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Save a biker's life this week
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FarkDo me a favor this week: Hang up and drive.
Actually, it isn't so much a favor for me as it is for the thousands of bikers rumbling around on Black Hills highways and city streets.
That's "bikers," by the way, with a capital "H."
The Harley crowd is here, all right, 300,000 or 400,000 strong, kick-starting our local economy with that magical mystical tour of motorcycles we call the Sturgis rally.
Even if you're not a black-clad hog head, this will be an entertaining week. Loud, too, and more than a little bit dangerous.
That's especially so for the bikers, a tough-looking bunch that operates with only a thin layer of leather, an occasional helmet and a measure of good sense between them and roadway catastrophe.
That good sense is where the lives are saved. The two-wheeled crowd can show it by driving safe and sober. But so can those of us operating on four wheels. Because no matter how sharp the bikers are, their safety still rests with that oncoming car or that pickup in the rearview mirror.
It doesn't take much to kill a biker. Roll through a stop sign - boom. Fail to yield - boom. Make a sudden cross-traffic turn - boom.
Few understand the infinite misery of such a monumental lapse like former Congressman Bill Janklow. When he ran a rural, East River stop sign four years ago this month, Janklow killed an affable, motorcycle-riding farmer named Randy Scott and ended one of the state's most storied political careers.
Miss a stop sign - boom. In the time it takes to read that sentence, someone can die.
It doesn't seem like it can happen to us. That's probably how Janklow felt, right up until that horrid summer afternoon.
It can happen to us.
Just think about the "almosts" in your driving life - the time you didn't see that car as you backed out, or pulled out in front of that pickup, or turned in front of that oncoming SUV.
Maybe you got knocked into the emergency room, or just roughed up a bit. Or maybe, if your "almosts" were like mine, you got lucky and either you or the other guy, or both, reacted in time to prevent a calamitous convergence of metal and glass.
Now think about what would have happened if that other guy had been on a motorcycle and neither of you had reacted in time. Boom - dead biker. Just like that.
The rally riders who come to the Hills each year bring money and mostly good cheer along with them. Despite the noise and occasional inconvenience, I think most of us are glad they're here.
They also create a carnival of sights and sounds on our highways and streets that add even more driving distractions to an already challenging tourist season. So we need to be especially focused as drivers this week.
Focused driving doesn't mix with combing your hair, touching up your make-up, lecturing the back-seat 9-year-old or scanning the morning paper on the way to work.
And it sure doesn't mix with blabbing on the cell phone. That's a recipe for disaster anytime, but especially this week.
So do everybody a favor: Hang up and drive.
You might just save a biker's life.
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com
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