Not a classic rendezvous
Ugh. Chuck Schmidt just posted to the fixie list that he's back from the hospital after getting whacked by an SUV on his Waterford fixie. How's this for a terrifying description of an injury:
There's an SUV coming towards me (I'm probably traveling 18-22 mph down the incline) and in an instant the driver turns in front of me to enter their driveway. That's my last recollection till the guys in the emergency vehicle ask my wife's name and number as they cut away my mussette's strap and shoulder of my Assos jersey to see where the massive amount of blood is coming from.
Next I'm in Emergency at Huntington Hospital about a mile from the accident scene (picture a resort/spa hotel and I'm not exaggerating),seeing my wife Sherry (we live about two miles from the hospital),getting a full body CT scan, and then to surgery to fix the five+ inch gash across the right side of my neck. Apparently I went through the right side window of the SUV with my helmeted head and gashed my neck on the glass; my face is untouched, however my Giro helmet is completely smashed and broken at the front. The surgeon finds that there is a nick in my jugular vein and lots of glass still in the wound. The x-raysreveal that my collar bone is broken in two places, my shoulder blade is broken in two places, my rib is broken along with a badly bruised right lung; the doctor says luckily the nerves in my neck aren't severed which would have paralyzed my right arm and right side of my face.
...
Now for the important news... how's the '02 black and polished stainless Waterford Road/Track. The bike was put into the emergency vehicle at the scene of the accident and placed in the walk-in shower at the hospital Emergency room (real VIP treatment) where my wife picked it up and took it home while I was in surgery. I looked at the bike yesterday evening and this morning an here's what I found. The bars and seat still point straight ahead, a gash in the cork bar tape on the right bar, a broken left bar end plug, the brake lever on the left is a few degrees off from straight ahead and has a small scuff at the bottom, a white paint mark on the left side of the top tube (from my shoe grazing the top tube?), a very small scuff on the left side of the Brooks Flite with a few tiny scratches across one of the rivets, a few light scratches on the left end of the rear track hub axle, two 1/8 inch paint chips down to primer on right chain stay, AND THAT'S IT!!!
If that doesn't make you cringe just a bit.
Reading Chuck's email made me think of Tommy McBride, who I used to ride with at Cannonball. Not that the situation was similar, Chuck almost died because of someone's ignorance, Tommy died because someone made a decision to kill him - but both SUV-bike collisions serve to remind that a bicycle and a human body are gonna lose every time against 2000Kgs of steel.
There's an SUV coming towards me (I'm probably traveling 18-22 mph down the incline) and in an instant the driver turns in front of me to enter their driveway. That's my last recollection till the guys in the emergency vehicle ask my wife's name and number as they cut away my mussette's strap and shoulder of my Assos jersey to see where the massive amount of blood is coming from.
Next I'm in Emergency at Huntington Hospital about a mile from the accident scene (picture a resort/spa hotel and I'm not exaggerating),seeing my wife Sherry (we live about two miles from the hospital),getting a full body CT scan, and then to surgery to fix the five+ inch gash across the right side of my neck. Apparently I went through the right side window of the SUV with my helmeted head and gashed my neck on the glass; my face is untouched, however my Giro helmet is completely smashed and broken at the front. The surgeon finds that there is a nick in my jugular vein and lots of glass still in the wound. The x-raysreveal that my collar bone is broken in two places, my shoulder blade is broken in two places, my rib is broken along with a badly bruised right lung; the doctor says luckily the nerves in my neck aren't severed which would have paralyzed my right arm and right side of my face.
...
Now for the important news... how's the '02 black and polished stainless Waterford Road/Track. The bike was put into the emergency vehicle at the scene of the accident and placed in the walk-in shower at the hospital Emergency room (real VIP treatment) where my wife picked it up and took it home while I was in surgery. I looked at the bike yesterday evening and this morning an here's what I found. The bars and seat still point straight ahead, a gash in the cork bar tape on the right bar, a broken left bar end plug, the brake lever on the left is a few degrees off from straight ahead and has a small scuff at the bottom, a white paint mark on the left side of the top tube (from my shoe grazing the top tube?), a very small scuff on the left side of the Brooks Flite with a few tiny scratches across one of the rivets, a few light scratches on the left end of the rear track hub axle, two 1/8 inch paint chips down to primer on right chain stay, AND THAT'S IT!!!
If that doesn't make you cringe just a bit.
Reading Chuck's email made me think of Tommy McBride, who I used to ride with at Cannonball. Not that the situation was similar, Chuck almost died because of someone's ignorance, Tommy died because someone made a decision to kill him - but both SUV-bike collisions serve to remind that a bicycle and a human body are gonna lose every time against 2000Kgs of steel.
1 Comments:
Remember people can heal (to a certain extent) bikes can't.
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