MARIETTA, Ga., - If there’s anyone who doubts that a motorcycle safety course is worth their time and effort, it certainly isn’t Army 1st Lt. Clifton Walker.
“I’m here to tell you that – if it hadn’t been for the training I received – I would have been seriously injured, or even ended up dead,” said Walker, who is the signal platoon leader for the 48th Brigade Special Troops Battalion of the Georgia National Guard.
It was two weeks after having completed the Motorcycle Safety Course that Walker found himself putting what he had learned to the test.
Walker said he was out riding his 2004 Suzuki GSXR 600, heading north on Riverview Road in Mableton, Ga., when he came upon an intersection.
As he came closer to the four-way stop, he began using the “12-second survey method” he had been taught in the course.
“You visually scan the situation in front of you using a 12-second count,” Walker said. “That way, the rider – in this case, me – has full ‘situational awareness’ of the road ahead, the weather and the traffic [vehicle and pedestrian].”
As the rider evaluates what he has seen using this method, he formulates how he will react if something happens.
On his left, Walker saw a semi-tractor pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with steel beams that had come to a stop. The driver had given no indication he was going to turn, but that’s just what he did. The driver looked ahead and then left, but never looked right before moving toward Walker’s direction.
“I’m at six seconds in my survey, and the semi – being as wide as it is – moved into my lane,” Walker said. “I said to myself, ‘he’s got to see me, I hope he sees me,’ but I knew in my heart he didn’t.”
As the truck made its wide, right turn into his lane, Walker had to decide how to avoid being hit. He knew the best option was to point the bike in the direction of the grass and dirt shoulder.
“I geared down, started braking and stood up like they taught us in class as I hit the shoulder,” Walker recalled. “The bike went down, and I was thrown, ending up on my back in the dirt.”
Landing on his back and left shoulder, he suffered some bruising and soreness. The full-face helmet he wore kept him from suffering more than a headache and a bit of dizziness.
Damage to his bike, he said, included deep scratches along the bike’s left side –from front to back, a cracked left mirror, a cracked wheel faring, and a cracked fuel tank. His helmet was damaged and his outer jacket was ripped.
Walker re-emphasized that his attendance at Guard’s Motorcycle Safety Course had possibly saved his life. Had he not taken the course, he might have panicked, frozen up and not reacted quickly enough.
“The lieutenant’s experience bears out the importance of this training,” said army Maj. Jerry Perry.
Perry, the full-time operations officer for the Governor’s Counterdrug Task Force, is among the 12 new instructors recently added to the Motorcycle Safety Course. He taught the course Walker attended.
“It’s nice to know what he learned from us didn’t fail him,” Perry said. “There’s no better testament than a rider getting up and walking away because he listened and learned.”