Back Porch Motorcycle Racing

The crash above, from a motorcycle speedway race in Sweden on Tuesday, looks ugly: Denmark's Hans Andersen collides with Russia's Emil Sayfutdinov, and Sweden's Andreas Jonsson also gets caught up in it. But all three riders are reportedly OK.

Professional motorcycle rider Jeremy Lusk died Monday of injuries sustained in a crash in Costa Rica. The crash can be viewed below, but the video is very disturbing.

This crash looks terrible, but everyone walks away:

That was Max Biaggi losing control of his bike and running into Kenan Sofuoglu over the weekend at the start of the second race at Vallelunga.

Sofuoglu went over his handlebars but had only bruises and no broken bones. Biaggi was also unhurt.

Sofuoglu told crash.net: "I just felt a bump and then I was flying. The shoulder I damaged at Donington is sore and my back will hurt tomorrow, but otherwise I'm OK."

The potential for injury in motorcycle racing is insane. Once thrown from their bikes, riders essentially become human speed bumps, and the further ahead a rider is at the time of the accident, the greater potential for them being a.) run over by fellow riders, and b.) causing additional horrific accidents in the process.

in the clip below, disaster seems to pass Toni Elias by; crashing on a curve, flying into the safety of the outfield, with his bike flung far away from him to avoid the cannonball effect of the bike crushing him into the haystacks.


Yet the intense speed of the accident and resultant force was enough to snap Elias' femur, the biggest bone in the human body, like a toothpick. The track (in the unfortunately named town of Assen) was bad luck for Elias last year, as well, as he crashed out after just four laps that time.

The also unfortunately named Casey Stoner finished first in the race, if you're interested in more than just the broken bones and spectacular accidents of professional motorcycle racing.

While we were looking for videos of Russian street racing--and if you aren't looking for the same, you're missing something--we came across videos about the Dodge Tomahawk, a motorcycle so hellacious you should avoid looking directly at it, much less climb on it.

A moving sculpture produced in extremely, extremely limited numbers--think ten, sold exclusively through Neiman Marcus for $550K a pop--the Tomahawk is, in theory, a rideable motorcycle. We say that because the Tomahawk remains less an actual vehicle and more an excuse to drape some wheels and a set around a whole ten-cylinder Dodge Viper engine.

For gear heads, it's got 500 horsepower and a max of 6000 rpms, which is supposed to be impressive. For non-gear heads, just understand that this all means it could warp time and space with its speed...in third gear. Our favorite line about the Tomahawk comes from the Wiki article on it:

According to the official specs 0-60 mph times have been estimated at 2.5 seconds, with an estimated top speed of 300+ mph. But there are also reports that the top speed is 676 km/h (about 420 mph)...It is very unlikely that anyone will ever test the vehicle, due to safety concerns and the price of the Tomahawk itself. Dodge has expressed interest in one day taking it to the Bonneville salt flats, but as of yet has not.

420 miles an hour...ye gods. Just don't let Lavar Arrington anywhere near the beast, and we'll all be fine (and so will Lavar.)

We would like to take the opportunity afforded by former NFL player Lavar Arrington's motorcycle accident to remind you that riding on a motorcycle is very, very dangerous. And in case you don't believe us, we'll cheat and use the moral imperative of warning everyone about motorcycle safety as an excuse to post awesome motocycle crash videos.

Arrington, who is in serious but non life-threatening condition following his crash on Monday, was wearing a helmet at the time, which earns him some safety points. He did not, however, possess the proper license for a motorcycle, meaning that Arrington also didn't likely have any official safety training on a bike at all.

And there are some things--the absolute danger of motorcycling aside--that can mitigate the risk of being on a bike, like not going lightspeed on apparently empty straightaways, wearing a helmet, and being downright paranoid about your points of entry and exit on the road you're traveling on at the time. Yet it's inherently risky, and nothing changes that aside from a world made of Nerf. (Available fall 2045. It'll rule.) The number of ways to fly off a bike combined with the number of things you could hit, impale yourself on, fly into or through...it's both infinite and intinitely unpredicatable.

(Full disclosure: we laid a bike down in a foreign country once, and it completely sucked in every way you can imagine. And we were on a pipsqueak of a bike, not the hell-chariot Arrington was undoubtedly riding.)

As Sports Bleachers points out, chastising Arrington for taking that risk is utterly stupid. Arrington's a grown man, and under no obligations to any professional team re: his behavior. Nor does his "talent" mandate any behaviors in and of itself--Arrington's free to be a postman if he likes rather than a football player, or in this case, aspiring to a career as a medical pain management test case. At the worst, Arrington's a bad motorcycle driver, a label the video above proves even professional motorcyclists wear from time to time.