Anatomy of a crash: ‘We just happened to be on motorcycles’
Mark Richardson
Keene, ont.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Yesterday
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Old Hastings Road, looking north, at the site where Rob Harris, friend of writer Mark Richardson, died in 2016.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
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There’s a small piece of plastic in the pocket of my leather jacket. It is from the fairing of a Honda RC51 motorcycle. I found it in a ditch near Catchacoma, Ont., at the spot where David Rusk was killed in 2019, when his bike went off the road for no reason that was ever explained.
It’s not a ghoulish souvenir. I keep it as an unexpected reminder, when I’m fumbling in my pocket for some earplugs or perhaps a piece of gum, that life is fragile and can be taken away in a blink of inattention.
I felt for it when I rode recently to the place where my friend Rob Harris was killed in 2016. He was riding a motorcycle on Old Hastings Road south of Bancroft, Ont., a narrow, treacherous and deceptive stretch of dirt, gravel and sand that is barely wide enough for two cars to pass, when he crested a rise and swerved to avoid an oncoming pickup truck. As best as anyone can tell, the truck was almost stopped because the driver, who lived nearby and was heading home with his family, had heard Rob’s motorcycle coming toward him and slowed down to let him pass. The truck was in a hollow dip, however, and Rob didn’t see it on the narrow road until too late. The bike slid clear to the side, but Rob’s helmet struck the front bumper. He died instantly.
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The memorial crosses for Rob Harris on Old Hastings Road, in 2017.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The memorial crosses are no longer there but I go every year to remember my friend and complete his ride. It seems as good a place as any to think back on our friendship. When I first visited two days after the crash, I accompanied his wife, who’d left their two young daughters at home with her mom in New Brunswick to fly in and identify the body. There was still blood in the dirt. Now, you’d never know anything had ever happened.
Rob was a highly skilled rider, in his element on a Husqvarna dirt bike. As the coroner said to me and his wife at the time: “This really was a flukey kind of thing. One missed gear change and he wouldn’t have been there. He’d have been a fraction of a second back on the road and would have seen the truck in enough time. But he wasn’t. He was in the worst possible place.”
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Rob Harris in Quebec, in 2015.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
I felt the piece of plastic while I was standing there on the road and took it out of my pocket to look at it. Silver and black. I didn’t know David Rusk, but his partner Lisa told me he was an experienced rider and, at 52 years old, his life was finally falling into place.
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David Rusk.Supplied
“I sit here and I try to think – what’s it all supposed to mean?” she said to me at the time, a week after he died. “What am I supposed to learn? What am I supposed to do with this? I feel like there must be something.”
Peter Elmhirst and Bill Watkin also rode the 45-kilometre length of the Old Hastings Road in August, a few days before me. They’d been friends in their retirements for the past decade, since riding together to the southern tip of South America, with Peter’s partner Anne on a third motorcycle. The ride in August was their first ride together this year.
“It was just a putter,” Peter told me a couple of weeks later when we drank tea on his deck, looking out over the peace and calm of Rice Lake, about 100 kilometres from Old Hastings Road. “We stopped in Ormsby and had a pop. We were just out puttering.” They passed by Bancroft and, a few kilometres outside of town, before heading back for home, they decided to pull over for an ice cream at the local Kawartha Dairy store. They signalled for the turn left, across the oncoming lane, and paused for a break in the northbound traffic. Peter was in front and Bill behind, as always. An SUV pulled up and also paused behind them.
“There was this really brief, extremely loud screech and just, like, an explosion,” said Peter. “I don’t remember any of it. It wasn’t a motorcycle accident. We just happened to be on motorcycles.”
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Peter Elmhirst and his partner, Anne Marshall, at their home on Rice Lake.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
Eyewitnesses said a commercial truck hit the SUV at speed, which then hit both motorcycles, which were knocked into the path of an oncoming car. Peter, who is 80 years old, was apparently thrown five metres through the air. He suffered a broken rib, blood in his lungs and a separated shoulder. Bill, 78, was pronounced dead soon after arriving at hospital.
Local police would not comment on the incident while it’s still under investigation. A person in the SUV was also killed, and a second person seriously injured.
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Peter Elmhirst, left, his partner, Anne Marshall and Bill Watkin at the equator in Ecuador.Supplied
“It’s important to pay attention to your surroundings and not be distracted,” said Bancroft Ontario Provincial Police Constable Joel Devenish, speaking in general when I asked him about the circumstances. “Don’t be fatigued – take a break.”
This happened just four days and a few kilometres from where two other riders had been killed on the same highway. Again, police would not comment while there’s an investigation, except to confirm the dead motorcyclists were 47 and 52 years old, and another rider, aged 72, was seriously injured. One of the riders who was killed had crossed the line into the oncoming path of the two other bikes and a car, said police.
The widow of the rider who crossed the line, however, said she was told by eyewitnesses that a car following a southbound group of 11 motorcycles pulled out to overtake them. She told me that her husband, Joe Craven of Cobourg, who was riding north on his Harley-Davidson to visit her mother in Combermere, had to swerve to avoid the oncoming car, which forced him to cross into the group of motorcycles.
In a subsequent press release about motorcycle safety, the OPP advised motorists to always watch for motorcycles and to share the road – in more than half of all motorcycle collisions, the motorist was at fault. And they advised motorcyclists to not assume that other drivers can see them: “Drivers who have collided with motorcycles often say they did not see the motorcycle until it was too late.”
The OPP might have added that it can be dangerous for motorcycles to ride together in groups too large to overtake. If they’re moving slowly, or a driver who wants to pass is in an aggressive mood, it is just too risky to commit to such a lengthy overtaking manoeuvre.
On the face of it, these four incidents seem like random acts of God, and perhaps they were. In every case, though, somebody let down their guard at the exact worst time and somebody paid the price.
What can be done? In Peter’s case, he was wearing all the proper safety gear, which he does all the time when riding. Bill, Rob and David were also dressed properly, but clothing can only protect from abrasion, not from hard impact. Peter credits his high-quality Arai full-face helmet and KTM riding suit with ensuring he has only one small scratch on his leg, just above the top of his Sidi boot. His injuries would undoubtedly have been worse if he had not been properly dressed. As Peter says, “sooner or later, for most of us, something beyond our control happens, and the only way you can prepare for that on a motorcycle is to wear the proper gear.”
And riders must stay focused all the time, more so than drivers in cars and trucks, who have added protection. After all, for all the precautions that are possible, there’s always an added element of risk when riding a motorcycle. Riders accept this, and it’s a tradeoff for the pleasure of the experience.
Peter is a former bush pilot: “If you love flying, and you love bush flying, then you accept risk,” he says. “Sometimes, [stuff] just happens. What else are you going to do? Life would be pretty boring otherwise.”
His friend Bill Watkin, who was the owner of Bill’s No Frills grocery store in Campbellford, Ont., also loved flying small aircraft and also accepted the risk. “Any story about this is about friends who took the opportunity to see the world on motorcycles, and had so many incredibly positive experiences, and just the inevitability of something you can’t predict,” says Peter. “Bill was always cautious, though. Bill always had our backs.”
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A piece of plastic from David Rusk’s crashed bike, in writer Mark Richardson's hand.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
I’ve remembered this risk every time I reached into my jacket pocket and felt the piece of plastic ripped from David Rusk’s bike. When I rode away from Peter’s house after our conversation on his deck, I paused at the end of his driveway to touch it again. It wasn’t there. It must have fallen out somewhere near Bancroft. Maybe I don’t need it now. The stories stay with you, and maybe the stories are enough.
Do you know what to do if you witness a motorcycle accident, and how to help? Biker Down is a new program, developed in the U.K., that offers a free, hands-on course to interested groups, certified by the Canadian Red Cross. The 2.5-hour presentation teaches crash-scene management and safe, basic medical assistance. For more information, visit bikerdown.ca.
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