Motorcycle crash with deer changed local couple’s life
By Frank Schultz, The Janesville Gazette, Wis. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
"It was one of those mornings when it's a little cool out, it's sunny, you know, low humidity."
Perfect for a bike ride, Dan recalled.
It was
----Peak times for deer crashes are mornings and evenings, roughly
----The Wichsers' story is worth considering as the peak time of the year for car-deer crashes begins.
----
That makes
The national average is 1 in 169.
----The couple were on
Dan, now 53, had biked most of his life. CJ had been riding with him for years. Whenever they could, they traveled by bike. They even had made the biker pilgrimage to
All that changed that morning, about 30 miles after they hit the road.
----
The top three states were
----The life-changing event arrived at 60 mph. It came in the form of a deer and in the middle of a sentence:
"It is just a beaut..."
CJ did not get to finish. Dan had glanced to the right, soaking in the scenery. He remembers a brown flash and a loud sound.
"I didn't even let up on the throttle. I didn't even have a second. It was just--POW!
"I knew we were crashing," he said.
And he knew it was a deer.
Dan and CJ slid down the road. Dan ended up near the centerline at the bottom of a knoll. He remembers worrying that a car could come over the rise and hit him. He tried to move, but several broken ribs, one broken leg and a chunk of flesh gouged out of his head begged to differ. They were not wearing helmets.
"That was part of what I liked about riding a bike. I liked the wind blowing through my hair," Dan said. "This is why I ride a motorcycle, you know? It is what it is. Everybody understands the risk you're taking, I guess"
----Twenty states require all riders to wear helmets.
----The bike ended up on its side with CJ on top of it. She had a couple of tears in her pants and a cut on her hand that required stitches, but that was it, Dan said.
They could be considered lucky.
If he had braked, the bike could have flipped. It could have been much worse, Dan thinks. As it was, the impact took the wheels out from under them.
"You probably couldn't ask for a better scenario if you hit a deer," he said. "If you follow the stories of people who hit deer on motorcycles, a lot of them aren't able to tell the story."
The deer was not lucky. It lay dead in the ditch.
Something must have spooked or chased the deer to make it bolt into the road, Dan said.
----In 2012, AAA released national statistics that showed 70 percent of deer-related fatal crashes involve motorcycles.
That same year in
----"I took the brunt of it. I never got knocked out," Dan recalled. "We hit him just perfectly broadside, almost."
The impact totaled the 2010
"It was my new bike," Dan said.
They had bought it about 18 months before.
----Deer are involved in a growing proportion of
----It hurt to breathe. Dan lay there, thinking someone could come driving over the knoll and run him over.
"This is not going to be good," he thought.
He tried to get to the shoulder, but the pain was unbearable, he said.
A semitrailer truck came over the hill.
"Thank God he saw me, and he hit his brakes right away."
Passersby stopped to help.
"It seems like forever when you're lying out there because it's a long way to anyplace that's got an ambulance."
A helicopter took Dan to
Dan found out he had a punctured lung. Treatment included two chest tubes and stitching the flesh around his shredded knees.
It was eight weeks before he could return to work at the
----The number of vehicle-deer crashes in
----Other than a spin on his son's bike, Dan and CJ have not ridden since.
"Neither one of us could just quite relax," Dan said.
"You realize, holy cow, how close."
They had had close calls with deer before--they live in a corner of the county that is rife with the beasts.
"You realize it's only one or two seconds away from a disaster, really," Dan said.
"Maybe we shouldn't push our luck anymore," they thought.
They had hit deer before with other vehicles. A deer hit the side of their son's car last year near home, its head crashing through a window.
They bought a Jeep with a deer-pusher bumper so the could take the top off and still feel the wind in their hair but do so with a lot more protection, he said.
"You definitely stand a better chance," he said.
"We used to joke about, 'Gee, I wonder if it would be soft and furry if you hit a deer.' And I can tell you. It's not soft and furry, Dan said.
----About 17 percent of crashes with deer and
___
(c)2014 The Janesville Gazette (Janesville, Wis.)
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