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Tales Of Decapitated Riders (Cyclists; Motorcyclists; Etc.)

Adrian Veidt said:
And it was David Warner as the journalist/writer who was decapitated. The priest was impaled.
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Ah, yes. You're quite right. I remember it now. And his impaling was forehadowed by ominous signs in photographs.

Still, if the film came out in 1976 and the decapitation ULs began to appear in '78, there could be a link...

Which gives me an idea for a thread :)
 
I saw a prog on Bravo today about motorways, featuring the police moaning about bad driving.

One copper said he once had to pick up a severed head after an accident, and now, every time he's had to deal with a blood'n'guts crash, the head sort of comes back to him and he can't sleep.......

I have seen some 'orrible sights at work but anyone who can pick up some bugger's head and walk with it has my utmost admiration.
 
I remember in Joseph Wambaugh's book "The Choirboys" there is a scene where a newlywed couple are killed in a car crash and the bride is beheaded.
As the police are directing traffic around the accident woman stops her car for a quick gawp at the bloodshed. When challenged by an officer she says she just wanted to check if anyone was hurt. The officers response was to pick up the brides severed head by the hair and say "Well, this one isn't feeling too good!"
 
There is a similar urban legend about a kid who sticks his/her head out of a school bus window, and it stays behind when the bus passed too close to a stop sign or other similar object.
 
Haha, the Choirboys, isn't that the book where the teenage gang moon the policeman and intone 'Who Has the prayer?' 'I have the prayer' 'Brother, speak your prayer!' (or something like that) and one farts? Laughed my head off.

A bloke was killed on a train this last week in S. England somewhere by leaning out of a window and suffering 'severe head injuries' which in this context means you-know-what. I've seen loads of peeps leaning out of train windows and delivered dozens of gory lectures to my kids on the subject...
 
escargot said:
A bloke was killed on a train this last week in S. England somewhere by leaning out of a window and suffering 'severe head injuries' which in this context means you-know-what. I've seen loads of peeps leaning out of train windows and delivered dozens of gory lectures to my kids on the subject...
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I was told about that when I went down to London for the meet.
I was horrified to note that London still has the old-fashioned buses, complete with conductor, that you board at the back.
We got rid of them up here in the North after a prospective passenger ran to catch a bus which had just pulled away, lost his footing on the bus platform and was decapitated under the wheels.
 
Susan Bulmer said:
I was horrified to note that London still has the old-fashioned buses, complete with conductor, that you board at the back.
We got rid of them up here in the North after a prospective passenger ran to catch a bus which had just pulled away, lost his footing on the bus platform and was decapitated under the wheels.
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I don't follow that: if the platform's at the back it would be behind the wheels. Unless the bus was reversing, in which case why was the passenger running? Also, a bus tyre would more likely squash a head than sever it from the body.

[OT Whinge: I wish we had conductors on the buses down here: I reckon the journies could be much quicker if the bus didn't have to wait at each stop while the driver takes the fares.]
 
I trained as a bus driver and it's incredible how many ways people can kill and mutilate themselves on public transport.
Very common is the 'doors closing on people's heads and dragging them along' method. Trainees are told horror stories going back decades of crushings, limb-loss and decapitations from day one.

And it's perfectly possible to be killed by a bus's wheels when you've fallen off the back.
If you've been waiting half an hour, then two come at once- bingo! The first bus won't get you, but the second will.
 
police and heads

The Bill do an unenviable job dealing with suicides , Ive seen them pull a couple of bodies out the river, and one on the railway (which was a decap)-
so they do deal with a number of cases like that at least.
But the thread started with an apparent UL about heads still inside helmets, which crosses my mind as perhaps being a tale told by bikers as propaganda related to the crash helmet laws.
In a normal crash the neck might be broken, but with an unwieldy helmet on the whole thing might come off, or so the tale would have us believe.
steve b
 
When I lived in Barrow In Furness a FOAF's father was apparently part of the rescue team looking for debris from the Bluebird crash on Coniston Water ( he was a diver ) ,he found Donald Cambell's crash helmet on the lake bottom , picked it up and found the headstill in it . He left it where it was because apparently the rescue team were told to leave any body parts they found where they were as it was the wish of the family that he was 'buried' in the lake!
Very ULish I think !
 
Wow Marion, the story about Campbell's head still in the helmet rings true with me. I remember hearing about his body being seen, headless, years ago at the bottom of the lake.

And didn't the ongoing and largely amateur search for the body turn up at least one other corpse- of a murder victim?

Brrrr.
 
Anonymous said:
... It was the guy who wrote "Haunted Ontario". Can't remember his name of the top of my head.
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Terry Boyle. There are at least 4 volumes in Boyle's Haunted Ontario series.
 
escargot said:
The woman killed by a pushbike is featured in 'Forty Years Of Murder' by Keith Simpson.
Not a recommended bedtime read.
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Lol, I'm just sitting reading this at work (I obviously wouldn't be doing anything productive! ;)) and came to the above post. What should I have in my backpack as my next read (after I finish "Credible Witness 2") but...

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wow this thread lay dormant for 16 years then suddenly here it is again.

Re motorcycle accidents and heads falling off. My cousin is an ex-copper from the West Yorkshire police and yes she did attend at least one motorcycle accident where the rider had hit a sign at high speed and carried on across a junction minus his head.

She was not asked to pick the helmet up but did see the ambulance guys doing so with all the attendant gore hanging out the bottom of the helmet.

TBH I suspect that the reason one doesn't see such details in the news is because it is an unpleasant and unnecessary layer of detail that we don't really need to know. Simply the fact that there was a serious motorcycle accident and someone died is sufficient reporting.
 
XBergMann said:
TBH I suspect that the reason one doesn't see such details in the news is because it is an unpleasant and unnecessary layer of detail that we don't really need to know. Simply the fact that there was a serious motorcycle accident and someone died is sufficient reporting.
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Spot-on! The victims' families don't want that sort of detail chucked around.
 
Don't we also have a general 'Decapitation' thread? I hear lots of those stories at work.
 
CALGACUS03 said:
Lol, I'm just sitting reading this at work (I obviously wouldn't be doing anything productive! ;)) and came to the above post. What should I have in my backpack as my next read (after I finish "Credible Witness 2") but...

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Oh you'll LOVE it! Simpson had some objectionable views though. Beyond cynical.
 
CALGACUS03 said:
Lol, I'm just sitting reading this at work (I obviously wouldn't be doing anything productive! ;)) and came to the above post. What should I have in my backpack as my next read (after I finish "Credible Witness 2") but...

View attachment 20683
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Oh yeah and you'll soon be able to tell at a glance the age/sex/level of health of a random skull such as the one pictured on the cover.
 
escargot said:
Spit it out, Man!
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I'm sure it was posted way back but it may have fallen down the memory-hole in chat. I can't find it in any of the obvious places.

I can date the story to early 2002. It was in July of that year that the City of Manchester Stadium - now the Etihad - opened.

At that time, I had done some work in a Gorton school and had good reason to remember one large family, of Oirish extraction: they had a child in every year-group, most of them boys and all difficult. Their looks were distinctive but they were so similar to each other that, even when the story broke, I was uncertain whether I had taught the lad at the centre of it or just one or two of his siblings.

They were exactly the kind of family who would give their children nuisance toys and dirt-bikes for their birthdays. So they did.

The stadium was nearly finished, I gather, with work continuing right up to the opening to prepare the landscape around it. This area seemed to invite the off-road tribe as an ideal playground, ignoring the Health & Safety warnings posted around.

Twilight fell but there was still fuel in the engines and tear-arse noises to be made, bombing over the rough terrain. Even better, the builders had thoughtfully left a line of posts to mark the boundary of the main approach to the stadium. Just the job for a slalom!

Or they would have been, if it hadn't been for the chains between!

Our alpha-male lead was out of it very quickly. His chums were offered therapy.

I did once search for the story online but it predates archived local newsaper reports. It must have been in the Evening News. :oops:

Searching for it brings up a surprising number of beheadings in the region!
 
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I'm aware of two decapitations of motorcyclists, both from first-hand versions via attending officers:

a) A moped (?) rider went under an HGV. Helpful bystanders tried to drag his body out from under the lorry, encountering considerable resistance. Men tugging lustily at both legs eventually achieved a result...

*poit*

The helmeted head rolled out from under one side of the vehicle, the remainder of the deceased came popping out the other. Much confusion ensues.

b) One of my colleagues was plagued by a motorbike-riding twat in his parish. He considered himself an "outlaw", and had various tattoos appropriate to his soi-disant hard man status. One of them was a dotted line tattooed around his neck, above which were the tattooed words "Cut here". We can see where this is going, can't we?

One day Mr. Tuffy attempted a white-knuckle overtake between two HGVs travelling in opposite directions. It didn't come off. His head, however...

Yep: right along the dotted line...

maximus otter
 
From time to time, I used to spend the odd evening browsing horrors on LiveLeak. If I wasn't depressed before, I certainly was after!

Still, wasn't there something to be said for acquaintance with the worst things life can bring? It wasn't all Schadenfreude, as some folk were plain unlucky. A stumble on the kerb could lead to your head in the road and then immediately under a bus.




Decapitations of motor-cyclists were bread and butter. I presume they were quickly out of it. More unfortunate was the young biker sliced in two and still begging for water . . .

Enthusiastic bikers tend to wrap themselves around with the assurance that nine-tenths of accidents are caused by other road-users. I think a lot of them have a misplaced trust in their ability to accelerate out of danger! :reap:
 
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ramonmercado said:
There is a bizarre beheadings thread but no Mundane Mutilations thread afaiaa.
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Yup, no beheading is mundane!

There've been some gory British train-related beheadings over the years. We were on the Severn Valley steam railway a few weeks ago and I saw several people pull the door windows down and lean out. Was expecting to see a head fly past at any minute.
 
Not a motorbike but Jayne Mansfield was in legend decapitated by car crash.
 
ninja_cat said:
That just reminded me of a friend who had a brush with a Horse.

He had a kwacker 500 racer and found a bridge in the country side that he could, with enough speed, get airborne on. Well over he goes a, and as he lands he sees two horses (riderless) in the road. Shit, he thinks, but luckily gets between them, only to see a third horse. Bang! he and bike (less expensive fairing) in one field and Horse running off in another field with a painful bum.
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Someone I used to be friendly with found a significant other who she was thrilled about. I never got to meet him, for reasons which will become apparent, but the thrill was apparently completely reciprocated. He was a keen climber - he worked as a steeplejack - and also a keen motorcyclist. He used to go off on long transcontinental trips, and would use these as a pretext for raising charity funds. He'd been planning one of these for a long time, so said to S he'd do this last one, and afterwards they could settle down together. According to a mutual friend of theirs, he'd actually been planning to propose on his return.

Tragically, and appallingly, she was woken early one morning by a call to her mobile from his number, but it wasn't his voice. The very first question she heard was "How will you collect the body?" Turns out he'd been riding at night through Mongolia, and had completely failed to see the cow standing in the middle of the road. Turns out if you hit a cow quickly enough on your motorbike, it's the last thing you'll ever do. It's a bathetic way to go. It seems he was in a hurry to get the trip over with, so he could get back to S, although of course we'll never know for sure.

Anyway, his death, and the way she found out about it, messed S up good and proper - we were able to provide immediate logistical and emotional support for her, but the experience really changed her for the worse, and she started behaving in ways that caused real harm to my family and me. She's gone from being someone my wife saw as almost a sister to a sworn enemy. It's all terribly sad
 
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