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Darkly ironic....
http://beta.news.yahoo.com/ny-motorcycl ... 17859.html

NOT FUNNY AT ALL. Bad kharma dude.....

Guess he found out there is something to helmets after all. Even a brain-bucket would have saved him.

Experience is a brutal and painful teacher. I have to wonder what the rest of his protester buddies learned, if anything. Sounds like he discovered what happens when you lock the rear brake and let it go before you stop moving on pavement. Probably he never had a formal riding course where he would have learned that fact from the outset.

Prayers for his family.

Not comedic, but certainly an ironic tragedy. ATGATT.

Comedic was the wrong choice of words.. I apologize..I was thinking of it in a DARK and Sad way, again I didn't intend to offend.

Also one more in a long line of arguments for ABS.

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but anyone who rides a motorcycle without a helmet is an idiot. Sure, I'll respect your right to ride without one, but I won't respect you for doing it.

I saw an accident much like this last summer. An older HD bagger (the bike, not the rider) was a few cars in front of me when it went down in traffic at 20-25mph. I had initially though he had been hit by the following car, but the bike showed no evidence of being hit. It looked like he locked his rear brake and lost control. The rider fell off and rolled down the road for about twenty feet. He was wearing a helmet and the helmet was badly scarred. The EMTs were called and they took the guy to the hospital, but I appeared his only injuries were the usual beating you get from the road. It was hard to assess his injuries as he was a French speaking Quebecois and his English wasn't much better than our French. If the damage to his helmet had been done to his head, it's hard to imagine he could have avoided serious injuries. This rider fell from a low seated motorcycle and did not strike any other vehicles or roadside objects. I was vaguely surprised at how battered his helmet was.

My only contribution to the event was preventing a well intentioned, but untrained bystander from removing his helmet. I thought we were going to have to tie the lady up so she would leave the poor bastard alone and not cause secondary injuries.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again - this rider probably made more people realize the value of wearing a helmet then most anything else recently that I've heard of. So he done good by doing bad to himself.

To quote a memorable line of Arnold's... "Pafement vuz hiss enemy."

I can't say I laughed when I heard this story (in a conversation), but I admit I came close. (It's not bad karma, it's just that the irony is so Woody Allen...)

Wear a helmet, save a life.

And whether you're riding solo or not, your family might as well be on the back of the bike with you... you're never alone when it comes to painful consequences.

r12gecko wrote:....your family might as well be on the back of the bike with you... you're never alone when it comes to painful consequences.

That's what ultimately convinced Pete Wilson (R), former Gov. of CA, to finally sign the helmet law.

He was presented with the tens of millions of dollars it was costing CA taxpayers to care for brain-injured riders, and the follow-on costs of public services for widows and now-impoverished children.

You pays your money and takes your choice…. Being a conservative kind of guy (aren’t all BMW riders?) I choose to ride with a helmet, but respect the decision of those who choose not to. The rider believed in his cause and paid the ultimate price. The real irony is that if the “Do Gooders and Uplifters” had stayed out of the decision the rider would not have died while participating in a protest ride.