Rider killed in Germany.
Went out this morning alone as my normal riding partner is out of the country for a few weeks. He has lived here for about 7 years so I usually just follow and try and pronouns the names of the towns along the way. Well today I took the GPS with me and decided to just wonder. About 75 km away from home I made my way around a long right hand sweeper only to find myself maneuvering through what was left of an Audi A4 and a BMW Motorcycle. Out of the corner of my eye I can see a small group of people huddled around behind the Audi. I pulled over and ran over to them. There was a women in riding gear knelt over the man on the ground. Blood was running into the street from his helmet, his arms were obviously broken and he was completely non responsive and not breathing. The color of his face was extremely pale with an odd yellow/green tone. His wife was crying a little and shaking him a bit trying to get some sort of sign of life but there was nothing. I asked if she spoke English and how long had it been since the accident, she said 10 minutes and that he had been in the same condition from the moment she got to him. She had been on another bike and stopped about 100 ft further down the road. The Audi had been driven by a man with his wife. He was still sitting in the driver seat not doing anything and the wife was standing outside the car just looking at us. I'm sure they were in shock but for god sake couldn’t they have at least tried to comfort the wife of the man who was clearly dead? I guess in their defense it was obviously not their fault; it looked as if he had run wide through the corner and then steered himself to the far left to try and avoid the car. Instead he clipped the front right corner of the car sending him and the bike into the guardrail. Its been about 1-2 minutes that I’d been there when a women stops who was apparently a nurse or doctor and begins CPR. I thought to try before she arrived but it was clearly too late and not being able to speak German I didn’t know how to explain or how they would react. The nurse had the wife perform the breaths and started chest compressions her self. After about 2 minutes the first Polizei arrived and an ambulance. They intervened but did not even attempt to continue CPR. About 30 seconds after the ambulance arrived a helicopter flew in and landed right in the middle of the corner where this all started. Strangely enough the Polizei didn’t make any attempt to stop traffic and cars literally had to stop in the middle of the road not having seen the wreck yet but rather just a helicopter landing in front of them. The whole thing just came together and never did it seem chaotic or disorganized, everyone just seemed to respond appropriately as events took place.
I had by this time moved out of the way and was just waiting to provide a statement if I could when the wife of the man who died came to me with the keys to her bike and asked me to bring it closer to where we were. Her face was covered in blood from trying to breath for her husband but she was calm. Obviously she was in some state of shock but had the presence of mind to get her bike moved out of the street oddly enough. After some time I told one of the other men who had helped do CPR to translate to her that I would call a friend to load her bike onto a trailer and bring it to her home so she wouldn’t have to deal with it but the polizei said they would do this. I felt so bad for here I just want to help her in some way but there was nothing any of us could do at that point. Finally the polizei asked us to go after getting personal information from us and I left.
I was surprised as I road away I didn’t feel any hesitation to twist the throttle but I definitely will never forget her face and I hope the best for her.
That was my morning...
__________________
Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
- George Bernard Shaw
Last edited by circleincircle : 08-26-2007 at 09:22 AM.
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