It hasn’t been a good week for motorcycle accidents. Last weekend a rider returning from a ride in the New England area was killed on the highway. The terrible irony was that he had ridden with a large group of friends that had gathered to commemorate motorcyclists who had been killed and injured while riding. Another rider was killed during the week in Sydney, being collected by a car. Then this weekend just gone another serious accident.
On Sunday I headed up to the Pie Shop for a coffee only to find that the Pass was closed due to an accident. If that is the case you can almost certainly be sure that it will be an accident involving a motorcycle (though it is closed for car/truck incidents as well). By the time I got there the road had been cleared and a couple of emergency service vehicles heading back down the road indicated that there must have been a serious one.
At the Pie Shop it was revealed that a motorcycle had been involved in an accident an hour or so earlier but details were sketchy. Then late in the afternoon the local newspaper’s online edition revealed that a female motorcyclist had failed to negotiate the second of the two hairpin bends at the top of the Pass and had crashed off the road and sustained serious injuries. She had been airlifted to St George Hospital in Sydney by the Westpac rescue helicopter (above) and was admitted with non-life threatening injuries, multiple fractures, apparently.
As news outlets are always on the lookout for an “angle” the reporter took great delight in reporting that the unfortunate lady had actually got off very lightly, falling over 4 metres down the steep drop-off below the corner and landing on a large pile of mulch that had been dumped there. Earlier this month the RMS road crews had cleaned out some trees and limbs as part of the job restoring the road after the big wash-away there on the first weekend in June. Had she not landed where she did, her fall could have been much further (a hundred metres or so) and would probably have resulted in her death.
Of course, there was no skill involved here, just a healthy dose of good fortune. No doubt she will have a very interesting story to tell her friends and family once the whole episode is concluded.
Now reconstructing an accident from looking at the end result is notoriously difficult. But this one is pretty easy. The lady was riding with a group of other lady riders and was heading east (downhill) having negotiated the first of the two big hairpin bends at the top of the Pass. The second hairpin is a very tight, downhill left had corner that needs to be taken at almost walking pace. The run-out area is even narrower than the entry to the corner being just wide enough for one car to traverse. Even on a motorcycle it is usual to have to stop and let the car or truck coming up the hill get by. Added to this, the corner drops and closes quite dramatically and it is very easy to find yourself on the wrong side of the road on exit. Most drivers and riders who are familiar with the Pass will head onto the right (wrong) side of the road on entry to allow themselves as much room as possible to stay on the correct side of the road on exit. If you try to negotiate the corner by staying on your side of the road on entry to the corner you will almost certainly run wide on the run-out of the corner and the temptation to grab some brake to “steady the ship” is great. Braking while turning slowly and going downhill is fraught with danger, however, and my guess is that the lady got part-way through the maneuver, realised she was going to be running VERY wide on the exit, panicked and hit the brakes even harder. The probable result of doing this is that the bike would have “stood up” and carried her onto the wrong side of the road, exactly where she didn’t want to be going. As already noted, the road is ridiculously narrow at that point and she would have parted company with the bike (significantly the news report did not say that the BIKE had gone over the edge just the rider) and gone headlong over the edge.
In any event I can vouch for the care that she will be receiving at St George Hospital and I hope that the surgeons there have the same success repairing her fractures as they did with mine. If you know the Pass, you will know that the end result here could have been far, far worse.
POSTSCRIPT; I have been informed that the lady rider was forced onto the wrong side of the road by a 4WD who also left the scene of the accident without leaving any details. Hopefully somebody got the number.
And, on that note, here is the excellent Alison Moorer singing the song that is the title of my missive today. I apologise for the sappy video but this lady’s the real deal, her diction and phrasing are superb. Enjoy.
dunc says
did hear that a lady had a fall up there and where it occurred
i dont understand the
POSTSCRIPT; I have been informed that the lady rider was forced onto the wrong side of the road by a 4WD
how she got forced over to the wrong side where it happened and then fell over the edge
must have been on the wrong side of the road herself for that to be the case
but i may never know the full story as i was not there
went up the other day and got run off a cnr by a would gp racer type myself and just shook my head at the mentality of some using that road the way they do
wonder there isnt more accidents i’m afraid to say