Insensitive, uncalled for, but from you? Totally expected. (Go on, moderate me)
I guess you and Flood have some sort of disagreement, but whatever your problem with him (since I don’t recall him putting anything about you) what is strictly wrong with the statement he put which appears to be added to John Cs post? Speed is more of a factor on two wheels than four – for the rider of the bike; most motorcyclists are perceived to hair around at speed, weaving in and out of the other traffic (one did this morning, on my way into work: I thought that had there been more ice around then he would be under someones wheels in an instant, but he appeared to know what he was doing) and yet they can still get killed when not speeding – either through their own fault or that of other road users. I photographed a fatal accident scene where a subsequently woman died and the bike was not even moving – she had the engine running and was putting her helmet on, the bike slipped over and her head hit the ground with a lot of force. At another accident scene a friendly police officer told me of a previous accident where he’d had to ask the family to positively identify a motorcyclist (from items of clothing and personal effects, he said) but they had wanted to see their son one last time and refused to believe it was him (he said that they really didn’t want to believe it was their son) because his face had come into contact with a post at 40mph. The same policeman told me of a motorcycle club that disbanded because their members suffered three fatalities in one summer, which, he said, shook the other members up so much that they took radical action.
On a different level it doesn’t matter how fast a train is going – the wrong sort of contact will kill you; I didn’t photograph a railway worker carrying the leg of a successful suicide attemptee since I was bringing up my breakfast. The train driver managed to get his speed down to 5mph before contact was made but the man apparently lay straddling the track so the speed didn’t really matter. A colleague of mine attended the scene of a train surfing accident; the victim didn’t connect with anything but the ground when he lost his footing, and was not a pretty sight.
But speed does not always kill – I guess there are always going to be those who end up severely disabled as a result. A few years ago I had to photograph a young man who was, I think, paralysed from the neck down as a result of crashing into a lampost at over 70mph whilst being chased by the police for being a drunk joyrider. He and his family were out to sue whoever they could (I believe that included the shopkeeper who sold him the alcohol, the car owner for not having an alarm fitted, the police for chasing him, probably the ambulance crew for not getting him to hospital quickly enough, and there was mention that his school had let him hang around with the wrong sort…) while seeming not to accept his role in the affair.
Its they only time I have ever talked back at one of my subjects: his chain-smoking be-shellsuited mother was moaning so much that her ‘angelic’ son should never have ended up paralysed for the rest of his life that I asked when his brother was due for release – the reporter having told me beforehand that both boys were known to the police as joyriders…
I hazard that you could say that stupidity in any sort of vehicle kills, the speeder or someone else – Nermal
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