The long road back
It’s already been a horrific year on the roads, and the holidays are just beginning. As the toll climbs, a survivor of a horrific crash pleads for road users to take more care. Leighton Keith reports.
Trevor Collins’ life was shattered in an instant – through no fault of his own. The 42-year-old Taranaki man was riding his Harley-Davidson to work on December 8 last year when an out-of-control driver skidded across the centre line and smashed into him, sending him flying 15 metres through the air.
The force of the impact destroyed the bones in his right ankle and cut the blood supply, requiring amputation, as well as breaking his leg in seven places.
Collins, who now has a prosthetic, says the past 12 months have been a rollercoaster as he rebuilt his broken body and began piecing his life back together.
As well as the broken bones, Collins says the ordeal crushed his confidence and had cost him both financially and emotionally.
‘‘I didn’t want to go out, it has taken me this long to get used to looking at myself like this,’’ he says looking down at his artificial lower leg.
‘‘It still leaves a pretty bitter taste in my mouth, it’s something I wake up to every day.
‘‘I’m with this for the rest of my life.’’
Collins’ wife Lisa was by his side as he fought through the dark times.
‘‘He wouldn’t go out for a long time, I had to beg him to come out. He wouldn’t leave the house for a long time,’’ she says.
She broke down in tears while recalling what it was like watching her husband go through the months of physiotherapy and torment of having to learn to walk again using the prosthetic.
Collins describes it as a very slow process.
‘‘I was on crutches for three months and then even when I got my new leg I was only allowed on it for an hour and a half a day, breaking it in and getting used to it.’’
He says he’s still learning new things every day.
Collins is not alone.
In the 2016/2017 financial year, ACC received 37,880 new claims from people suffering from road trauma injuries.
Motorcyclists and their passengers accounted for 4056 of those claims. They were the second-highest cohort after people travelling in cars – 26,557.
During the same year ACC paid out $449 million on active road accident claims, $93 million to those who had been on motorcycles and $270 million to people travelling in cars.
More ACC claimants were for motorcyclists than those travelling in buses, and trucks combined. There were also less claims for cyclists than motorcyclists.
Motorcyclists disproportionate representation in the statistics is a reflection of the vulnerability motorcyclists in crashes.
It doesn’t mean motorcyclists are to blame, Collins says.
‘‘The only protection you have got is the gear you are wearing, your jacket, your gloves, boots, jacket and if you are wearing any sort of pants, leggings, that’s all you have got.’’
It’s been a horrific year on New Zealand’s roads with 356 deaths so far, already 51 more than were killed in all of 2016.
Although the harrowing fatal crashes are well publicised, the plight of those who survive but suffer horrific injuries is less well known.
Collins wants the public to stop and think about the far-reaching impact their actions can have on the lives of others when they’re driving this holiday period.
‘‘You are not in that much of a hurry, take time to assess what you are doing, look at where you are going, look both ways before you cross the road, it’s that simple.
‘‘It’s really that simple, don’t drive like you own the road
because you don’t.
‘‘The person you slam into has got a family and they’ve got a life, that’s just as important as the next person’s.’’
Lisa agreed.
‘‘Think about the impact that they can have on other people’s lives, because of their stupidity.’’
The driver who hit Collins, Joel Jonathan Broughton, is a patched member of the Nomads gang who had already served more than 50 jail terms.
Broughton fled the scene and it took police months to locate him. He initially denied driving the car but later admitted it, claiming he had fallen asleep at the wheel.
By the time Broughton was sentenced in October, he had spent six months on remand on unrelated charges, and was released two days later.
Collins can still vividly remember seeing Broughton’s car fish-tailing towards him, leaving him with nowhere to go and nothing he could do to avoid the impact.
‘‘It was out of control so I slowed down, as much as I could, as fast as I could and pulled over to the left but by the time I had done all of that he was on me.
‘‘I remember hearing the bike and me smash into the car.
‘‘I remember hearing the crunch.’’
He remembers hitting the grass, throwing his helmet off and trying to stand up ‘‘so I could have a go at someone’’ but wasn’t able to because his leg wouldn’t work.
‘‘It (the pain) was pretty intense. I remember biting the grass at some points because it was that painful.’’
Lisa says she knew there was something wrong as soon as the phone rang.
She immediately set off for Taranaki Base Hospital but passed a tow truck winching her husband’s motorcycle aboard, and then saw an ambulance stopped on the side of the road near the crash site.
‘‘I just thought ‘how can he only have a broken leg, it has got to be more than that, it was just so mangled’.
‘‘All I thought was that they are resuscitating him. I thought ‘I don’t want to see it’ and I lost it really, I burst into tears.’’
It was an hour or more before Lisa was able to see her husband in hospital.
‘‘It was quite traumatic to see him lying there like that, I just couldn’t stop crying really.’’
Collins was in surgery for eight hours on the day of the crash. Doctors inserted a rod from his hip to his knee and plates and wires in his ankle and foot.
He was then transferred to Waikato Hospital in the hope of saving his foot, but nothing could be done.
He was flown back to New Plymouth where his foot was amputated.
Lisa says it was traumatic watching him suffer as his foot died from a lack of blood circulation.
‘‘I felt like I wanted to take half the pain for him, but I couldn’t.’’
Collins left hospital on December 23.
He had been riding motorcycles for more than 20 years before the crash and had never been involved in an accident before, so rejects any claims bad roads cause crashes.
‘‘No, I don’t think it’s the roads at all, I think it’s people’s inability to assess the road conditions and their own driving.
‘‘Everyone thanks that they are the best driver in the world so when something does happen, they think ‘this couldn’t happen to me cause I’m great at what I do’.
‘‘I think that’s a mentality that has got to change too, because everyone is vulnerable.’’
Collins also made a special appeal for drivers to pay more attention to motorcyclists, something he says is lacking on the country’s roads.
‘‘My situation was slightly different but as a rule I think most car drivers are looking out for car drivers, not all road users.’’
He encouraged motorcyclists to remain alert at all times.
‘‘You can’t take it for granted that everything is going to be ok, I’m walking proof of that.’’
I didn’t want to go out, it has taken me this long to get used to looking at myself like this. Trevor Collins