Ever watched someone wreck on the street?

[MendoDave]

I was on a return leg of a pretty long ride and it just so happened that I met up with A guy who was heading back down the coast coming from Seattle. I told him I was making a pit stop at the Westport store where I might toss one back. After about 40 miles of riding down Hwy 101 and Hwy1, we reached the store. I went inside to get one of those big bottles of beer. Old Rasputin or Kiltlifter or something like that.
When I came back out I found that this guy was mixing his own Highball in a bottle of coke from one of two flasks that he had. So over the course of 15 minutes we talked about bikes, long trips, suspension, luggage and things like that all the while polishing off our drinks and watching the sun get lower over the ocean.

Taking off from the store I told him to lead off as I was going to turn off at my driveway in about 15 miles. I noticed right away that something wasn't right with this guy anymore, and as we rode out of the town and into the first set of twistys It became apparent that the guy was going to crash. What do I do? was going through my head. I had said "lets stop and get a drink" Not "Lets stop and get drunk" But this guy seemed plastered and he was taking up the whole lane on the triumph. Well we hadn't even gone a half mile out of town before he unceremoniously drove right off the side of the road and down the side of the fill slope.

My first thought was Oh man I hope the bluff isn't right there. Had he done it about three turns later he would have gone down a steep slope breaks off into a cliff. The ocean is down there 100 feet or so. I gave him a ride into town and let him sleep it off.

[DucHead]

In 2007, I watched my (then) girlfriend going ca. 50 mph hit the side of a sedan that turned left in front of her.  She was thrown 30+ feet.  She broke both legs several times, including two compound fractures.

Not fun to watch.

[CairnsDuc]

I watched 2 Bike accidents, both involving Harley's

I was sitting at the Traffic lights and from the opposite side of the intersection I watch an older Harley roll up to the lights,
Stop and then proceed to topple over, I ran the red light, (Made sure no cars were going through the lights, it was about 6am on
a Sunday morning) pulled off to the side of the road and ran over to see if the guy was OK, he was sitting on the road laughing!!??!
by this stage a couple of other cars had rocked up, so we all helped him get the bike upright, He then said he simply forgot to put
his feet down when he stopped! At least he saw the funny side, he jumped on his Harley, Started it up and with a puff of blue smoke
from the exhausts he went on his merry way.

Was riding up the local mountain range to attend a bike show, the local Ducati dealer asked me to bring my Monster along to display,
At this stage the bike was running like a pig, We had just fitted the Termi's and DP airfilter/open Air Box kit but the DP ECU was Faulty.
So they put in the original ECU with a tweaked map to get me around on the weekend, so the bike was running rich, coughing through the
air box,  So I was taking a rather slow ride up the range.

I was able to stay in front of the cars, but if any bikes came up behind me I would pull over and wave them through, One guy on a Harley
decides he wants to play silly buggers and swerve around behind me, I signal him to pass, he does not pass, he waits until about 5 or 6
turns later and decides to try and pass me on the inside of a tight turn, last second I see him so I move to the middle of the lane and brake,
I don't think he realized how tight the turn was, hit's the brakes and drops the bike and slides in front of me into the hillside.

Thankfully for him it was a slower corner, but when your only wearing T shirt, Shorts, Helmet and runners, well lets just say he a decent
amount of gravel rash, and a badly damaged Harley, which was now pissing out oil and fuel on the road side.
I stayed with him for about 10 mins until his friends all started to turn up, I was told he will be fine and was basically told to go away.
So I left. Never did hear how he went.

[The Bacon Junkie]

I've witnessed more crashes than I'd like to have seen. Like DP - a couple up close and personal.

But on the way out to the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant one morning about 50 miles west of Phoenix I witnessed a bad one.  Two friends and I had stopped at a little store just a short distance from the plant.  As we left I noticed a guy on a Honda 750 pull off right in front of us with his kick stand still down.

I told the guys with me that if they wanted to see a motorcycle crash just watch the guy up in front of us a ways. They asked how I would know this. I said, just watch.  We were coming into a long pretty deep left hand sweeper. The road was full of cars all going about 70 mph.  As the rider bent further and further to the left to make the turn, the kick  stand finally hit the road.

The bike high sided and slammed down onto the road beginning what seemed to be an endless series of end over ends out into the desert with the rider doing the same.  How he lived through it I don't know, but it wasn't pretty to watch and he was seriously injured.  It was a helpless feeling knowing what was about to occur and having no way to stop it.

LA

I did the same thing a month or two ago while riding with Duck-Stew (minus the crashing part)

We had stopped at a lookout point up on Piuma Cyn Rd.  It's very twisty and elevated speeds are possible. 

Sometimes my kickstand won't go all the way up when I kick it and the spring pulls it back down.      Well, we were in a feisty mood and I fired up Rosie, kicked the stand, clicked down into first, and took off.  The first turn after the lookout is a slight right into a fast left.  I had just clicked into second and started leaning left when the stand started scraping.    It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but luckily I was only doing about 40mph and was able to stand her up and stop before something really bad happened.

All I know is I needed to clean out my leathers when I got home... Stu might have had to too!

[lazylightnin717]

I was on my way back from centralia about 2 years ago with some friends. We were on a good, twisty mountain road. Two of my buddies were ahead of me as we were coming up on a fairly sharp left turn. I notices my buddy in front get on the brakes a little harder than normal so I did the same. Next thing you know, a bike comes sliding across the road followed by the rider. Nothing too crazy. Until the second bike comes sliding across the road followed by the rider. Bonus!

Apparently they were riding brand new bikes and had no idea how to ride. I saw a sticker on a trash can down at deals gap this past weekend that reminded me of those two squids. It said "if loud pipes save lives, imagine what learning to ride first would do" or something along those lines.

Never did find out what made then crash but my guess is they came into it too fast and locked up the front mid lean and the bikes instantly went down.

[DucMouse the Mighty]

i was riding home one day after work and i saw a guy lock his front brakes and go into the back of a truck..

we were riding down the street(he was in the far left and i was far right) and i was coming up close to him, when the light turned red and the truck infront of him just slammed on the breaks and the guy just grabbed his breaks(locking them) and landed on his side but the bike went right under the truck  ...so i pulled off on to the sidewalk and crossed the street and by then they had already pulled his bike to the side and the guy was ok..he had a jacket and helmet...but i think he might have gotten a little road rash on the legs....when the cops came they saw my bike took them a few mintues to see us on the other side of the street....it got my adrenline pumping for a bit! but glad he was ok.