I have witnessed exactly 2 people take their last breath in front of me in my life. One of them was a family member whose illnesses had been a long time coming and while of course it was tragic, it wasn't exactly a surprise. We had known this day was going to arrive, it was just a question of when. The other one was a shock moment out of the blue, and this one haunts me significantly more than the other; especially since the entire thing could have been prevented if the person involved hadn't been an idiot.
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Although i don't recall exactly when this happened I can remember the events very vividly. I can still hear the sounds, i can still see the people involved, and I can still even remember things like the smells. It is not a pleasant memory and the only reason why I was involved at all is because I just happened to be nearby.
A few friends of mine and myself were sitting at the cafe that I owned at the time when we heard a sound like an explosion followed very quickly by a tremendous amount of water being dropped from a great height. It was early evening, and while we didn't know exactly where it came from we went around the corner to investigate.
There was no explosion nor was there any water, but the situation was not a good one regardless.
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Most buildings in Thailand have some sort of security bars on the windows and this building was not an exception. The bars were mangled and all the glass behind it was shattered (that was the sound of "water" that I had heard before.) The sound of an explosion was a person flying into those security bars after having been launched from his motorbike and briefly obtaining a high speed flight to his ultimate doom. He was currently lying very nearby.
The bike he was riding was back at the curb where the driver had hit the embankment, presumably at high speed, and ended up flying full-speed into the side of this building and hit with enough force to completely crumble the steel bars on the windows as well as bounce back several meters.
We were the first people on the scene and it quickly eroded into chaos. The person was non responsive, and there was a lot of blood. I had been an Emergency Medical Technician in the States and while this isn't a doctor or nurse, it is exactly the sort of training that a person needs in order to keep someone alive while waiting for more well-equipped and knowledgeable medical staff to turn up.
There was just one problem though.
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The problem was that I could tell, with my very limited medical training, that there was no chance this guy was going to survive. He still had a pulse and was breathing when we got to him and others were really concerned about "securing his neck" and what not but I knew that all of this was for naught, his head injuries were too extreme.
We didn't move him, we took off our shirts to try to stop the bleeding but even though we arrived at the scene MAYBE 45 seconds after impact there was already so much blood on the ground.
I took control because I am not scared of blood and I had responded to accidents in the past as an E.M.T., but this person (I never did find out who he was) was not shaking, was not going into shock - I was surprised he wasn't already dead.
His eyes were closed and he was just a lump on the ground with a very weak pulse yet he was still breathing. I don't mean to be overly graphic but this is the truth, he didn't just have head injuries, parts of his skull had collapsed inside his head and I could see his brain. You can't exactly just put a cloth on top of that and have it coagulate if you apply enough pressure.
While I was holding the increasingly saturated shirts on this guy's head, i felt his pulse get ever weaker and he actually made a slight movement and one last exhalation that was actually stronger than the others...... then he was gone.
By the time the ambulance arrived there wasn't really much for them to do. The young man had been dead for up to 10 minutes or so. There would be no attempt at reviving him as far as I could tell. Again, i don't mean to be terribly graphic but he was missing large portions of his skull and that simply isn't something you can just patch up.
The reason why I say this guy was an idiot is because of this very obvious thing.
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This young man had no visible injuries to any other part of his body. If he had simply been wearing a helmet there is a very good chance that he would have an amazing story to tell his family and friends right now, but because he was "too cool" to wear one, he died less than a couple minutes after flying into that building.
Your body can take a tremendous amount of damage. You can break almost every bone that you have at once (ask Evel Knievel) and still not only live to tell the tale, but live to ride again. This guy, who died right in front of me didn't need to die but he did because despite knowing that Thailand has a bit of a reputation for having dangerous roads he thought (perhaps, again i didn't know him) "it won't happen to me."
These days when I see my friends riding without helmets on I get upset with them because they are operating the same way that whoever this person was... "It wont happen to me... I am skilled driver!" "I'm driving slow" or "my house is just over there." I wonder how many people are dead that said exactly the same dumb shit.
My own head met the pavement that resulted in me getting knocked unconscious one night but I didn't die or even get hurt very bad.... wanna know why? Because i was wearing a friggin helmet!
I would be willing to bet that the guy who died right in front of me on a street corner in Krabi thought exactly the same thing... "it won't ever be me." But it was you pal, and it totally could have been prevented.
If you ride a bike, I certainly hope you have the sense to protect the thing that is enabling you to read this right now. Helmets cost a lot less than a new head - and it is by far the most important part of any motorbike ride.