I hope they come out OK.
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/10081/1044796-100.stm
2 girls in critical condition after bike crash
Two 14-year-old girls remained in critical condition today at Children's Hospital after they lost control of their bike Saturday evening on a steep Beaver County street and slammed into an oak tree.
Melissa Mazur of Chippewa and Sydney Kinney of Patterson were riding their bike on Boden Street in West Mayfield, just outside of Beaver Falls, shortly after 7 p.m. when they gained too much speed and careened over an embankment on Patterson Avenue Extension.
Daniel Pilling, a 22-year-old Geneva College student, was riding his bike on Patterson Avenue at about 7:15 when he heard leaves rustling in the shallow ravine near the road and heard someone moaning.
A White Township police officer found Sydney conscious but with two broken legs. She told police she was riding with Marissa on the back of the bike when they lost control and hit the tree. Neither was wearing a helmet.
Marissa was unconscious and had suffered head trauma and a broken leg, police said. She was also having trouble breathing.
Both girls were flown by helicopters to Children's.
Read more: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/10081/1044796-100.stm#ixzz0iwnrJfPw
Woah, this is right in my neighborhood, I was just walking on that street earlier today.
Patterson Ave Extension is a gravel road with a hillside that slopes from street level to upwards of 25ft above the road below. Good to hear that they were found, as if he hadn't been biking there, I don't know what they would have done.
I think "young and dumb" is completely uncalled for, hope they're ok.
Two on a bike? No helmets? Going down a steep hill and losing control?
You see old, smart people doing that?
Mick
+1 Salty
Way to go Daniel P!
young and tragic... i wonder how many cars went by unable to hear the girls... that's the sad part.
Pretty cool that they were found by a biker, so +1.
Good that they are going to be ok. +1
Sucks that it will become one more item in peoples minds that "bikes are dangerous". So is riding on the hood of a car without a seatbelt. -1
re; Mick, uh, you haven't met me...
I grew up in Chippewa and went to Patterson elementary. That entire area is hilly with pretty sharp turns and little to no shoulders. It definitely shouldn't be ridden with someone hitching a ride on the back of your bike.
okay....
well first of all it is Marissa Mazur.
second of all they are deff not young and DUMB!
Sydney is in ALL gifted classes.
She has straight A's and is an inspiration to all..
She now has one of her legs amputated and broke her other leg. She is in surgery now getting her collar bone fixed.
Marissa may not me the brightest bulb...
but she is my best friend and i will stand up for her.
she is in a coma and broke every bone in her face and her upper left leg...
I really do NOT appreciate you calling either of them DUMB....
They have deff inspired me to stay strong through out this situation. I love them too death and you will NOT say that kind of stuff about my best friends!!!!!
though it may not have been the most tactful description from Mick, i can vouch that he is not a mean spirited guy - just blunt.
that said, i think we can all agree that the consequences of their actions are profoundly more than one could ever conceive for or wish on another person, especially at that age.
Brittany, I hope your friends will be ok. It's a very tragic accident and I'm sure no one on this board meant anything mean, especially since we didn’t know how serious their injuries were.
Please keep this board updated on you friends conditions because I’m sure we will all be keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.
Britanny, I am sorry for your friends.
What I meant, and expressed untactfully, is that what they were doing was the same kind of thing that most of us here did at that age.
Unwise things. Silly things where we did not give a thought to the hazards involved - even though the danger would be readily apparent to most adults. To us, the biggest danger seemed to be that our parents might find out.
Brittany, I'm sure you understand our loved ones were no danger at all.
In a recent article in a bike mag Urban Velo, Andy White talked about breaking his neck. The doctor told him that he (the doc) had treated someone earlier that day with the exact injury.
Andy would walk again, ride a bike, and not be disabled. The other guy was paralyzed.
Both Andy and the doc thought about this: no one can give a good answer as to why one person walks away and another person has a life-shattering event.
No one has an answer to why your friends had this happen. The weren't doing anything out of the ordinary for 14 year-olds.
If it had happened a little differently, they would laugh about it. When they were older, they might have had a good story when their sweethearts asked them "Hey, where did you get that scar?"
That is what usually happened to most of us when we were young and did unsafe things.
Why is it different for Marissa and Sidney?
I don't know.
No one can give me a good answer about why your friends had a horrible thing happen to them.
I'm sure that they, and their parents, brothers, sisters, friends will think a lot about this. Some of them will agonize over the questions of "What if they had done it like this? What if they had done it like that?"
I don't see any answers to those questions, though. "What if...?" is like a fairy tale, an impossible dream.
Even though the fairy tale of being able to go on like nothing happened is what usually happens.
Britanny Nicole, I'm truly sorry your friends traumatized like that.
I used the language that I did, because most of us have done far more hazardous things. The behavior that led to the accident isn't differnt from dumb things we have laughed about.
The outcome is different. And it makes me want to cry.
Please accept my apology.
Mick
this is the saddest thing just getting sadder.
It is difficult to talk temperately about this, but after thinking about it for 10 or 11 hours, keeping my mouth and keyboard shut didn't seem like an option. So everyone please know that whatever I say is my opinion alone.
I feel terrible for these girls and their families, their lives have been irreversibly changed.
Mick, you may have poorly chosen some words and ruffled some feathers, but poorly chosen words don't usually break bodies and lives.
Society likes to euphemize thing, so instead of calling things outright "stupid", it's called "poor decision making", so peoples feelings don't get hurt. Sledding down a hill with an active road at the bottom is poor decision making. Trying a little crack or driving while drunk is poor decision making. It's bullshit and I'm tired of it, these things are just f'ing stupid, and people die from stupidity.
I've done thousands of stupid things in my life, and mostly gotten lucky and walked away from the consequences. Some things still put my stomach in a knot after 20 or 30 years. The fact that I got lucky doesn't make the actions any less stupid.
I have a 14 year old son and a 9 year old daughter, and the boy doesn't have the most common sense. When they are out doing things, they may not stop to think about getting hurt, but they always know that if they do something at some level of stupidity, they will have me to deal with. I am not your textbook "let' sit down and talk about your feelings" parent. They sit down and I tell them about my feelings, and usually everyone within about 1/4 mile knows about my feeling too. But at the end of the day I always make sure they know I love them beyond imagining.
These girls and their families have my deepest wishes that they recover and have long lives with people to love them.
Thanks, Mick, for apologizing. Britany_Nicole I'm so sorry to hear about your friends' terrible crash and injuries. I hope they will be ok. It's so sad when kids who are just trying to have some innocent fun end up in such a situation. I can't even count how many times decisions I made growing up almost ended like this or worse. I was lucky as I'm sure most people on reading this were.
As adults on this message board, and in life, we've all had "oh sh*t, I didn't know that really happened/they really got hurt/ you really felt that way" moments. Everything on this board is taken with a grain of salt and understood that they way words are read is not always the way the author of those words would read them. Had this thread been created without the outlandish title, I may have never read it. All of us do stupid things and most of us get lucky. I really feel for these girls. I hope that we can follow their progress and take something away from this. What went wrong? How do we convey the message to young kids and teens that you must be safe when biking. I see people everywhere doing terrible (safety type) things on their bikes. How do we stop this from happening again?
My sympathies go out to these girls, their friends, and their families.
-Sarah
Awake 3:30am thinking about this. I've had the experiences both of watching my daughter carried away on a stretcher with a neck brace, and cracking my own helmet apart, in bike accidents. In both cases, fortunately, we walked away, sore and wiser, but whole. Doesn't always work that way. So I can relate, kind of.
In my past I had training in nuclear power plant safety, heavily emphasizing root cause analysis to the Nth degree of detail. Ultimately every accident should have been preventable. Was this accident caused by inoperative brakes? In other words, would a 250-pound man on that bike have had the same fate as (guessing here) two 125-pound girls? Were there not two bikes available? Did the road contribute to this in any way? If I put my mind to it, I could come up with 20 or 30 questions, each of which, if this was a steam pipe break, would need an absolute explanation and measures taken to prevent a recurrence, and everyone involved to be given training.
But bikes aren't nuke plants, parents can only do so much to keep kids safe, and kids can only do so much to keep themselves safe. Is it even possible to train children how to deal with this sort of crisis as it is happening?
I don't know what happened here, and I don't know that it matters. Bad stuff happened, people got badly hurt. *big sigh* Yeah, I can only echo the sentiments of Sarah, Mick and others above.
Side note to Sydney: Google "Amy Palmiero-Winters". Your life isn't over yet.
Really sad news. Marissa Mazur died from her injuries. I feel terrible for Brittany, her friend, and their family... could have been any one of us who rides a bike for fun. http://kdka.com/beaver/Marissa.mazur.bike.2.1593378.html
I just heard the news too about Marissa's passing. My sincere condolences to her family & friends.... God (or whoever-up-there), only knows why it lets some tragic things like this happen to anyone. Only by carrying on their memory & learning from their life, and both triumphs & mistakes; can one try to reconcile a situation like this.
Peace
This is very sad, sorry to hear about it. Would anyone be interested in riding to Beaver Falls and back, perhaps raise some bucks for the family? It would be about 70 miles total. It doesn't necessarily have to be to Beaver Falls but I like stupid long rides with hills. Something to raise awareness/bicycle helmet safety...
Not sure how often this happens or if people do rides like this. Obviously it would be a Saturday or Sunday, around the upcomming events like Tweed ride... and will be a good warm-up for MS150.
flyS564, I live up in Beaver Falls, if you want any route suggestions or advice, please don't hesitate to ask, as I've ridden to Pittsburgh and back before. Most of the route there are roads that parallel route 65 that you can follow, except in Conway where it's really sketchy for approx 1 mile, with an overgrown sidewalk as your only option. I don't want to discourage you from doing it, but just know that there are some obstacles. Again, if you are serious about doing it and get something going, feel free to shoot me a message for more details.
so terribly sad…
Maybe one of the more artistically inclined people on this board could create a card/poster that could be left at the BikePgh office for a few days for people to sign & we could send? Pitch in for flowers?
this is so upsetting. if it weren't for all my experiences (good, bad, or lucky) on a bike as a kid or teen, i wouldn't have the great experiences I have now as an adult. So sorry for both these young women and their families. I'd be glad to do a ride to Beaver Falls if we can organize it.
Terribly sad to hear the tragic news. I'm heart broken for Marissa, Sydney, Brittany, their friends and families.
Everyone here did something similar in their youth. Everyone here rides. And based on the responses here, everyone here cares.
Awful things happen - sometimes they're accidents, sometimes they're not. Like a lot of life's experiences, how we respond to it defines us.
I don't know wether I can do 70 miles, but I'd sure give it a try if it helped those families or raised awareness enough so some other family doesn't have to go through this.
did anybody see the condition of the chain on that bike when they showed it on tv? nobody shold have been riding that bike, much less 2 people. i can imagine the brake pads were a nice sort of dry rotted hard plastic or metal-on-metal.
ohkay i know its a little late to be commenting but I was the one in the accident.! I understand we may be "young and dumb"...but first off let me tell you neither marissa nor I have ever been down that road. i made poor choices and i will have to live with them for the rest of my life. so all of you who say ignorant things about me, marissa, my parents/her parents or either of our familes can screw off.!
I just post here infrequently, so can't speak for
Everyone, but feel free to post your thoughts here and best wishes to you.
