Alternate blog post titles: “Wear your helmets kids”, “Must happen all the time”, “Not a great way to start a ride”, “Stuff you’d rather not see on Vacation” or perhaps “Hope he makes it”.  Warning: this blog post contains a description of a traumatic event, which while not gratuitously graphic, may be tough for some people to read (it was not easy for me to write).

I got pulled over today!  Or perhaps more accurately a cop with a dustmask pointed at me.  Local police were pulling over folks riding/driving around the Chiang Mai’s moat.  I was very surprised, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong.  Frankly, I am not sure if Thailand even has traffic laws, as there doesn’t seem to be any speed limits (posted or honored), and people do pretty much whatever they want (and the system works pretty well, perhaps better than in the US).  It turns out they were just randomly pulling over farangs to make sure they had their drivers licenses (which I did), so was not a big deal.  He was only pulling over foreigners, so I assume that my significantly larger sillhoute was the giveaway (I wear a full face helmet).

Scooters rule the road here, and is by far the primary form of personal transportation for the masses.  If one where to sit on the side of the road and make a casual observation they would notice that certainly no more than half of the bikers around here wear helmets.  I was quite surprised to discover that, by law, motorcycle riders are required to wear helmets.   Obviously with only half the folks here honoring the rule, enforcement has been an issue, and the local magistrates have been working pretty hard on it.  Everyday here there are checkpoints (typically around corners) where police pull over riders and issue citations.  They certainly have a long way to go.

This morning, Mike (my new found Australian riding partner) and I were heading north to the hot springs by Pa Pae, perhaps 100km northwest of Chiang Mai.  The ride was fairly uneventful, the usual morning diesel fumes and then as we left the city behind we reached fresh air.  We just turned off the main highway and onto a normal 2-lane blacktop with long open straightaways, which is fairly uncommon around here.  Mike and I are riding “Big Bikes”, 250 and 400cc respectively.  Tiny by American standards, but they dwarf the 50 and 100cc scooters that dominate the landscape.  Having a large displacement bike isn’t really necessary, as there is rarely opportunity to exceed 50 MPH either because of the traffic or geography.  The exception to the rule was this road north of Chaing Mai which was free of traffic and turns.

Mike and I were clipping along comfortably at about 100kph, coming up on a Thai scooter driver who had his machine running at maximum speed of about 80 kph.  When I got to about 50 yards behind the driver I saw his bike start to wobble.  At first I thought he was just intentional weaving (bikers do this on long boring stretches), and then I realized he was in serious trouble.  He was experiencing ‘high speed wobble’ or ‘tank slap’ in which the front wheel and handle bars begin to swing back and forth uncontrollably.  He managed to semi-control the bike for perhaps a second or two and then, unable to recover, was violently tossed from the bike.  He tumbled and slid down the road for about 30-40 yards, eventually bouncing off the road and down into a concrete ditch.

I was able to come to stop 10 yards or so past where he finally landed, Mike was a little bit further back from me.  He hit his head pretty hard and when we reached him he was having violent convulsions.  Naturally we were totally unprepared for treating major trauma and realized we have to get this guy medical attention immediately.

And this is perhaps the most disturbing part of the story: We tried to flag people down.  His body was clearly visible from the road, but the first 5-10 cars simply looked and continued.  The man stopped convulsing, in time for a sawngthaew with about 6 tourists to stop, and one of the tourists was a paramedic.  I got a Thai man who also stopped to dial emergency services and report the accident.

Local police arrived within minutes, and a ambulance truck arrived perhaps 5-10 minutes.  The injured man was conscious, although did not seem to be very aware of what was going on.  He sustained fairly serious injuries to his hands and feet–he was only wearing sandals.  He also was without a helmet, and although his skull did not seem deformed he had an obvious head injury and perhaps a broken orbital socket (above left eye).  I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he also sustained a few fractured bones.  His injuries were pretty major, but all things considered he was very fortunate–he could have been killed instantly.

This was fairly a difficult thing for me to watch and I’m having a hard time writing about it.  Watching the whole thing happen from start to finish was perhaps the worst thing that I’ve ever seen.  I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to find out if he will survive or not, but I think he probably will, of he didn’t have cerebral hemorrhaging or internal bleeding

The fact that we couldn’t get anyone to stop and help was pretty disgusting.  Mike thought that they were willing to let him die rather than stop, and that if the tour truck hadn’t had foreigners on it they may not have stopped either.   Eventually more Thais stopped to help but it was an amazing cultural difference that we find difficult to understand.

The sad truth though is this: If he had of been wearing the same safety gear that I was wearing at the time (riding jacket, leather gloves, riding pants, full-face helmet) he probably could have ridden away without injury.  The bike was damaged but probably drivable.  I guess I can’t stress how important good safety gear is–it’ll save your life.  Wear your damned helmets people!

I’ve been trying to take as many photos as possible, although I didn’t this morning.  I think I’ll have no trouble remembering.

On a lighter note: the hot springs were good and am going to ride Elephants tomorrow.

Tags: motorcycle, thailand

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 4:52 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.