People and Their Risks

Some time ago, my family and I saw a motorcycle accident from start to finish. I learned a few things from this.

We live in a rural area, to begin with. With apologies to Dickens, that much must be made perfectly clear from the start. The wreck happened in a beautiful place on a pretty afternoon. The two people in it were doing something very fun and enjoyable. I think a lot of disasters happen this way which makes them seem even more horrible.

Now myself, I like bikes. I've ridden off and on for years. Yet for me, three things are true:
a) I've never wrecked on the open road,
b) They scare the hell out of me, and
c) I'm always on edge when I throw a leg over the saddle.

That's how I approach 'em. Bikes really are dangerous. If you're going to ride, I think that's a good way to live with motorcycles. I don't understand these fools who launch off on a crotch rocket like The Matrix. If you're one, you're asking to get killed. If you don't have your spiritual act straight and ride like that, you're not just a fool, you're a damned fool. Sorry, but that's how I see things. Call it a limitation of mine.

Okay, enough of the sermon. Here's what happened on that really nice afternoon in southwest Douglas County. (This is a place where people ride all the time. They could make a motorcycling movie here. You'd have to see it to understand.)

The mistake was a simple one. They came over a descending left turn at double the safe speed and left the road. The driver locked his front wheel, skidded in a straight line, met gravel, then corkscrewed, launching himself and his girlfriend into the air. They crashed in a cloud of dust while their two companions rode on completely oblivious.

First lesson I learned is this. In rural places, when a yellow cautionary sign says 15 MPH, that's no kidding. You city people ignore cautionary speed limits all the time. You shouldn't do that out in God's country. There's usually a mighty good reason.

The second lesson was more subtle: motorcycles are NOT better at cornering than cars. They just corner differently. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because your vehicle leans over on two wheels like a fighter jet that it can ignore the laws of physics.

The third lesson is about how to crash a motorcycle. If you're about to wreck, you learn something: it's almost impossible to stop and turn at the same time. If you try, you'll launch, then you're going to fly. Good luck with impact, I hope you studied tumbling in gym class.

Skids happen in straight lines. Make all your stops in a straight line, make all your turns with little or no brakes. That's because a wheel which isn't turning isn't doing you any good. So if you're going to skid, you might as well pick where. The driver of this particular bike couldn't do that.

The fourth thing is really interesting: miracles happen. You'd have to have seen it to believe what happened next. About 10 yards off the road, a rancher had put up a barbed wire fence and staked it with angle-iron posts. If those two hadn't have launched and flown, they'd have been sliced like cheddar cheese. They didn't hit anything except mother Earth.

When I got to the lady, she was on her back unconscious. Both her eyes were open. Her right leg was snapped like a dry twig. There was a bulge in her leg where bulges aren't supposed to be. Her right toe was almost in her armpit and she was staring up at the sky with sand grains on her eyeballs. I thought she was dead.

The man had face planted with no helmet while his 600 pound motorcycle flew over him and landed on the barbed wire fence like a trampoline act where it hung suspended. He looked like 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali -- in about 3 seconds. I thought he'd broken his neck and figured either quadraplegic or dead.

A couple of us bystanders helped the lady by wiping the gravel and pebbles out of her eyes, moving her useless leg into something approximating a normal position and staying with her as she came to. Others helped the man while my wife phoned 911. Medivac copters came for both and flew them to a hospital while the Sheriff and I cut the barbed wire, which whipped the air as the bike settled. The guy spent a night in the ICU while the lady got a leg cast. Both made a complete recovery. He was out in about four days, she was out in about a day and a half.

They bought another bike and planned to continue motorcycling. I hope some of those lessons took.

Air Travel -- Change Has GOT to Come

Here is something you can be sure of. Air travel is gonna change. I travel a lot these days, and I'm a pretty experienced el-cheapo air traveller by now. In addition, I'm also a private pilot. I have an instrument rating. I've studied the economics of private versus commercial air travel in my various fantasies about life and have nibbled at my commercial pilot's license as well. Here's what I've figured out so far.

First -- we will not see the public taking to the skies in personal flying vehicles anytime soon. The personal sky car is a futile pipe dream that's been with us since the end of WWII -- right up there with Esperanto and visualizing World Peace. Not gonna happen. Ever. Whatever the big change is, it is not millions of ordinary citizens becoming pilots -- for a LOT of very good reasons.

Second -- the sheer crappiness of present-day commercial air travel is so pronounced, it will COMPEL the free enterprise system to produce its replacement. We're talking about a genuinely unpleasent, miserable travelling experience which does not look like it will improve in quality anytime soon.

You sit down on any airliner these days and what you immediately notice is:
1. The thing's packed to the gills
2. The airline in question is probably in bankruptcy
3. The schedule is filled with flights

Something doesn't fit here. Whether it's Delta or United or Frontier or US Air or Continental or whoever, you notice it right away. There's red ink all over the place and at the same time, hardly a seat to be found and a downright lousy travelling experience to be had by all -- hardly any room for bags, no leg room, little to no food, lousy magazines with absolutely nothing in them worth reading, tired-looking flight attendants. Tectonic pressures are building. Something's gotta give.

I said to a fellow passenger one day, "You know, it's hard to see how this airline's bankrupt. Look at this cabin. Absolutely every single seat has a rider. Every last one." My fellow passenger just smiled and agreed. Neither one of us had a clue why that was. Theoretically, you'd expect the airline to be making big money on us all. Not happening.

I repeat: something's gotta give. You wait and see. Somebody out there is going to figure out how to do it a LOT better, for a LOT less money, providing better roominess and atmosphere. And whether it's in a totally different system of flying and routing or not, whoever does is going to CLOBBER the big guys. And I don't just mean the Jet Blues and Southwests of the world. I mean even better than them. See, they offer the same cramped, crappy experience as United or American, but just do it for less cost (translation: sucky wages). That's not the big improvement I'm thinking of. No, it's something even better than that.

Whoever pulls it off is gonna KILL the traditional airlines off altogether. They won't just be in bankruptcy reorganizing their debts -- they'll be extinct. And frankly, folks -- they deserve to be. Moreover, if any of you reading happen to be airline employees, I just have to tell you: you have a terrible reputation. You really do.

We are at a point in the commercial air travel game about where passenger railroads were in the early 1950's or where General Motors was in the early 1960's: in control, everything business-as-usual, and without a clue anything is coming to change their world. What that thing is is the mystery yet to be revealed. But it's got to be coming.

By the way, in case you're wondering, is it even competitive to fly yourself -- if you had the plane and the skills (which practically nobody does)? In a word, nope. Get this.

The fastest, least expensive, light pressurized twin that can fly from Denver to San Francisco in anything like what the airlines can do (say, four hours; not bad) is still four times the cost of a round trip coach seat on United. So that's not the big change that's coming.

Another thing that won't be the big change (because the proponents are in total denial of reality) is the baby biz jet. This is a small five or six-seat twin jet aircraft that several companies are making. Now, they say, you can fly your own jet for a lot less. Now, they claim, jet flying is affordable. So affordable, in fact, this new breed of tiny personal airliner will change even the old hub-and-spoke airline system of today; now, a small bizjet can fly you from Smallville Airport to wherever -- no more plane changes, etc etc.

Frankly, that's a lot of hooey put out by the makers of still-hideously-expensive aircraft that almost no private pilot could be insurable to fly. Despite them being RELATIVELY cheap (compared to a $25 million Gulfstream or Citation), they're still between 1 and 3 MILLION bucks. Nope. Not gonna happen. That's not the big change.

But something is coming. It has to. And I can hardly wait. To whoever's out there, if you are reading and have the idea, please. Go for it. Today. MILLIONS of travellers are waiting for a better way.