After seeing Filippos Papafilippou’s impromptu perfect-10 pole vault onto Steve Woollatt’s wheelie bars at Santa Pod yesterday, it’d be pretty damn difficult to find a luckier motorcyclist, right? While it is too close to call for certain (and I’m sure Papafilippou has a few choice words on that), this motorcyclist from Brazil is at least a very close second place. He was just cruising down a motorway when a three-axle dump truck blindly pulled out directly in front of him. With nowhere else to go, the rider went full stuntman and laid the bike down, sliding underneath the truck between the front end and the first axle perfectly, coming to rest in the grassy median.
Lots of things could go wrong in this situation: he could have misjudged his speed and smacked the truck instead of going under or worse, gone under but underestimated the truck’s speed, leaving the rider a grease spot on the highway. The rider stands up and goes out to rescue the bike from the middle of the road. The trucker? Just keeps on rolling along like nothing happened. Protective riding equipment saves lives, as well as your hide. With the distance this guy skidded, there wouldn’t be much left on his cheeks if he didn’t have good stuff on.
THANK YOU JESUS!!! That is one lucky man, and quick thinking saved his ass.
And that, folks, is the one case where “I had to lay her down” actually made sense, and wasn’t just a BS excuse for grabbing too much brake. I watched it several times and couldn’t figure out a different escape, except maybe managing to go off the road behind the truck’s tail.
If I could walk, nay, hobble, that would be one dead truck driver.