driver was pulling out blind due to the restriction the camper imposed on his field of vision. We could have been a semi and he still wouldn't have seen us.
Diane
Gear: Diane was wearing a CSA approved half helmet, riding goggles, riding jacket with joint armour, jeans, no gloves.
Injuries: All of Diane's injuries were from contact with the road as she flipped end over end. (She tumbled past the front of the car.) These contacts caused multiple facial fractures. Specifically, the orbital ridge over her left eye was fractured and her cheek bone was broken and a chip pushed down through her sinus cavities. Her upper tibia was badly shattered with a fracture running through the tibial plateau. She had no road rash or soft tissue damage anywhere except for a cut over the left eyebrow.
Analysis: Knee armour would have prevented or minimized Diane's tibial fractures. Here is an anomaly: she had no road rash on her knees; in fact when I later examined the legs of her jeans which were cut off from the front, the cut sides fit together perfectly without any sign of abrasion. I can't account for it. My knees, which had only glancing contact with the pavement both had road rash; Diane's right knee, which hit the surface hard enough to shatter it, had none. There were several such freakish and seemingly unaccountable things about our injuries.
Helmet: a full face helmet would have certainly have prevented or minimized Diane's facial injury. However, the helmet she did wear seemed to have played no significant role. Even though she had multiple facial fractures, it showed no signs of significant impact. There were a few superficial scratches at the back, but the front was unmarked.
And here is another anomaly. Diane landed on her face. But then why did she receive no facial lacerations? The impact seems to have been confined solely to her goggles. Diane's head injuries were evidently caused by the goggles' frame being forcefully pushed against her orbital. The impact must have been quite strong to cause such damage since the frame had a foam rubber lining. But the goggles as she wore them were well under the 1 inch overhang of her helmet. How could they have hit the road so hard without the front of the helmet also being involved? And if the helmet had escaped contact because Diane hit the road with her head slightly face forward, when then did she not have any lower face/jaw injuries?
However it happened, though Diane's goggles caused her injury they also protected her from much worse. The left lens shows a pronounced vertical scratch and the right is scuffed. Without them, I believe that she would have suffered serious eye injury and facial laceration, and possibly blunt force trauma to the brain. It is extremely odd that a flimsy piece of gear not normally considered as protection from anything more than a flying insect should have had such an effect in a collision with the road.
Phil
Gear: I was wearing a CSA approved half helmet, riding goggles, jeans, quilted vest and t-shirt, no gloves.
Injuries: My left radius was shattered at the point where it joins the wrist (the surgeon said into 25 pieces). I also had a compound fracture to my right shoulder blade.
Seven ribs were broken in my right chest, three of them in two places in what is known as a flail chest injury. In spite of the ten rib fractures (at least five of them were displaced), my lungs did not suffer puncture, collapse, or contusion. In fact, when I remember that I was able to speak as I fell to the road, I marvel that I did not even have the breath knocked out of me. Anomaly number three. Nor did I have any back or neck injuries (not even soreness). This is anomaly number four.
My right pinky finger was degloved down to the first joint and I had moderate road rash covering most of the outside skin area of my left arm, a smaller patch on my right forearm and small areas on my knees.
Analysis: Though I don't remember the fall itself, from the pattern of my injuries it appears that I dropped off the bike in a hands and knees posture and made initial contact with the road on all fours. This caused the four point road rash and the degloved pinky. Since I came off the bike to the left, most of the impact came on my left arm, breaking the radius and causing the asphalt surface to grab that arm and pull it under me, causing the extensive road rash to that limb. This forced my body into a classic Hollywood tuck n roll (a much more damaging one though than what I've seen on TV).
I rolled over my left shoulder and, since my lower body was still traveling left, the deceleration of my upper body had the effect of swinging my whole body into a lateral roll. I think it may have made one complete revolution in the air in that orientation. I was still in the air in mid-roll when my back hit the left front of the car, presumably over my right shoulderblade, shattering it and breaking my ribs.
A ballistic jacket such as Diane was wearing would have spared me the upper body road rash, though that was the least of my worries. I'm not aware of any gear which would spared my forearm. Gloves might have saved my pinky. Back armour might have softened the impact to my shoulderblade and ribs but I think not significantly since it is designed more to protect the spine. An airbag jacket, as unproven as it is I think would have made a difference here.
Helmet: At first I assumed that my helmet had not played a role because I had felt no impact with my head. However, when I examined it I saw the following: two pronounced scratches on the left front, several circular concentric scratches on the left rear, and an area of many fine parallel scratches about two inches in diameter on the right back.
The first two sets of marks I assume pertain to the tuck 'n' roll: the front scratches from the initial contact of my head with the pavement, and the left rear ones marking a pivot point as my body rotated on the way over my left shoulder.
The third set puzzled me, as I thought the scratches were too fine to arise from contact with the pavement. I believe it came from contact with the car.
I have revolved various possible scenarios in my mind to explain the fact that I had no whiplash or noticeable blow to the head. That would be the minimum expected effect from an impact strong enough to cause flail chest.
Here is what I think happened: My shoulder blade hit the leading edge of the car's left front tire right where the tread meets the sidewall. (It would have been turned out slightly to make the its turn.) My torso arched around the point of impact and my head snapped back, but before it traveled far enough to strain my neck, the back of my helmet hit the sidewall at the tire's trailing edge, scraping the wheel well as it did so. This would have caused my head to bounce back in tandem with my upper body as I fell forward. That would explain the fine scratches on my helmet. It would also account for the unusually lively bounce my body took as a result of the impact.
If my reconstruction is correct, then my helmet did protect my head from laceration and likely also concussion.
Summary
This accident was primarily a failure in defensive driving and secondarily a failure in effective braking. (Effective braking would possibly have mitigated injury but not prevented the accident).
What I did do right was to react immediately (if not entirely effectively) in a way that reduced the effect of the collision. A low side at 20-25 mph and then an impact by one of us with the car at 15-20 mph gave us better odds than for both us to hit the car and be ejected at 33 mph.
Wearing a helmet saved me from at least some head injury. It appeared not to have made a difference in Diane's case. All the gear; that is, full face helmet + full ballistic coverage with armour + gloves would have probably eliminated Diane's injuries but would likely have prevented only the more superficial of my own ie, the relatively mild road rash and pulped finger.
However, as badly as we thought we were injured at the time, it became apparent to me as I analyzed the damage in detail that we got off far more lightly than we had a right to expect (see anomalies two through four). Diane could easily have lost sight in at an eye and received permanently disfiguring injuries to her face. If I had hit the car flying backward in any other than the precise way that I did, there is little doubt in my mind that I would have incurred a catastrophic spinal and/or chest injury.
This consideration is very sobering when you consider the relatively low speed of our impact. As they say, there is no such thing as a fender bender on a motorcycle.
Lessons learned
1) This accident has reinforced my commitment to defensive driving and also teaches me that it is never safe to think that you've arrived at a point where you enjoy absolute safety while riding. In this case, the accident likely could have been avoided if I had followed defensive driving techniques which I already knew. Yet there is no absolute defense against the irrational actions of others. No matter how prudent you think you are, there is always an accident scenario which may slip through your defenses. The only answer is to avoid complacency and to continuously work on improving these skills.
2) The motorcycle I now have has ABS.
3) I will practice threshold braking (up to the limits of the ABS of course). I've never lost braking control so completely as I did in this accident and I need to restore my injured pride.
4) I have gotten full coverage gear (full face helmet, airbag jacket, riding boots and gloves, Draggin' jeans, and Thor Force knee armour. I wear all of it on the highway though I usually omit the knee armour and wear regular jeans for short local errands.
5) If my wife decides to ride with me again, I will make sure that she wears all the gear. If I want to be cavalier about my own safety, at least our kids are grown and I am if anything over-insured. But one thing this accident impressed on me was the knowledge that as the rider I have absolute responsibility for the wellbeing of my passenger. I don't have the right to compromise Diane's safety, even if she were willing to do so herself. It was very hard to watch Diane suffer through her ordeal in the hospital from injuries which would likely have been avoided if she had worn full gear.
Aftermath
The first ambulance arrived within a few minutes and the second a little later. We were taken to the Foothills Hospital, a short ride by motorcycle, but a very long trip when you're riding on a hard board with broken ribs and scapula. It occurred to me for the first time that an ambulance is really just a truck with medical fittings. I think I would have been almost as comfortable in the back of a pickup.
The EMTs cinched me so tight to the board I could hardly breathe, and kept it that way until we arrived. This is protocol of course: in your first few hours in the emergency medical system everything seems to revolve around protection of the spinal column, whether it appears to be injured or not. They had to put me on oxygen before we got too far.
We were both slated for surgery the next day, but by then Diane's leg had started to swell, so they had to postpone hers. She had a very rough go of it. For ten days she lay with her shattered leg packed in ice before the swelling subsided enough for surgery.
Diane endured all of this with unflagging spirits, having a smile for every visitor (she had a constant stream of them) and ready to chat amiably about anything other than her current circumstances. She had the air of a gracious hostess rather than that of a victim. Even after 31 years of marriage, I learned something new about my wife's inner toughness.
During this time they were able to reconstruct Diane's orbital bone with the aid of a titanium plate. Today there is no sign of her facial injury except for a few missing wrinkles around her left eye. (She tells me now that she'll have to get a lift for her right eye to make them even.)
When the time came, they put Diane's leg right as well. It now has enough heavy metal in it to guarantee her special handling at airport security for the rest of her life. Diane can walk straight, though her distance is still limited and she reverts to a limp when tired. She walks every day to build her leg's strength and function
On the day following the accident (Sunday) my own break was given open reduction with internal fixation and also an external fixator which I was to wear for the next 11 weeks. I was given no treatment for my ribs or shoulder blade, none being required. My breathing was a little constricted but not too bad, except for a few bad moments after surgery, from which I awoke feeling as if I were suffocating.
I found that my first instinct at the accident scene was correct: I was reasonably comfortable and could breathe almost normally as long as I was upright. On Monday I came off the morphine and was able to inhale up to 3700 ml of air at a time. My ribs seemed to have set themselves.
The following morning they took me off oxygen and I discharged myself later that day. I felt that I would heal better if I just got up and moving. I gather there was some debate about that behind the scenes (the doctor said yes but my nurse told me that she had vetoed him). However, she ultimately agreed and I left, moving very carefully and with my back as straight as a drill sergeant's. I was back at work the following Monday.
The motorcycle was fixable, but not for the amount the insurance company was willing to spend. I took the writeoff.
The car's driver was cited for crossing a double solid line. That was a bogus charge, of course. He clearly intended to cross it, but never made it that far. I was not surprised to hear that the charge was dropped September 18. Fortunately, his insurance company has not chosen to contest his liability in the accident. It helps to have 50 witnesses.
Finally:
I want to acknowledge God's protection over us. He allowed the accident to happen, but we were both spared injuries which easily could have been much worse. Even during our lowest point, we never felt that He had left us or didn't care.
We appear to be healing now without any significant permanent loss of function. We are grateful for what we have now more than we ever were before.
Some would call our escape luck. If it is, then at least in my case it's screaming, run-out-and-buy-a-lottery-ticket luck. But I prefer to call it Providence. There is a verse in Proverbs which I think sums up well this tension between chance and divine will:
"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is of the Lord."
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