I was groggy and rather unsure I knew where I was, or who I was, or whether I was.
The first thing I vaguely remembered in those exact moments was the hands of paramedics pushing up against my arms and legs, my head and chest. I said to somebody, “Help me get up.”
Nobody listened.
Instead, strangers strapped me to some kind of stretcher and loaded me into an ambulance. Next thing, they carried me into a hospital room and placed me in a tube to take some images, looking for damage.
Not completely outside my normal unusual thought processes, I recalled the quote from Dizzy Dean, who was hit in the head by a thrown ball while attempting to break up a double play in a 1934 World Series game, when after that injury he famously said, “They X-rayed my head … and found nothing.”
What my doctors found was, for lack of a better description, a bruised heart knocked out of rhythm, broken ribs and a whole lot of hurt. I stayed in the hospital overnight for observation and hobbled to bed at home the next day.
I had been in a bike wreck, and, in my case, there was nobody to blame but myself. No car hit me. No distracted driver went awry. I took a downhill turn too fast and the asphalt made me pay. It could have been bad, much worse than it was. The whole of it was just a small personal taste of the dangers of rolling on a bicycle, something most of us do from the time we’re like 5 years old.
How hard can it be?
Well. Very hard. Very dangerous.
Especially when other moving vehicles are involved. That much has become tragically evident in the news of late, including everything from stories of brothers participating in a race in St. George, good men who had every good reason to live, who were hit and killed by a distracted driver while on the side of a road to noted Utahn and former NBA player Shawn Bradley, who was also struck by a car while pedaling away, and paralyzed in the process.
One of the messages in such accounts is … to … be … careful … out … there.
Not that there was any fault in the aforementioned cases by those on their bikes. The message is for everyone who shares the road — but especially motorists. Being on a bike is risky. There’s a lot more risk than there should be.
Estimates claim there are about 1 billion bikes in the world … whew, a billion. A hundred million in the United States. There are even more cars.
Anyone who spends a lot of time on a bike has a harrowing tale to tell.
I know of cyclists who crashed while powering down canyon roads at high rates of speed and bike riders who casually slalomed around planters on their own street. Mix in the variable of motor traffic, drivers who don’t see cyclists because they are not looking for or expecting them, and tragedy lurks more menacingly.
It’s a matter of cyclists thinking safety first, but more so others on the road paying attention, far beyond the bumper of the car ahead of them.
Bikes and bikers are here, there, everywhere.
With the advent and popularity of e-bikes, powerful as they can be, caution is the needed rule.
I had a motorcycle as a young person, and because of the experience of riding and watching, noticing the way some drivers do not properly look carefully enough for those around them, those who aren’t driving an oversized SUV, but, despite those experiences, I’m not completely innocent, either.
On one occasion, years ago, I was parked on the side of a road on a steep hill in Salt Lake City. When I went to exit the vehicle, I swung my door open and just as I did a cyclist whirred on by. He was beyond the reach of my door, thankfully, but it sure seemed close. I hadn’t looked over my shoulder to check for that possibility.
I do now.
Hopefully, we all will, more dutifully. Look. Look. Look. And allow others to live.
When Bradley was hit and paralyzed by that car on his bike, I reflected back on a story his father, Reiner, told me of his son long ago, a story I’ve recounted before. He said: “He was always coordinated despite being tall. When he was 4 years old, we gave him a bike, and he was riding it around after about an hour. … He loved it.”
Everyone loves bikes, from youngsters with baseball cards clipped on, fluttering in their spokes — you old-timers remember doing that — to adult enthusiasts who pilot their $15,000-plus rides as often as possible.
Utah is a fantastic place to do so, what with scenery, if it were around major metros in the East, that would be as famous as any on the planet.
But with the beauty comes the beast.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 932 bicyclists were killed in U.S. motor-vehicle crashes in 2020. Hundreds of thousands were injured in various types of bike accidents. In Utah, somebody who supposedly knows about these things reports that an average of six bicyclists are killed each year, nearly 900 are seriously injured. Not to mention those who are injured in a way that falls south of “seriously,” which often refers to an injury suffered by someone else.
Point is, riding a bike is a popular thing to do in Utah, normally an enjoyable, healthy thing, a thing that requires personal responsibility on the part of the rider, but especially on the part of everybody around the rider.
You can barely get on a bike without demonstrating a great deal of trust in yourself and in others. Here’s to validating that trust, making it more worthwhile, making it worth it.
Danger lurks.
All anyone, all of us, can do is limit it as much as possible, as all of us let the good times roll.
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