I am 26 years old and have been riding dirt bikes and quads for twenty years. I have had my close calls but all in all just bad bumps and bruises un til this year. This past September I hit a 30 foot jump on my Raptor that shot me straight up in the air to the point of having to dismount midair. Upon impact I cracked my sacrum(a$$bone) in three places and slipped my L5 vertbrae out of place. Big oouch! Well after 7 months of rehab I've been back for a couple of weeks riding around. Well thursday night I was riding my woods trail and hit a newly dug grounghog hole that threw my shoulder into the tree and I am diagnosed with a complete AC shoulder seperation and three cracked ribs. I am going to surgery on Tuesday. I have never had such bad luck in my life. And it's my good arm too. Has anyone else had this particular injury if so please let me know some details. Also share your battlescars!!!

 

lucky for me i haven't had any really bad injuries on an ATV yet but my friend was doin wheelies on his tri-moto 125 and he slipped off and ruptured his spleen. he didn't even go to the hospital until the next day. the doctors couldn't believe he was still alive.

 

I broke my left shoulder while riding my dirtbike. Now i use 4 wheels

 

Well it all started out that me and my buddy made me a bet that that he was faster through the trail. I was riding my 99 banshee 370 and my buddy had his 440 ex. We raced down the road and hit the trail. The trail was really wide where you could ride side by side. Any way I passed him jumping over the jump and when we landed his four wheeler killed on him. I turned around to help him. He didn't know what happend. When he went over the jump he hit the kill switch. We started out through the trail again. I was in the lead and looked back to see if he was there. When I looked foreward I was going right for the tree. The corner was banked and I hit the bank at 62 M.P.H and smack right into the tree. My wheeler went rolling in the woods and I flew off the four wheeler on the air. When I landed on the ground I got knocked out and broke my leg. It took a while for my buddy to get my quad out of the brush and to get it running. I lived about three miles from home and rode my quad home with a broken leg. You really couldn't get to me where I was because The rode a floded over. I went to the hospital and my leg was broke at a angle and spiraled down into the joint of my ankle. I was in the cast for six weeks. When I got out of the cast I broke it again. It was raining out and I walked in the house slipped and fell. I went to the doctor and he said that I twisted it and I was going to have surgery. After surgery I had a metal rod and four screws in my left leg.

 

Wow, after reading about some of these injuries, my boo-boo doesn't seem so bad, but it sure felt bad at the time. It was almost a year ago, on the "May Run", which is the biggest ATV & 4 wheel drive rally of the year. I had been out riding all day, with no real problems, and around 3:00am, my buddy and I were looking for a place to camp for the night. He said he knew of a spot, and we were almost there, just about 50 feet away, and I ended up backing off a cliff which was about 100 feet high, and which ended up on a beach on the shore of the Bay of Fundy. My riding buddy heard me call for help on our helmet communicators as I was going over. I fell off the back of the bike first ,and, after a 15 foot freefall, landed on my back. It knocked the wind out of me, but I was glad to be alive, because I had no idea how far down the cliff went. Then I realized that my bike was still coming down. It was pitch black, so I couldn't see it to protect myself. The bike crashed end for end over top of me, and dissapeared down the embankment. By the time my buddy got to me, I was pretty dazed, but didn't feel too much pain because of the addrenalin I guess. We climbed down and found my bike upside down in a hole at the bottom of the hill. It was still rideable, so we used it to take a trail that went around the side of the drop off I had just come down. By the time we got to the top, I was starting to hurt, but it was the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, in an area which was about 1 hour car ride from a hospital, so I had to stay in the woods that night. I was hurting really bad, but nothing compared to when I woke up. I could hardly move. My head was pounding, my back was stiff, my knee was banged up, and I couldn't move my right arm. When I finally did make it to a hospital that day (after a VERY slow, painfull ride home), the doctor said I had some internal bruising, and a 3rd degree shoulder seperation, along with an assortment of other abrasions, bumps and bruises. The nurse told me that the last guy they had in there for that same type of accident, was in for a broken neck, so I guess I did get off lucky.

 

This one is made to order for the post. July 17, 1999, is the day that my life changed forever. I was going to get together with my 3 buds. Well two of them had to wok in the morning so me and one other guy decided to go riding. I had my Warrior and he rode my Timberwolf. We rode to some sand pits where I had been to 100's of time before. 1 minute after we got there I was at the bottom of a little play hill just tooling around when somehow my front end came up and I didn't have time to react. It was one of those freek things! My Warrior landed square on my chest as I landed on my back. My bud found me like that and tossed the machine off, but the damage had been done. Broken back, T11 and T12. Torn pec and nerve damage down the arm. I couldn't feel from my nipple line down. That is the scariest feeling in the world. 30 minutes later the ambulance came and took of my boots and I was finally able to move my toes. They rushed me in the to hospital at 30mph, the pain was so bad that every bump cause me to screem with pain. My home town med center sent me to another town to a specialist, with shots of valium and morphine. Then after 9 hours of surgury, I have a set of Titanium rods from T9 to L2 ($60,000+) In my last year in college I missed starting for my football team. It took almost a year to get to 90% of my former self. Today I can do almost anything. I can't bend my back and have radiant nerve damage in my legs but at least I am not in a wheelchair. I still ride as much as I have time for and love it very much. But I am just a little more carful.

Mohs
Ride hard but ride smart.

 

Though not to the caliber of some of these stories it scared the sh*t out of me. Two years back when I still rode bike me and a couple of buddies where riding on our practice track on an old golf course that my friends parents aquired. We had just finished our showcase jump early that day a 50ft table. Though not big to some it was for us. The great thing about this jump is the landing continues for about another 60ft down a hill leaving us alot of room to grow. Well after a day of riding no injuries so far. Needless to say the girls showed up and you no what happens then. Suddenly we think where all better than McGrath and where trying to out jump eachother. Well I grabbed an extra gear on my CR250 since the landing was so long. Well I freaked on takeoff and let off and from there the bike started to come over forwards in the air. The front tire hit then my head and then the back fender. I was knocked out and next thing I knew there was 5 people in my face yelling my name. No permanent dain bramage though. Well this is getting long winded. Seeya

 

We all have had a few close calls,including me.Back around late 1986,I had a new 87 King Quad.After a few wks,I tried to climb this very small but steep gravelpit hill.The hill won.The ATV tipped and the handlebars hit me smack in the middle of my back.It knocked the wind out of me for about 10 minutes,but other than that,I was ok.

Since than,if I have to THINK about whether I should or should'nt do a certain stunt,I usually dont.

We all need to practice a little common sense now and than,and keep ourselves OUT of the ER rooms,
Bill

 

Split my head open to the bone above my right eye jumping my warrior. Had a helmet on still dont know what the hell really happened. just that my goggles had a perfect print of the clutch perch bolt in them . I keep the lenses as a reminder anything can happen

 

Glad the stories so far have for the most part turned out OK. I have been very fortunate to have not sustained any injuries riding that requiring professional medical attention. I do have one little story: Last fall I was riding my Scrambler down a wide open trail that winds it's way up a mountain side. I was running wide open at about 60mph and for no apparent reason the rear end locked up and the entire quad went sideways. Next I realized I was flying through the air about 6 feet high and I must have flown fifty feet. I landed with a resounding thud a$$ first on the only exposed rock in the trail and felt all of my breath leave me. It was a scary minute or so as I writhed on the ground trying fighting to get breath, I eventually must have passed out because I remember coming to and hearing my Scrambler still running. I escaped with only a very sore lower back and butt that changed various colors of black and blue and a very scratched up helmet. My Scram hit a few small trees on the side of the trail and was stopped from doing a nose dive off a 100 foot cliff. It was completely undamaged except for a broken chain. All I can figure is that in the process of throwing the broken chain it somehow got wrapped up locking up the rear axle. I was kinda spooked over this for awhile since I was not goofing off but just riding normally. If you wreck doing a certain jump you know not to do that again or at least that the possibility for a wreck is there, but when you get thrown just riding along it's hard to learn a lesson.