Rafael José Colón died on his way to visit a fellow biker who had been transported to the hospital just hours before. Photo courtesy of Rafael Colón Sr.

Editor’s Note: In the last three months in Miami-Dade County, more than a dozen people have died as a result of motorcycle accidents, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Last week’s cover story “Motorcycle Madness” examined local, state and national statistics as well as South Florida’s Bike Night phenomenon that draws hundreds of enthusiasts each week. In part two of the SunPost’s report on the increasing rate of motorcycle accidents and fatalities on South Florida roads, Keyvan Antonio Heydari follows the trajectory of two Miami crashes that took place in May, named National Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.

Dead Before Arrival

Rafael José Colón was on his way to Jackson Memorial Hospital early on the morning of May 4, 2007. He never made it. Riding his Suzuki GXR 1000 at about 2:30 a.m. that Friday, he crashed into a guardrail on a ramp from Interstate 95 to State Road 836, fell about 40 feet onto a grassy embankment and snapped his neck.

The 23-year-old was en route to Jackson to visit a fellow motorcyclist who had catapulted off the Palmetto Expressway on-ramp while leaving the Bike Night gathering on U.S. 1 and 104th Street in Kendall that Thursday night. Colón didn’t know the other motorcyclist he was going to visit, but a group of about six comrades on cycles rode from Broward to check on the fellow rider’s welfare.

He and Colón were but two casualties of South Florida’s traditional Thursday Bike Night activities. “They were pretty distraught, having a double tragedy happen in a couple of hours,” recalls Ignatius Carroll, a spokesman for the Miami Fire Department who was on the scene.

According to police scenarios, Colón decelerated from 120 mph to about 90 mph to get on the ramp that feeds from I-95 to westbound S.R. 836, but the impetus pushed him into and over the rail. Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Pat Santangelo notes that particular overpass is a recurrent accident scene for cycles decelerating to turn onto the ramp. “They think they can control the bike but they slide and get pushed into the rail. It’s a relatively common mistake,” Santangelo explains.

One of four children, Colón had returned home to Miramar from the Thursday night ride when a riding buddy called to tell him a fellow motorcyclist had been injured. They gathered a group of riders for the early morning drive to Jackson Memorial.

Rafael Colón Sr. recalls that when his son purchased the 1000cc bike, he counseled, “You just bought yourself a ticket [to trouble].” Smiling, Rafael José responded, “You have to have confidence.” Previously, Rafael José had owned a smaller 250cc cycle for a couple of months.

Colón Sr. moved his family from Puerto Rico to Miramar about seven years ago. Rafael José bought the powerful 1000cc dynamo, known as a “crotch rocket,” on a $69 per month payment plan and had owned it for about 45 days when he died. Colón Sr. asserts that his son had a motorcycle riding certificate.

On the night he died, Rafael José was wearing a helmet and protective gear. According to Colón Sr., his son’s corpse had few scratches and the motorbike was “intact,” but he speculates that applying the brake overturned the bike and launched his son over the guardrail.

“We saw the street closed, and we knew what happened,” he says. “It’s not the same to crash in a motorcycle as in a car.... Only someone who has lost a child knows what this is about. We have suffered and cried. I’m sure he was going to die like this.”

Rafael José Colón, who was to marry his live-in girlfriend Lismarie on July 14 in Puerto Rico, worked at Warren Henry Infiniti in north Miami-Dade.

Colón Sr. wants to dispel any notion that his third child was a faceless, helmeted projectile on I-95 or one of the wild riders seen on Miami’s expressways. “He was a good kid and a good son. Humble and respectful.”

The 48-year-old father added, “Only our belief in God and a greater plan for my son has helped us. I don’t want another family to suffer what we have lived through. So that my son’s death was not in vain.”

Living to Tell About It

Almost a month after crashing her motorcycle, Maitée Palmer’s skin still shows the evidence of her brush with death. Photo by Ricardo Herran/ www.herranricardo.com

Maitée Palmer is a Bike Night survivor.

On May 11, 2007, Palmer was riding with five friends, returning from Denny’s in Sunny Isles Beach after a Thursday night that started in the Kendall parking lot where bikes congregate.

Driving west on State Road 826, they came to the stretch of the Palmetto Expressway known as “the bend,” where the road doglegs south. Riding without a leather jacket, Palmer lost control of her bike, she says, after hitting a groove on the pavement while turning south. According to Palmer, she was riding at 150 mph when she eased up on the throttle as the road got rougher, causing the 500cc Honda to wobble. She slid on her backside 600 feet, almost a quarter mile, as she tried to keep from hurting her spinal column and back.

“Somebody always goes down on a Thursday. Or you fall or you die. That's the way it is.”

Palmer gets right to the point. She talks hard and fast. That’s also how she rides.

“Ninety percent of the time, I’m a responsible rider,” she says. “But I’ve gone over 150 mph more than 200 times."

After 15 hours in intensive care at Palmetto General Hospital, Palmer has made a quick recovery and is back at work in a Miami veterinary clinic. On her cell phone, she has photos of her severe road rash. “I smelled my flesh burning.”

Jorge Ruiz and his friend Alex Perez were riding with Palmer that night. About 200 feet behind Palmer, Ruiz performed a maneuver known as “laying down the bike” in which the motorcycle goes on its side and in front of the driver.

“I slipped on her oil,” recalls Ruiz, who rides a Suzuki GSR 01. Ruiz was wearing a helmet but no protective jacket, just a T-shirt. He shows a road scrape on his forearm, product of the 200-foot road slide that night, but now healing. “It gets pretty rough.”

His friend Alex Perez was a little more scared, taking the fall without gear or helmet. “I fell and didn’t have anything. I learned my lesson.”

“Concrete hurts. I was going 155 for no reason,” Palmer admits. “I cried because I could have killed people I care about. I almost got hit by three cars.”

Palmer mentions Mitchell Padilla, who died on a Thursday night in Miami Beach when he T-boned a car with his hyper-souped-up Hayabuso 1300 — the fastest production bike made — augmented with 100 extra booster shots of nitrous oxide. “Thursday night is Bike Night. That’s everywhere in South Florida,” Palmer asserts. “I feel every friend that has died has died on a Thursday.”

Padilla’s passenger, Melanie Karina Velazquez, died just shy of her 20th birthday when Padilla ran the stop sign at Meridian and 10th in South Beach at more than 60 mph. Some riding colleagues of Padilla commented that the young man, who worked in his family’s trucking company, would continually push the limits. “He was hot-headed. He had to be the center of attention. I feel sorry for that girl telling him to stop and he wouldn’t let her get off,” said a fellow Bike Night participant.

Palmer draws on her accident experience to comment. “We all do the same thing. Mitchell would do it constantly. He was a good kid, but he was hot-headed. When you ‘biff’ it, you screw up pretty bad. We used to go everywhere, wherever they had bikes, we were there.”

What causes this excessive risk-taking? Movies? Video games?

“It’s personality,” Palmer underlines. “I jump out of airplanes, I like kayaking and biking.” She had her bike for 18 months without insurance. “Are you kidding? It costs $18,000 a year to insure myself,” Palmer notes. “If it wasn’t that expensive, everybody would have insurance.”

Maitée Palmer agreed to tell her story because she’s “all about enlightening people.”

“I was going 155 for no reason,” she reiterates. “You have a Porsche and you do the same thing. After you do a stunt like that, you say, ‘I just cheated life. Let me slow down.’… You feel invincible on that bike. Like Superwoman.”

Palmer, however, felt quite mortal when she came down to the pavement. “I really thought I was dying that night. The helmet saved my life. I didn’t want to be paraplegic or quadriplegic,” she recalls. “There was gasoline, sparks. I smelled my flesh burning that night.... I skid 675 feet on my butt. I have had a real big passion when it comes to motos. I love anything with an engine.”

Palmer has a recommendation for politicians: Reinstate the mandatory helmet law, which was repealed in 2000. “[The helmet optional] law should have never been passed.”

Palmer notes that she knows why riders pull wheelies on the local expressways and won’t swear off motorcycles. “I know how it makes them feel. My new saying is when I can afford to get insurance, I’ll get a bike again.”

Palmer takes responsibility for her actions. But will she pay her $30,000 hospital bill?

“Yeah, dude. That’s my credit,” she emphasizes.

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