Daytona Beach Hospital Makes Room for Bikers

Biketoberfest begins in nine days in Daytona Beach, an event heralded by hundreds of huge motorcycles roaring south down Highway A1A like two-wheeled F-16s. Halifax Medical Center is making an unusual preparation for the event -- they're limiting elective surgeries so they have time to put injured bikers back together:

The decision, he said, is the result of the carnage that came through the emergency room during Bike Week 2006. Bike Week is the busiest time at the Halifax emergency room, the state's fourth busiest.
"During the events, we'll have 135 injured come in; half will have to be admitted and 25 percent in the ICU (intensive care unit)," Lang said. "And these are the most serious kinds (of patient casualties): amputations, spine injuries, head injuries."

Daytona Beach · Florida · 2006/10/10 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

Emergency care providors refer to helmetless motor cycle riders as "organ donors".

Just make sure those cards are signed, guys. Your choice in risky pasttimes can help someone else continue living: all part of the glorious circle of life. In that respect, motorcycle riders are far more useful than basejumpers.

#1 · justsomeguy · 2006/10/10

Im familiar with many of the bars where bikers drink on the east coast of Florida, because Im a guy who likes to have a couple of brews with my late lunch (I keep Spanish hours wherever I work). Most bikers are cruising, especially in Florida this time of year, so they often show up at the scenic spots where I hang out. Theres a bar by the lighthouse on the Daytona side of Ponce Inlet where theyre actually encouraged to ride their Harleys into the open bar (I wouldnt try riding a rice-burner through there), around a post onto the deck, and out again. Its a Bacchanalian tradition, and the bartender will show you a T&A scrapbook to prove it.

Judging by the copious amounts of alcohol that most bikers (whether poser types or those who wear their dirty outlaw colors) drink and the fact that most of them seem to smoke tobacco heavily, I doubt many of them have quality organs to donate.

#2 · Vince Williams · 2006/10/10