Man with new motorcycle in fatal crash

[TFee3]

I bought a new c90T after almost 20 years of not riding, but I trailered it home. I backed it out of the trailer, adjusted the mirrors, rode it 50 feet down my driveway and promptly dumped it on my left leg. Not to be outdone, I rode off. Two weeks later, I dumped it on my right leg, but this time severely sprained my ankle, twisted my knee, and cracked two ribs. Even so, I rode it home. I haven't had a problem since. I have ridden off and on for 56 years, and you know the old saying, those who have or will dump their bikes!

[FormerF150Owner]

Originally Posted by amvince

Sad but its the buyers responsibility. No helmet, off a bike for 30 years and trying to ride an unfamilar machine. I hadn't ridden for 18 years before I bought my curerent bike other than my kids XR 70. I took the course, trailered my bike home and wear a full faced helmet.

AMVINCE - I couldn't agree more on you mentioning an "unfamiliar machine". I rode a co-workers Hyabusa the other day for about 2 miles and I couldn't wait to get OFF THAT BIKE. It was completely different than my M50. They may be great for some folks but not me.

If I had rode a BUSA home from the dealer I may have been a statistic also.

[inspiron]

I've ridden several bikes away from the dealership - and never had a problem.

A friend of mine had just picked up his new bike and made it less than 50 yards. He was rear-ended at the first intersection and landed in the hospital. The bike was totaled with less than 1 mile on the tacho.

It's not always the rider's fault.

[JmalB]

Originally Posted by KD57

According to the OSHA pos inspector at the jobsites, ALL accidents are completely avoidable. There is NO SUCH thing as an accident. I hope a meteorite hits him in the head.

Our safety guys say there are no accidents, only incidents...


I had my roommate ride my scoot home when I bought it. He'd been riding for years.

[busa-boy33]

Originally Posted by KD57

According to the OSHA pos inspector at the jobsites, ALL accidents are completely avoidable. There is NO SUCH thing as an accident. I hope a meteorite hits him in the head.

oh man your right. I was in training there for a while to be an OSHA instructor back a few years ago. I had taken HAZMAT, HAZ-CONTROL, OSHA Site Safety and Construction Safety courses and lemme tell ya, for every accident and every injury recorded on a job site you can rest assured that there will be a new rule on the books as to how to avoid it. There are so many redundant rules, and laws now on books that you have to sit back and ask yourself "Who is hiring all these accident prone morons??".

my favorite one is the requirement to have a body harness and be fully tied-off with a lanyard if your 4' or higher. So if your on a step stool and your feet are higher then 4' you had better be 100% tied off.
But lets be truthful here, we all know why these rules are in place. Because there are S.O.B's out there that would rather live off of workman's comp then actually have to go to a 9 to 5 job every day. They milk the system with stupid lawsuits for small injuries they suffered on the job OR they want meds because they are hooked on them and throw fake injuries out there to gain them.
So it ends us up with stupid rules that breaks the common sense law and actually has to be in written form because paper cuts are being filed under workman's comp. No lie!

So be sure if your in an office to close those filing cabinet drawers so no one trips over them, falls and dies from severe head trauma. Watch out for paper cuts as that could get infected causing you to lose an arm or leg. Please stop shooting rubber bands at coworkers as this could put an eye out, stop spitting staples at people as you could swallow one causing internal bleeding in the stomach thus death.. you get the idea. People you can't make this stuff up.

[KD57]

The 100% tie off rule. Believe it or not, the safety guy at a jobsite actually told my driver he should be tied off because the bed of the truck violates the height rule. He even wrote it up on a safety complaint sheet and sent it to our office.

As far as worker comp lawsuits go, I have been in many. Here are a couple:
1. We installed wall mounted rail to a stairway at Sam's Club. The dingbat worker there used skates to get around on. The lunch room is on a mezzanine, so instead of taking her skates off to go up the stairs, she leaves them on. Lunch is over, so instead of walking down the stairs, she decides to skate down the rail, which was a bad idea. We were sued over it.

2. We erected a 2 story building. Months later a guy drives a forklift thru a wall, and down to the ground. We were sued again, since we erected the building. In fact, on this one, everyone was sued that happen to be in the vicinity. He even sued the landscaper because this moron landed on a stick used to hold up a planted bush the landscaper planted.

[themeatmanlandry]

Rigth before I took the job as Safety Manager on the base, they had a guy fall asleep on a tractor while bush hawging (look it up Yankees!!). He went into the bush hawg and was subsequently chopped to bits. They sued.

A girl at the same job was trimmign hedges with electric clippers. She finished the area she was working on and decided to move the ladder. Before she got off the ladder, she grabbed the moving blades with her free hand and lost 3 fingers. She sued.



Also, isn't the OSHA rule 6' (not 4)? Is 4 feet a rule your boss uses?

[KD57]

The OSHA rule is 6'. A few general contractors have their own safety regime, and a couple of them use 4'. Probably because they were sued when a guy fell that was off the ground 5'-11 3/4.

[amvince]

After reading your posts I think there should be an Idiot test. If you fail the Idiot test you should not be able to sue and you should be shipped off to Idiot Island.

[KD57]

[JmalB]

I hope I pass. I really don't want to be on a season of Survivor.

[Nick Mystic]

It seems to me that this posting has gone from a sad story about a guy getting killed in the parking lot of the dealership where he had just purchased a motorcycle to an OSHA bashing thread. Granted, when one reads some of the safety regulations on the books it's easy to make jokes about how stupid someone would have to be to actually receive an injury doing something that common sense would seem to be sufficient to prevent.

I once served on a Safety Committee for the small town I lived shortly after a terrible tragedy occurred at a chicken processing plant in our state. A number of people died when they couldn't escape from a burning building due to the owners padlocking the door shut to keep workers from taking unauthorized smoking breaks.

In order to help keep our town's insurance premium down they invited someone from the League of Municipalities to come out and give our safety committee a presentation on safety issues. The guy who came out to give the talk was a former OSHA inspector and it seemed to me that he was more interested in being well received by the "good old boys" he was talking to than he was in really educating us about safety problems.

For example, he told numerous stories like the ones posted above by some forum participants detailing some sort of accident that someone sued over when common sense would tell you it was the person's own fault they got injured (like roller skating down a flight of steps, for example).

After his short talk he told us he would walk through the town hall building with us to point out some safety violations if he spotted any. As he walked along he would point something out and cite the regulation that was being violated, but always did so in a way that would elicit a laugh from the group. In the office area he stopped in front of some filing cabinets and said, "Here's another violation. This filing cabinet should be fastened to the wall."

Again, this got a good laugh from the group and some comments about how we don't have earthquakes in NC and don't really have to worry about the filing cabinets falling over. While everyone was laughing one of the Aldermen on the committee reached over and pulled out the top drawer of the filing cabinet, which as it turned out was stuffed to the gills with files. When the drawer was about two thirds of the way open the entire five foot tall filing cabinet fell over forwards and the sharp corner of the open drawer caught the mayor (who had been laughing the loudest over all the dumb safety regulations being explained) on his forearm and opened up a terrible gash that later took 14 stitches to sew shut!

The point of my comment is that a lot of safety regulations that might sound silly when taken out of context probably came about because someone ended up getting a serious injury before safety measures were enacted.

[Davecm203]

I wonder that if it keeps up like this: Will most states end up going to a graduated licensing system like they have in the U.K. and Japan.

I witnessed a parking lot crash at a dealer once. I guy bought a new CBR1000. I heard the salesman ask him, "are you sure you will be ok?" The customer replied, "Of course. I have been racing dirt bikes since I was 6 years old and ....blah, blah, blah,..." He then started the bike, revved it to red line, and just let go of the clutch. The bike shot into a wheelie, he fell off the back, the bike shot across the parking lot like a rocket, and then smashed into a parked Honda Prelude. He was sitting there stunned.