Motorcycle Hangs Out After Crash Launches It On To Street Sign
A crash near Vancouver, British Columbia, left a motorcycle in a precarious position, hanging from the traffic light pole. The motorcycle and a silver sedan collided at an intersection in Delta, a suburb of Vancouver, KTLA reports. The force of the crash launched the motorcycle into the air, and in a one-in-a-million chance, the front wheel hooked the light pole, leaving it suspended by the fork. Police say the rider suffered serious, but non-life threatening injuries.
Security camera footage of the crash was posted on Instagram. It's a classic case of an oncoming vehicle turning left across the motorcycle's path. This is the most common vehicle-to-motorcycle crash there is, responsible for nearly 50 percent of all fatal two-vehicle crashes (fortunately, this one was not fatal). The bike spun into the air, caught the pole, and swung back and forth over the intersection, while the rider launched forward and tumbled down the road.
You can't park there
The motorcycle involved looks like a new Suzuki GSX-R750Z 40th Anniversary Edition, based on the color scheme and the gold forks are unique to the 750. It's hard to estimate speeds from the video, but it was moving at quite a clip as it entered the intersection. The video glitched and showed the bike doing a stoppie just before impact, a sign that the rider was already braking hard. The car it hit is a BMW, which may not surprise some, but it's also possible the driver did not expect the bike to be approaching so quickly.
Authorities then had to figure out how to remove the motorcycle from the light pole. A YouTube video shows the operation, which involves a rotator truck, which has a large crane generally used for heavy truck recovery, and a platform fire truck. They work together to wrap straps around the bike and lift it off the pole. There's certainly no textbook procedure about how to do this, and it's clear that everyone's figuring it out as they go through several attempts. I'll bet even Matt's Off-Road Recovery has never handled one of these.