January 2009
From the NEW Chapter Rider Educators:

For our inaugural article, one topic came immediately to mind: SAFETY.  However, since that is what the whole rider education program is about, I thought I ought to narrow the focus a little.  I would like to address a possible scenario with you:

You and your loving “Significant Other” get together with me and Jan, Pam and Randy Crockett, Bill and Kay Leonard, and we all take off for a ride through the Arkansas countryside.  Seems like a harmless and fairly routine weekend so far, right?  As we start around a curve in the endless dirt track that is called a road in Arkansas, two big bucks come bounding out of the trees on the side of the road and directly into your path.  The adrenaline starts pumping immediately and you manage to avoid hitting the poor helpless “Bambi” by swerving to the right,  oh, xxxx you didn’t think about the drop-off on that side, and you go part of the way down a 15 foot embankment before hitting a large oak.  You and your Sweetie are both rendered unconscious and end up in a hospital (after Kay drives five miles down the road until she finally gets a cell phone signal and can summon an ambulance).  Now everything should be alright, right?  Maybe, but when they get you to the hospital, you are still both in a coma.  Who is going to sign a consent form so the doctors can do what is necessary?  How do we contact your family?  None of your kids are living at home any more, who do we contact?  What do we do?

I started this scenario, not as a part of a drama class, but to get you to think of one of the important but often overlooked facets of preparation for riding.  We should all take the time to prepare a form like this Emergency Information Form, not just once in a year, but any time that both us and our primary Emergency Contact are going to be on the road together.  I would even go so far as to suggest that it not be kept on our own bike, but perhaps have people on different vehicles entrusted with each other’s information.  This applies to travel by car as well as by bike, at least have the form filled out and in the vehicle listing someone to be contacted who will not be in the vehicle with you. 

Luckily our chapter accident victim last year had someone traveling with her who knew how to contact her family, but suppose it had been Jan and I who had the accident…. Who among the group would have known who to contact?  I don’t claim to have done any better than the rest of the group, but I can resolve to fix that for future trips.  The enclosed GWRRA form can be used as a basic document with the emergency contact changed as situations dictate.  I would probably move the line about “Do not leave an emergency message on an answering machine – contact must be made directly to a person” to before where the emergency contact is listed, make it larger and BOLD, and then add a place to get the whole thing notarized.  Still, it is an excellent starting point.  Spend some time during the off season planning for your safety during the prime riding season.

Ride Safely.
Carl and Jan Breeding

GWRRA Emercency Information Form