A loud bang, then horror
Shocking scene at motorbike crash
A MAN who stopped to help after a crash that left a motorcyclist fighting for his life has descibed the horrifying scene that confronted him.
Dave Cramer had only just entered the M1 motorway at the southbound Bermuda St exit on Wednesday evening when he heard a “loud bang” behind him.
The Palm Beach resident said he was probably three cars in front of the crash when he saw a black Harley motorbike – minus its rider – overtake him on the left hand side, before crashing into a fence.
Mr Cramer said he looked back in his rear view mirror to see the injured rider lying on the ground on the left side of the road and pulled over to help.
“I was probably the first to go up to him, I tried his pulse,” Mr Cramer said.
“He was in a bad way. He had nothing at first, he looked gone ... then I could feel something after about five seconds.”
Another witness called an ambulance while a woman, believed to be a trauma nurse, asked for a tourniquet, he said.
“(The woman) said, ‘I need a tourniquet for his leg,’ so I pulled the belt off my pants and slid it under his leg,” he said.
Mr Cramer said the man’s foot had been severed in the incident and he had “no leg from the knee down.”
Another person administered CPR before paramedics arrived, transporting the bike rider to Gold Coast University Hospital where he remains in a critical condition.
Witness Cody Richardson, 30, said he could see the man’s severed foot and leg as he drove past the accident.
“You could see his tendons, it was rancid,” he said.
“I had just heard a motorbike coming, it was so quick. In my head I thought it was ridiculous, that’s way too fast and as I was thinking that I heard a bit of a bang.”
Tallebudgera local Quinton Bray, 39, told the Bulletin he and his partner had been waiting in the traffic when the motorbike drove past “at speed”.
“It was hard to say how fast,” Mr Bray said.
Mr Bray said they were lucky their young daughter, who was also in the car at the time, didn’t see the incident.
“It was a bit of a shock,” he said.
“I’m a bike rider myself and I don’t leave home without a helmet, it was a bit erratic, thongs and no helmet.”
A police spokesman said they had been made aware of a man driving on the M1 without protective gear and had been keeping an eye out for him before the incident.
Investigations are continuing.