Plastic Wrap Barrier Causes Motorcycle Crash

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ^ | July 16, 2004 | DARRYL ENRIQUEZ

[BluegrassScholar]

Town of Waukesha - Motorcyclist Daniel Buckel was within 10 feet when he saw the potential disaster stretched across a dark and foggy rural road just ahead.

Disbelief turned to fear, then anger, as Buckel's 2-year-old motorcycle hit a barrier of kitchen-variety plastic wrap that was wound thickly from traffic pole to traffic pole on opposite sides of Guthrie Road, south of Highway I.

The clear plastic trap, which was 3 to 4 feet above the two-lane road south of Waukesha, sent both Buckel and his passenger, girlfriend Theresa Brzykcy, into a bloody slide across the asphalt.

"It's appalling, and it's really frightening," Brzykcy said. "What was their intention? This should make people more aware that pranks like that are not as harmless as they seem.

"They had done a pretty thorough job. It was wrapped around pretty thickly," she recalled.

The malicious prank has Waukesha County sheriff's investigators concerned because other capers involving plastic wrap occurred in the town last year, although none was as serious as the motorcycle crash early Tuesday, Sheriff's Detective Steve Pederson said Friday.

Investigators were planning to canvass homes near the crash site this weekend, looking for information that will lead to a break in the case.

"When something like this happens someone always brags about it," Pederson said. "If anyone has heard anything about this or any other incident involving (plastic) wrap, contact us.

"Maybe someone had seen this happen or removed (plastic) wrap from other areas," he said. "We'd like to know about it."

Last year, a number of parked cars were found bound in plastic wrap to prevent drivers from getting inside the vehicles, Pederson said. Plastic wrap bonds together, giving it strength and making it difficult to remove.

Pederson said investigators were unaware of other incidents of wrap being stretched across a road.

The couple's injuries sent both to Waukesha Memorial Hospital. Buckel, 22, of the Town of Waukesha, required 15 stitches to close a deep gash above his right eye and also broke a finger. Brzykcy, 19, of Brookfield, got a deep cut and bruise to her right cheek along with other scrapes and bruises. The motorcycle was a total loss, Buckel said.

The 1 a.m. ride was supposed to be a short one meant to relax the couple, who have known each other for more than a year. He had just left his bartending job, and she was waiting for him at his family home. Earlier she had taken his mother to a medical appointment.

Buckel said he was driving 5 mph under the 45 mph speed limit because the motorcycle headlight had shone on deer along the road and there was a slight haze from ground fog in the low-lying area.

"I didn't see it," Brzykcy said of the barrier. "He braked so hard I figured it was a deer. My first hit was on him, which totally saved me. Then, I landed on my head (on the road). Everything went white and yellow and red, and I blacked out for a while. I woke up on my back, laying in a driveway."

Buckel, fueled by anger and concern for Brzykcy, fought off his own pain and called 911 on his cell phone, he said. Among the first emergency personnel to arrive was Beckel's best friend, Scott Sommers, a member of the Town of Waukesha Fire Department.

"I ran over to my girlfriend and looked around to see if the pranksters were still around," Buckel said. "I didn't see anyone. When my friend arrived, it made things a lot easier to cope with."

[Blue Jays]

Good Evening All-

Posted by Melas:
"...I normally don't do this, but you're just flat out lying. Booby-trapping is illegal..."

Melas, there is extra on this notion in Post# 108. We're in agreement on this topic.

~ Blue Jays ~

[JoeSixPack1]

I also have a new stock cross over pipe w/ hooker slip-on exhaust (old one had a stress crack down by r/s passenger foot peg)

and

Screaming Eagle(SE) 9.2X1 HC heads (*uses the same sparkplug as sportster)
Weisco piston (Flat)
Jugs punched .030 over
Shaved .014 off the bottom of each jug
SE ring kit
SE high output coil
SE Adjustable push rods
SE Hyd Lifters
Roller rockers tappets
Andrews EV-51 cam (Dumped the ev-27)
44mm SE carb w/thunder slide kit (+ couple of big jets)
SE breather kit & air cleaner
2002 HD TC open air intake
Crane Fireball high-4 ignition modual w/exhaust sensor
1 tooth oversize drive pulley
AM/Fm/cassette, cig lighter

ash tray, toilet, sink, sleeper...oops wrong vehicle..

and a partridge in a pear tree

1995 EVO 1340 rubber mount w/over 83k miles FLHTC

<|:-)~~

[BraveMan]

I think after 22 years my old shovel is ready for a companion. Are they putting the twin cam 88 in the FLHs yet?

I'm getting too old for that 'bugs in the face' stuff . . .

[JoeSixPack1]

Yes. Since '99. Check these guys out below,


http://www.accurate-engineering.com/

[taxed2death]

Up north, a 1/4 stick is like a huge M-80 firecracker....about 5 times the black powder of a m-80......makes a m-80 sound like a pop gun.

[JoeSixPack1]

Hey, if you're looking to buy, there is a silver lining to the yuppie invasion.

1 to 2, year old bikes that have sat in garages with less than 3 thousand miles are easy to find (Usually with one or 2 scrapes on the fairing or windshield from stagnate drops). 50% of the morons who are first time buyers, first time riders and wallets to big for their pants let their bikes age gracefully in storage, too ashamed to put on the market for fear of the better half giving them the "I told you so" zinger.


Go find one that fits! <|:-)~~

[-YYZ-]

"Burying saw blades where they gun it to go up a hill works too.

It's a long contemplative walk back pushing a heavy bike with shredded tires..."

You, sir or madam, and the person you replied to, are seriously f!#$ed in the head. Seek help.

[-YYZ-]

On the subject of LOUD PIPES I must say, I don't like them. They're annoying to pretty much everyone within earshot and they're make our (motorcyclists') image with the public even worse than it already is.

BTW, my stock-mufflered 1000cc V-Twin powered bike makes about 90 HP and will do the quarter mile in about 11.5 seconds, which makes it more powerful and quicker than about 90% of the loud-piped Harleys on the road, all without pissing off all and sundry. And given a place to do it it would run all day at or near its HP peak.

[null and void]

What makes you so sure I haven't?

[null and void]

Ahhhhh! You 'get it'.

Thanks!

[Modernman]

That particular kid had actually knocked my brand new $300 gate over and gunned it up my road without knowing that there was an open trap ahead.

Ah... That makes sense, actually. If you had just put traps all over your property but had no fence around it, things would have been different.

[cinFLA]

Yeah, I've got a Harley with open drag pipes, try that with me and see what happens. I'll ride it whenever I want!

Number One reason people hate harley riders.

[Modernman]

Booby-trapping is illegal

Digging ditches, re-grading your property and putting up barricades to keep people from driving over it is probably legal. However, pits full of punji stakes or spring-guns certainly are not.

[-YYZ-]

"What makes you so sure I haven't?"

Well, I guess I was really more PO'd at the person you were responding to, who was advocating something almost certain to cause serious injuries or death to a rider. Your suggestion, while still unacceptable in my mind, would most likely just result in a broken bike, although a sudden complete blowout of a front tire at speed could certainly cause a crash that could result in injury.

And yeah, I'm a firm believer in "Less sound equals more ground" for dirt bikes. For street bikes the insistence of some idiots to run pipes that are way too loud, and to ride in such a way that maximizes the noise, is already starting to affect the rights of riders to ride their machines on some public roads and many gated communities. No reasonable person could object to the sound that my bike makes. Sure, I like the sound of deep, throaty pipes, whether on a cruiser, sport bike, or even on cars, but I'm mature enough to realize that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for such things, any more than I appreciate those droopy-drawed bling-bling boys in their rice-boy cars with 1000 watt stereo systems and fart-cans.

[Arthalion]

Wow, I haven't been accused of that since the Laci threads :) What I said is the truth, but it's not the entire story (the entire story could fill a small novel, and the pits intent wasn't really to dismount bike riders). The short summary is this: I wasn't just trying to stop kids from cutting through my yard. People were tearing up my property, cutting my fences, stealing items and vandalizing my vacation home, and all because I'd had the "nerve" to try and stop them from cutting across my land and to force them to ride to the proper trail entrance a mile or so up the road. The problem I had was this: How do you secure a third of a mile of road frontage to prevent people from entering your property when you're not there? Since the land is sloped and I'm uphill from the road, my eventual solution was to have the shoulder widened by cutting into the hillside, so dirtbikers today are presented with a 5 foot tall vertical cliff/cut along my property. This left them with three points of entry: the main gate, and the corners of my neighbors land (my neighbors live on their properties full time, so the bikers typically don't cut through their land). I took care of the property corners with come well placed split-rail fences and by felling some smaller trees across the heavily used trails, and hoped that the locked gate would keep people off the driveway.

Didn't work. I had 5 gates broken in two years. After the fourth gate was broken, someone entered my property and stole a LOT of equipment; two generators, my chainsaws, all of my tools...even the AC unit out of my shop window. When the sheriff's deputy came out, he advised me to figure out a way to make my driveway impassible. I did this by building what I refer to as my "tiger trap". I took my backhoe and dug a hole two feet deep, three feet long (the 3 foot deep was an exagge..rrr...typo), and 12 feet wide at a point in the road where it passes through a small cut (so people can't drive around it). The hole is concrete lined (straight sided, flat bottomed, with only a small drain at the bottom), and has hinged steel plates along one edge. When I'm home, I close the plates, covering the hole and opening the road. When I leave, I lock the plates open leaving a gaping maw in the roadway that only a Hummer could pass.

The goal of the pit wasn't to hurt people, it was to make the road impassible. The inside of the pit is painted dayglo orange to make it visible to people coming up the road, and I even had three construction cones that I put in the roadway just ahead of the hole to block cars from driving into it. There was no criminal case and no civil case because I wasn't an a**hole about it, and I took every reasonable precaution to make sure that nobody fell into the hole. That the kid ignored those precautions, damaged my property to gain access, and then blindly rode into the hole was judged to be unpreventable by me.

Now, if I'd camouflaged the hole, placed pungi sticks at the bottom, or placed land mines in the roadway, I'd agree with you. But the current state of the law says that landowners are only expected to take reasonable precautions to prevent trespassers from harming themselves on your property. The locked gate, the orange paint, and the cones were reasonable enough. Since this occurred, I've replaced the cones with a chain strung between two posts, with bright orange reflectors and a "Road Out" sign bolted to the links.

No BS. Next time I'm up there, I'll take a few photos of the thing and forward them to you :)

[Melas]

On the subject of LOUD PIPES I must say, I don't like them. They're annoying to pretty much everyone within earshot and they're make our (motorcyclists') image with the public even worse than it already is.

BTW, my stock-mufflered 1000cc V-Twin powered bike makes about 90 HP and will do the quarter mile in about 11.5 seconds, which makes it more powerful and quicker than about 90% of the loud-piped Harleys on the road, all without pissing off all and sundry. And given a place to do it it would run all day at or near its HP peak.

To each his own. I've never owned a bike with stock mufflers, and I don't intend to ever start. First change I make a performance pipe/muffler and open up the air cleaner.

All bikes can benefit from this simple operation. Even that bad-boy Honda VTX 1800 has another 15HP for the taking by simply opening up the breather and exhaust.

[Melas]

Sounds sweet Joe. Since they ruined the Sportster, my next bike will be a 103" Lowrider with SE heads.

[Melas]

Yeah, the Twin Cam 88" is being used on all HD's except the Sportsters and the V-rod.

There is a split though, the softails use the 88B, which has chain driven counterbalancers, the dynas and touring bikes are rubber mounted.

The good news is that you have more engine options now. You can get the same engines in 88", 95", 103" and even a "race only" 120" version.

[JoeSixPack1]

which has chain driven counter-balancers

Bzzzzt oops

Counter bored flywheels with 2 half-moon shaped, free spinning counterweights that negate the flywheels own vibration via the kinetic force created by that vibration.

This is getting to be fun. :-)~

[-YYZ-]

My bike doesn't need it. It has a modern airbox system with a large, flat cleaner element, probably close to a sq. ft. in size. Opening it up even more (there are kits available for those who can't leave well enough alone) will produce a lot more intake noise and a small increase in power. Ditto the exhaust system. And it's unnecessary because I already have a power to weight ratio better than a VTX1800 with 15 extra HP from opening up the breather and exhaust.

But that's neither here nor there. My main point was that making a racket with extremely loud or open pipes doesn't increase performance noticeable, but it does piss a lot of people off. Moderately loud pipes and a judicious use of the loud handle may be OK if a lot of your riding is done is essentially unpopulated areas. Where I live even out in the country I'm passing several houses per mile, and I'm pretty sure they didn't move out there so they could listen to unmuffled bikes roar by.

Too often the same guys riding around on straight-pipe cruisers are the same guys who would complain about the racket from kids cruising through their neighbourhood in their Civics with fart-can exhausts and massive stereos pumping out bass you can hear from a block away. I lump them all in together - rice-boys, weekend outlaws with straight pipes, muscle cars with glass packs, whatever. It's all unwanted noise to me and others.