Imagine you are minding your own business during your commute from work. Imagine someone switches lanes in front of you kind of quickly. Not hard to imagine, right? It happens every day for some of us. Now imagine that the person that switched lanes in front of you is a motorcyclist that, for whatever reason, got distracted in performing the lane-change maneuver, or maybe he or she was inexperienced and did not lean like he or she was supposed to. What do you think will happen? One truck driver found out, and he had his dashcam recording the whole incident. 

The dashcam footage

If you watched the video posted above, you would see that a motorcyclist changed lanes, hit the jersey barrier, and then separated from their ride as they flew over the railing. The airborne human at that point disappears from frame, falling downward to an embankment or roadway below. 

The accident happened in Montreal in front of Rob Nugent, our truck driving dashcam recording friend. Although in disbelief at first, he stopped to see where the motorcyclist landed and then waved down a police officer, who thankfully was not far from where it happened. 

Mr. Nugent told CTV News,

“If I didn’t stop, I knew that guy was probably not going to get found, at least right away,” 

Injuries received

The CTV News report goes on to say that the motorcyclist received serious, but not life-threatening injuries. Speed may have contributed to the incident. Inexperience is another possibility. The motorcyclist had no registration or license at the time this happened. Additional fines may be added forthcoming. As can be seen in the footer of the dashcam, Mr. Nugent was progressing under the posted speed limit of 55 when the motorcyclist passed him. 

Excessive speed has been reported before during the COVID-19 lockdown. It seems a lot of people can not resist the temptation to mash the throttle when the roads have less traffic. The number of citations nationwide has gone up in recent weeks during the quarantine, as have the speeds for those citations. 

Kudos to the truck driver

The motorcyclist probably owes his or her life to the trucker. There is no telling how long he or she would have laid there if Mr. Nugent had not stopped to flag down help. The motorcycle would probably have been picked up as an abandoned vehicle, and there is no guarantee that whoever picked up the bike would have been looking for a body nearby. 

As a reminder, always look out for motorcyclists. Or, if you are the one going out on a motorcycle, be extra cautious on the roadway and bring your license and registration. Fortunately, from the video, it looks like this person was wearing a helmet at the time the flight took off. So, that may have prevented injuries from being worse. Regardless, let us all be mindful of each other out on the roads, whether that means allowing more room for each other or checking on someone after an accident. Hopefully, in this way, fewer of us will end up being on dramatic internet footage regarding an unfortunate event.