11 Motorcyle Riding Celebrities Who Are Thankful to Be Here
1. Gary Busey
Back in 1988, Busey had just picked his Harley up from Bartels and was making his way onto a busy street in Los Angeles when a freak accident occurred that would change his life forever. The back wheel hit a patch of sand and then the bike started to fishtail away from him. He hit the rear brakes and the bike flipped him over, leaving him to hit the curb head first. What resulted was a double compound fracture on his back, a split skull and a 50-cent piece of his skull missing from it. The actor's life hung by a thread, and after undergoing several hours of neurosurgery doctors told the media it was a wait-and-see scenario. Busey did recover and was told in the hospital that if he had arrived three minutes later he would not have lived. Busey said to have had a spiritual awakening and has lived his life very differently from that point on, with love and positivity being what he wishes to leave everyone he comes into contact with.
2. Ann-Margret
The sex kitten from 1960 was out in Minnesota one August day when she was thrown from her motorcycle unceremoniously. She suffered three broken ribs and a fractured left shoulder for her troubles. The very next day she set out to carry on as Grand Marshal of the Colonel' s Truck Accessories National Hot Rod Assoc. Nationals, riding in a pace car like nothing had happened. The day after that she had an interview on Larry King where she spoke about the accident, telling King that she had a beautiful new motorcycle waiting for her.
3. Steven Tyler
It was like any other day when Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler hopped onto his motorcycle and went out to pick up his daughter Mia from the babysitter in January 1981. The rocker got into an accident on the way there that tore open his head, the injury taking nearly a year to heal. The accident delayed the album Rock in a Hard Place from being completed and put the fate of the band up in the air. Many attribute the alleged extreme drug use by Tyler to be the reason behind the crash. Tyler recovered from the crash but, unfortunately, his drug use increased until the band held an intervention for him in 1986.
4. Bob Dylan
Noted motorcycle enthusiast, Nobel prize winner and musician Bob Dylan said he picked up the habit of riding when he was a teenager and purchased a Harley 45. Back in 1966, Dylan wrecked his Triumph on the outskirts of Woodstock in a crash that has been a mystery for most of rock and roll legend. Dylan said that an oil slick caused him to lose control but according to playwright Sam Shepard, Dylan was blinded by the sun and got thrown from the bike. Whatever the cause was, the crash gave Dylan a cracked vertebra along with some serious road rash. Dylan had to cancel his upcoming Yale Bowl performance as well as another performance that manager Albert Grossman had lined up. Dylan went further by retreating from stardom and living quietly with his young family. It was eight years before Dylan would go back out onto the road again and to the open arms of his fans.
5. Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson was out running errands on his motorcycle back in the summer of 2000 on what was a beautiful New York day. He was traveling down a stretch of road when a deer dashed in front of him and he collided with the woodland creature, ultimately ending up crashing into a tree. Neeson broke his pelvis and was lodged in the tree so precariously that he had to be cut from his clothing to extricate him from the site for hospital transport. He needed extensive surgery to repair him and ended up not reprising his role in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
6. Ben Roethlisberger
Big Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers foolishly went out riding without his helmet and paid the cost for the error. He flipped his motorcycle and crashed into the windshield of an oncoming car. He suffered a broken nose and both upper/lower jaws among other injuries. He was also driving without a valid license for a motorcycle which brought him much criticism by safety advocates and the media. The then-rookie quarterback would later go on to lead his team to the Super Bowl title.
7. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Before he was the Governor of California, action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger had been in one of his worst motorcycle accidents to date. In 2001 the actor was out driving his motorcycle when the car in front of him abruptly stopped, leaving him no room to stop himself safely and no time to switch lanes. He was hospitalized for four days after coming in with six broken ribs.
8. Lauren Hutton
Actress and model Lauren Hutton had a motorcycle mishap at a charity event for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. She only suffered a broken leg while riding her motorcycle which could be attributed to fellow rider and friend Dennis Hopper who had earlier convinced Hutton to wear safety gear.
9. Billy Idol
Iconic bad boy rocker Billy Idol was out for a cruise on his Harley in the early hours of a February morning when his misfortune occurred. Idol made the insane move to disregard a stop sign at a Hollywood intersection and collided with a car. Idol, who was not wearing a helmet at the time, was rushed to the hospital where he underwent seven hours of surgery to repair his broken body. He later told late-night talk show host Arsenio Hall in an interview that he was amazed to walk away from the accident with both legs intact. In typical Idol fashion, he quipped that when he came to on the operating table with someone cutting his shirt off, he thought to himself "Thank the f- I didn't wear one of my favorite leather jackets."
10. Erik Estrada
Erik Estrada suffered a terrible accident while in the midst of stardom from the hit television show CHiPs. The accident occurred during the last season of the show while filming a scene where he and his partner jump on their motorcycles, and a car is backing down an alley. The Highway Patrol officers would then give chase. They shot the scene and everything went great, or so you would think. Estrada was later told that there was a hair on the lens and they needed to shoot the scene once more. Here is where things started to go sideways in this tale; the stunt guys had already gone home for the day and the driver they had was young and inexperienced. The new driver stops 25 feet too soon, the motorcycle hits the front fender, Estrada goes flying through the windshield and lands on the hood, and then the bike ended up landing right on his back! He was airlifted to UCLA with a 50/50 chance of surviving his injuries, and spent five days in intensive care with fractured ribs, punctured lungs, a cracked jaw, and a broken wrist. Estrada defied the odds he was given on arrival, and, when he was able to, got right back on a bike.
11. Tommy Lee's Buddy
While this one isn't the celebrity himself, it is his close friend who was riding with him at the time. Recently, Tommy Lee was out for a ride with said friend in Malibu, CA when the suggestion came up for them to switch bikes so that they could get a taste of the other's world. Moments after they set off again, the friend, who was riding Lee's larger bike, was rear-ended by a car causing a wreck that would have destroyed the smaller bike Lee was now riding. The friend only suffered multiple vertebrae fractures, which he recovered from, and is happy that they made the exchange that fateful day.
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