Bikers flout the law -- and get away with it By ERIKA BERAS eberas@MiamiHerald.com When Rafael Jose Colon rumbled up to his parents' house in the saddle of a shiny new Suzuki GSX 1000, his father said: ``Mi hijo . . . you've just bought yourself a ticket to death.' Less than a month later, Colon catapulted 40 feet off an overpass connecting Interstate 95 and State Road 836, landing in the courtyard of a women's detention center. His neck snapped. He was 23. Spurred by Colon's May death and an alarming number of similarly spectacular crashes, the Florida Highway Patrol took to the streets Thursday, shadowing speeding motorcyclists with a fleet of unmarked cars and snatching violators' keys at red-light intersections. It remains to be seen whether the more reckless riders can be reined in. South Florida is awash in high-performance, high-speed, testosterone-fueled 'crotch rocket' sports bikes. The riders are mostly men, often with women clinging to their backs. 'It scares me to drive one of these,' said Uppy Bermudez, a 25-year-old mother of two from Homestead who rides on the back of her husband Pablo's Honda. ``But it's fun to ride when he's driving.' Riders congregate on Thursday nights -- Bike Night -- at the parking lot of Amos Sports Grill on South Dixie Highway in Kendall and fan out across the region, darting in and out of traffic on major highways. Not all of them ride recklessly. Jorge Gomar, 50, a Bike Night regular from Kendall, has a Harley, as do many of the older riders. 'Younger people tend to go for sports bikes,' he said. 'Lots of our bikes are cruisers.' Cruisers traditionally lack the horsepower to go as fast as sports bikes, which are built for racing. 'A lot of the younger riders give us a bad name,' Gomar says. Indeed, for some of the younger riders, eluding authorities at breathtaking speeds is part of the thrill. `IT'S AWESOME' By day, Armando Dasorri, 20, does data entry at a bank and studies information technology at Miami Dade College. He lives in Doral and rides his Honda 2006 CB everywhere. He said the fastest he has gone is 165 mph. 'It's awesome,' he said. ``You don't have to follow traffic. It's illegal to go between lanes, but, hey, we all do illegal things every day. Cops are always attempting to pull me over and I don't stop. The one time I did stop I got arrested for fleeing and eluding. But you just want to see how fast your bike will go.' Traditionally, the highway patrol and other law enforcement agencies have been helpless to thwart the more brazen speeders. Many departments have no-chase policies, unless they involve pursuit of a violent felon. 'Ninety-nine percent of the officers won't waste their time chasing them because they know they won't catch them and only hurt themselves or someone else on the road,' said Bobby Hernandez, spokesman for the Miami Beach Police Department. An exception was made in 2005 for David Carpenter. Carpenter was thought to be the man seen repeatedly flouting the speed limit on a Honda. But cops couldn't prove it. The bike's license tag was bent, obscuring the numbers on it, so it couldn't be traced. The rider had a habit of flipping police 'the bird' as he flashed by in a 160-mph blur. Determined to catch him in the act, authorities deployed a single-engine plane and six patrol cars, tracking him to an apartment complex on Northwest 105th Lane. But when the cruisers arrived, Carpenter, calmly washing his car, denied he had been out on the road. Refused entry, police tried to peek inside his apartment, but the curtains were closed. If it hadn't been for Carpenter's English bulldog mix coming to the window and parting the curtains, cops couldn't have seen his Honda and made the bust. INEXPERIENCE If you can afford a decent car, you can afford a sports bike. Roughly $12,000 purchases a

 

quote: 'Death is destined' Those guys are 'friggin' nuts on the road..

 

For any particular reason? I'd rather clean bugs off the windshield...

 

I probably sound harsh, but I figure, if the idiots are going to drive like idiots - that's their problem. I just hope they don't kill someone else when they mess up their lives.

Hack

 

In my opinion riding a motorcycle in excess of 120 mph through traffic is like shooting a gun in a crowded room. A collision with a small car at these speeds could very likely seriously injure or kill one or more occupants.

At some speed, if there are others on the road they are putting at risk by their actions, I believe these riders must be stopped at all costs. If they go so far as to obscure or even remove their license plates to prevent identification, then unless a pursuit chopper or airplane is available, the only alternatives may be to lay down spike stripes, or run them off the road, whatever the consequences for the offender.

If a driver of a car were careening through traffic shooting a firearm out the window and refusing to yield with officers in pursuit, would we do any less? Operated like this, these bikes are deadly weapons that pose an imminent and lethal threat to all law abiding citizens and their loved ones out on the road.

Would love to hear any LEOs comment on what options they have available in these extreme scenarios.

 

Not harsh at all. But the important point to remember is that it isn't just their problem: it's all of ours problem, because by driving at more than twice the speed of traffic, often in excess of 120 mph, splitting lanes, riding on the shoulder, and careening in and out of blind spots, they pose a lethal and unavoidable threat to the other drivers out on the road and to those drivers' loved ones who are traveling with them.

An ejected motorcycle rider or motorcycle itself flying through your rear window or into a car door at a speed differential of more than 60 mph, or head on at a speed differential well in excess of 120 mph can seriously injure or kill the car's occupants. It's the speed differential that makes these riders' actions so serious.

Families shouldn't have to have a hummer or a big pickup truck just to be able to protect themselves from idiots using the public roads as their own personal race courses. What is going to happen to that mother in a ford escort with an infant and a toddler in the back seat when that sport bike cuts through a red light at 120 mph and hits the rear passenger door, or what is going to happen when that sport bike rear can't slow down in time and rear ends them and is ejected into their rear window? If you saw the photos of the sport bike rider lodged in the loading door of a semi trailer he rear ended, you know what that means for her and her kids.

 

My departments policy is not to chase anyone who runs on a m/c unless its a felony that they are wanted for, even then depending on the crime its the supervisor on duties discretion. A few years back we had a chase with a crotch rocket and it wasnt high speed at first but when it turned high speed it was called off. As the r/o turned onto the next street the rocket had crashed into a light pole and the driver was dead. It was verified that he was not being chased at the time of the crash. He took off beause he was only on a permit and he just stopped he would have received a summons and thats it.I dont think these people realize the consequences and the catastrophe that occurs at those speeds,I believe its a lot to do with overconfidence and people buying somehting that they really are not ready for. A bike like a Honda CBR is no first bike for anyone.When you go that fast on a bike I guess you just hope for the best. Does anyone really need a street bike to go almost 200mph?

 

I know this shouldn't make me feel better about this whole sport bike thing, but it is nice (for me) to not have to read how a HD "troublemaker" did whatever.

 

They'll probablyget around to banning crotch rockets eventually, just like they did 3 wheeled ATC's, either that or they will become so expensive to insure fewwill be able toafford one. One way or the other, these idiots are going to cost everybody a little bit of freedom and a lot of money.

 

Maybe the crotch rocket dealers should be compelled to only sell these things to people w/ a motorcycle endorsement on their licenses. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is a delaer selling rockets to anyone who walks off the street.