Nathan Witham, 50, was found unconscious at the accident scene after the 6:15 pm crash. He was airlifted by Medflight to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for treatment.

Witham’s accident happened as he was traveling north on Route 125 on his 2010 Harley Davidson. He slowed down as he approached a traffic backup at the Lee Traffic Circle and a vehicle travelling behind him struck him.

Police said the vehicle, a Ford Expedition driven by Melissa Thomas, 17, of Hollis, didn’t slow down and struck Witham’s motorcycle. Witham got ejected from his motorcycle. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and was unconscious on the ground when rescuers arrived at the scene.

The teen driver was not injured.

Police are investigating why Thomas didn’t slow down. Speed and alcohol have been rulled out as contributing factors.

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According to the authorities, police tried to pull over the motorcyclist for a routine traffic violation close to the intersection of South Willow Street and Laxson Avenue, but instead he accelerated east on Laxson Avenue and got out of sight. Police then got a report about a motorcycle accident at Laxson Ave and Edouard St involving the man.  

Police identified him as William Boucher, 24. Boucher was found pinned under a vehicle in a driveway after his motorycle crashed into parked cars, police said. He sustained injury and is treated at Elliot Hospital, where he is listed in a serious condition. Although a helmet was found at the scene, it is not yet sure whether Boucher was wearing it at the time of the accident.

No charges have been filed yet. The incident is still under investigation, the Union Leader reports.

However, accidents happen even when the weather is nice, and some motorcyclists were involved in crashes resulting either in death or serious injury.

A Franklin man, Dennis Taft, lost his life in a single-motorcycle accident on Route 11 in Andover, NH on Saturday, while the same day another motorcyclist suffered injury in a multi-vehicle crash involving two cars and two motorcycles.

Police said, Joseph P. Catalano, 23, of Albany, NY who was riding a 2006 Harley Davidson on Route 4 in Hampton with his father (who was on a 1990 Harley Davidson), was injured when he was struck by a car.

The car, driven by Ethan R. Marshall, 20, of Burlington, VT was going north on Rt-4 when it rear-ended a stopped vehicle that was attempting a left turn near near Finius T. Flubberbusters. The car then crashed with Catalono’s motorcycle, and caused his father’s motorcycle to skid 100 feet, police said.

Catalano sustained serious right leg trauma and was transported to a Castleton hospital and then airlifted to Lebanon, NH, where he was reported in a stable condition on Sunday afternoon, news reports said.

His father, Joseph Catalano,  sustained road rash on his right hand and arm. The stopped vehicle, driven by Charles W. Hannum, 52, of Fredonia, had three passengers, but no one was injured.

Marshall’s airbags deployed and he was transported to Rutland Regional Medical Center with a bloody nose. He told the police he took his eyes off the road for a second, and when he looked up he was unable to stop and swerved to the left to avoid the stopped vehicle in front of him.

Marshall received traffic tickets for following too closely and for failing to stay within the designated traffic lane.

The SUV – a 2010 Chevrolet Equinox - operated by Laurie Boyce, 58, of Alton, was traveling on Saco Road about 4:30 pm when she made a left turn onto Route 111 east and struck the 2006 Harley-Davidson motorcycle operated by Shane McCarthy, 45, of Lee. His wife, Lezlie Perham, 41, was riding on the back of the motorcycle.

Police said Boyce was turning left onto Route 111 when she struck McCarthy’s motorcycle, “She said she didn’t see him coming.”

The SUV’s front grill smashed into the front tire of the motorcycle, knocking it over and throwing the bike passenger over. The SUV then dragged the bike a short distance, police said.

McCarthy, who was wedged between the bike and the SUV’s undercarriage following the crash, was pronounced dead on the scene. His wife was taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland in a critical condition. According to a hospital spokesman, she was in satisfactory condition over the weekend.

Both McCarthy and Perham were wearing helmets.

Drugs and alcohol were not contributing factors in the crash, police said. It is not yet known if Boyce or McCarthy were speeding. The cause in the crash is yet to be determined.

We feel sorry for the death of Shane McCarthy, and we sincerely hope his wife, Lezlie Perham, will soon recover from her injuries.

Two other bikers were injured in a separate incident the night before, while a Pawtucket biker was killed in Scituate accident (on the same Friday night).

The Pawtucket motorcyclist, Dana R. Zeiner, 51, was killed in a head-on collision with a pickup truck on Tunk Hill Road in Scituate, RI, near Gainer Dam.

According to police, Zeiner crossed the double yellow lines of the road and went into the westbound lane, crashing into the truck. Zeiner was pronounced dead at the scene. The truck driver was uninjured.

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The other motorcycle accident happened a couple of hours later in Middleboro. The two motorcyclist who were injured in the other Friday crash were a stepfather and stepson travelling on their Harley Davidson motorcycles on Old Center Street.

The crash occurred when they came upon a fallen tree, blocking both lanes of the street.  The Harley riders tried to avoid crashing into the tree by laying down their bikes, but the stepfather hit the tree anyway. The stepson crashed, too, while trying to avoid hitting his stepfather.

Both men suffered injuries. The stepfather, Tracy Moquin, 41, was airlifted by a medical helicopter to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, while his stepson, Joshua Kagiwada, 22, was taken by ambulance to an undisclosed hospital. 

We wish them both a speedy recovery. To the family of Dana Zeiner, we send our deepest condolences and sympathies.

The motorcyclists were traveling in a convoy on I-495 south when the crash occurred. It is not yet clear what caused the motorcycle accident, and the injured  victims’ names were not released by police.

For now, we only know that the crash resulted in several injuries, some serious. Two  injured bikers were flown by two medical helicopters to nearby hospitals, and three others were rushed by ambulance.

The motorcycle crash happened around 4 pm on Saturday between exits 2 and 3, just south of the Chicken House, causing what police described as “mass confusion” on the highway. Traffic was snarled for hours with some drivers even standing outside of their cars. According to police, at least three more crashes resulted from the motorcycle accident with cars rear-ended each other.

We’ll post updates regarding this accident as soon as more details are available.

News Sources: Boston Herald, Enterprise News.

The accident occurred early Saturday afternoon when Officer Warren Olsen, 44, was struck in the rear of the motorcycle by a car operated by a teenage driver as he was making a right-turn from Hazelton Avenue to Faith Lane in Manchester.  

According to news reports, Olsen was thrown from the bike in the crash, while the motorcycle continued on and crashed into a utility pole.

Olsen suffered lacerations and bruises which were treated at Elliot Hospital. He is now in a stable condition. 

The driver of the car, Stephen Ribecca, 18, of Manchester, was taken to Catholic Medical Center to be evaluated. The car sustained a minor damage.

Even though the accident is still under investigation, there are indications that driver inattentiveness may have caused the crash. No charges have been made at this point.

News Sources: WMUR, The Examiner, The Union Leader.

In this case, the accident happened between a car and a motorcycle in Lewiston, ME. The outcome was the same: 1 man died and 1 woman was injured.

Police said the fatal crash happened after 6 pm on Lisbon Street in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Lewiston, when a senior driver pulling her Subaru out of the KFC parking lot onto Lisbon Street was hit by a man on a blue Yamaha motorcycle.

As in almost all instances when a car and a motorcycle collide, the motorcyclist was the one that suffered the greatest injury. The biker died at the scene. He was wearing a helmet, which was found a few feet away from him. The crash must have knocked it off.

The man has still not been positively identified, police said.

The driver, an elderly woman also suffered in the crash. She was injured and taken to a hospital by ambulance.

According to witnesses, the motorcycle was heard going fast before the crash. The sound of the crash was so loud, “it sounded like a cement truck hit a building,” a woman who lives in a nearby building said.

The woman, Sandra Nelligan, said she came out of her home to see what has happened and saw the man lying on his stomach on the ground. The woman in the Subaru sedan was slumped and appeared unconscious, Nelligan said.

According to Nelligan the man appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s.

The accident remains under investigation.

News Source: Sun Journal.

According to news reports, the man was standing on the seat of his motorcycle waving with one hand and holding the bike’s handlebar with the other. He lost control and fell off the motorcycle.

The victim’s name was not released due to pending notification of his relatives first.  

The other motorcyclist, Marjorie Loonie, 45, of Melrose, Massachusetts, was seriously injured in the crash, and had to be airlifted by a LifeFlight helicopter to a Maine hospital. Loonie’s condition was still being evaluated yesterday, a Central Maine Medical Center spokesperson said.

Loonie was a part of a motorcycle group of four which previously visited the Trailside Steak and Seafood Restaurant yesterday afternoon.

After the restaurant the four motorcyclists drove about a 1/4 mile on Route 302 from the restaurant when the man lost control of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and fell to the ground. Loonie, trying to avoid a collision with him lost control of her own motorcycle and crashed.

No other details regarding this accident were released, except that none of the motorcyclists were wearing helmets.

Also, there is no word on why the man was standing and waving before the crash or if alcohol was involved. Police are still investigating the accident.

This unfortunate crash should remind other bikers about the importance of always wearing helmets and not engaging in dangerous behavior while riding a motorcycle, since it puts more than one lives in peril.

News Sources: Press Herald, Sun Journal.

A recap for those who are not familiar with Monday’s fatal crash: a motorcycle rider, Paul Green, 60, of Acton, Mass. was killed in a collision with a minivan driven by Robert Coles, 39, of Granville Summit, PA on Route 414 in Pennsylvania.

Green reportedly tried to do a U-turn on the road and came in the way of an oncoming minivan. Green died in the crash, while Coles suffered minor injuries when his airbag deployed – he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

Some of our readers said that we were defending the motorcyclist’s side in our previous post. While we have the deepest empathy for both victims in this terrible accident, our sympathies always lie with the victim who suffers the most in an accident, and every time there is a minivan-motorcycle collision, the person who suffers the most is the biker.

Motorcyclists are not protected by their vehicles – their whole bodies are exposed to injury in a crash. In the moment a crash occurs, bikers may have some say into the extent of the injuries they’ll sustain (for example, if they are wearing helmets and protective gear), but unlike motorists they cannot rely on their vehicle to absorb the impact. Bikers get thrown off their motorcycles even in smaller crashes.

Paul Green was wearing his helmet, but even helmets cannot save a biker’s life when the brute force of the crash sends him flying.

Yes, we are utterly sorry for his death.

He made a mistake – he attempted an illegal U-turn, and the minivan driver struck him. There was probably no time to react.

We don’t blame Robert Coles. We sympathize with him knowing what he must be going through.

We can only express our wish that other riders will learn from this whole unfortunate event and remember to stay alert on rides that take them through unfamiliar territory, especially at night.

Paul Green’s death is a sober reminder of the importance of not getting involved in dangerous and illegal turns, as well as taking motorcycle safety courses. Even experienced riders like Green can make mistakes which can, and did cost them their lives. Other riders should learn from this.

Again, if we all pay just a little bit more attention on the road, we might save lives, not just our own, but someone else’s, too.

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