There’s a jolt, an explosion, and the world turns white.
I’m in the turning lane, waiting to go left. Ahead of me I see blue lights flashing and then, much closer, a motorcyclist, driving at what seems an incredible speed. As the motorcycle is about to enter the intersection, the motorcyclist veers left — Did he lose control? Is he trying to avoid someone else? — and heads straight for me. There’s a jolt, an explosion, and the world turns white.
A few minutes earlier, I had been leaving the house and was about to get in the car when I remembered the bag. The grocery store charges an annoying 10 cents for one, so I turned around, went back inside, and picked up one from our stack of reusables. I hate paying that extra dime.
It was a sunny, near-perfect Sunday, with low humidity and temperatures in the mid-70s. It was early afternoon and the streets were surprisingly clear of traffic. I figured I’d be back shortly.
The biker is almost upon me and I helplessly raise my hands, as if to ward him off. “What the … !” I say, and we crash.
The world is white. Silent.
Am I dead? Am I in heaven?
I am surrounded by a deep fog but the haze quickly dissipates. In front of me, an airbag is deflating. I realize I need to get out of the car, but the side airbags are still inflated. That’s interesting, I think, oddly analytical — some deflate, others don’t. I wonder why?
I reach under them to open the door and then squeeze out, almost on my hands and knees.
I walk around, dazed. The motorcycle — a Harley-Davidson — hit the front of my car, on the passenger side. My right front wheel is torn off, the Harley next to it, ruined and twisted. There is a boot on the ground and a piece of cloth lying on my windshield. About 30 feet away I see a body prone on the street, curled fetal-like. A police officer is already there. He motions for me to back off and so I do. I remember my wallet and phone are still in the car and I crawl back in to retrieve them.
I stand by the side of the road and start to shake, the adrenaline rush receding. I’m light-headed, my legs barely able to hold me up. The area floods with police cars, fire trucks, and EMTs. Some come over to check on me. “What’s your birth date?” asks one. I give him my phone number.
My hands and arms sting and are turning red with what look like first-degree burns. In a couple of places the skin is harshly abraded, dots of blood showing. “It happens with airbags,” says another officer.
“Is he alive?” I ask her.
She had been by the body and gives a noncommittal shake of her head. “I don’t know.” There’s something in the way she says it, however, that tells me she does know.
EMTs check me out and ask if I want to go to the emergency room. I say no and, still trembling, am barely able to sign a waiver.
It’s been close to an hour. I call my wife. “I’m OK,” I say, “but … .”
At home, I ruminate about chance. If only I hadn’t gone back into the house for a reusable bag, I would have been through the intersection before the motorcyclist passed, never encountering him at all. But then someone else might have been — going through what I had and perhaps worse.
News stories are already appearing online. The Barnstable Police Department posts on Facebook. A “patrol officer attempted to pull a motorcycle over for a traffic violation.” Instead, the post continues, the biker took off; “moments later the motorcycle crashed into a vehicle.”
Other news stories appear, in The Cape Cod Times, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere. And then the commentators begin to rear their heads. “Play stupid games … zap-zap splat!” says one. “No 2nd chance for this jerk,” another writes, while a third assures everyone: “He got his just desserts.” A critic quotes the old Sonny Curtis song, “I fought the law, And the law won.” There’s a gif of Charles Darwin, giving a thumbs up.
Really? They don’t even know who he is.
But I do.
When he died, he was just three months shy of his 56th birthday. He had two children and worked in construction. He was no saint; the police tell me he’d had previous brushes with the law. And his motorcycle might have been unregistered. That perhaps would have earned him a reprimand, a fine, or suspended sentence but ... death? I think not.
How quick and unkind we are to judge, to “other” strangers, to grant them life or death. Whether known to us or not, we are pretty much all the same, making our ways through life, grappling with the hands we’ve been dealt, trying to make the best of things, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.
Some see me as a victim that day, but I don’t feel that way. I walked away. I am alive, safe with my family, safe with my friends. But not the biker who struck my car. I grieve for him and for those he once loved and who loved him in turn.
This column appeared in The Boston Globe on July 24, 2023 at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/24/opinion/motorcycle-accident-death/.