Dale Tripp doesn’t remember the motorcycle crash in Lewiston that almost killed him. He spent a month in a coma and four months in a hospital bed. Now the 41-year-old Auburn man has steel rods in his hip, leg and arm. He has permanent brain damage. Dale Tripp will never ride again.

Craig Turcotte, 25, has been riding sport bikes for seven years. He performs stunts on his Kawasaki, but until a few weeks ago, he didn’t even own a helmet. Then a fellow rider crashed and died while doing a wheelie on Foss Road in Lewiston. The next day, Turcotte went out and bought a helmet. It protects the Lewiston man’s head, but it doesn’t protect him from the nasty memory.

Melanie Jandreau rides all over the country on her Harley-Davidson. She loves the wind in her hair. She loves the freedom of the open road. In May, one of her best friends crashed her bike while riding in Myrtle Beach. For 50-year-old Jandreau, that was enough. Now the Lewiston woman wears her helmet full time.

These three belong to different motorcycle cultures, yet they experience the same judgments and misconceptions from nonriders, and they share the same dangers. They’ve also learned that when you flirt with danger, the consequences can be devastating.

Two killed

One evening in early July, two motorcyclists were killed in unrelated crashes in different parts of the city within a half-hour. It was a fluke. An aberration. And police were quick to point out that the crashes were quite distinct from each other.

“About the only things they had in common was the fact that they involved motorcycles with male operators,” said Lewiston Police Lt. Tom Avery. “Other than that, they were completely different.”

Lawrence F. Mathieu, 44, of Greene was killed when his Harley-Davidson collided with a car on Main Street. A half-hour later, Corey Sturgis died of massive head injuries after falling from his sport bike on the dead-end section of Foss Road. Neither was wearing a helmet.

Maine’s mandatory helmet law was repealed in 1977 – and despite repeated attempts to pass a new one, only riders under the age of 15, novices and drivers on learner’s permits are required to wear helmets on motorcycles.

Sturgis, 27, was known to perform stunts on his Honda. The day he was killed, he had been “tank riding,” or performing a wheelie while sitting on the tank of his bike. He lost control. He fell over backward, and his head struck pavement. He died almost instantly.

“I was right there. I was the first one to him,” said the 25-year-old Turcotte, who lives in Lewiston. “It’s a hard thing to get out of my mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”

Turcotte rides a Kawasaki ZX-6R. It’s a machine capable of reaching speeds of well over 100 mph very quickly. Typically, he rides with a group of friends who have equally formidable bikes.

Turcotte sometimes does stunts on his Kawasaki. He and groups of other riders find places to go where there is little or no traffic – the industrial parks in Lewiston and Auburn, for example – and they try to impress each other with their skills.

Mostly, though, riding is a liberating experience, Turcotte said. It is a form of socializing among people with common interests.

“Ninety percent of the time we go out, we meet new people. It’s just a friendly atmosphere,” Turcotte said. “We’ll cruise through the city. Then we’ll hit the back roads. We might have two riders or 15 riders. You just can’t pack that many people into a car and have fun with it.”

The death of Sturgis, who lived in Lewiston, affected many people in the motorcycle community. For Turcotte, the crash brought home the realities of the road as no lecture could.

“It just shows you what can happen. It showed me that we’re not indestructible,” he said. “The next day, I went out and bought a helmet. I may still ride without it. But if I’m out doing tricks and things, I’ll be wearing it.”

Police insist that people should do motorcycle stunts only in authorized events on racetracks, period.

The hardest part’

The day Sturgis and Mathieu were killed, a third motorcyclist died after his bike collided with a moose in northern Maine.

“Of those three accidents, which do you think was most preventable?” the police lieutenant asked.

In fact, Sturgis had been charged in May with driving to endanger. Auburn police said he was doing wheelies on his bike while riding on a public street at that time. But the district attorney’s office didn’t prosecute, citing lack of evidence. That is a familiar problem for police.

“It’s a matter of catching them in the act,” Avery said. “That’s the hardest part.”

This year by late July, 14 people had been killed in motorcycle crashes in Maine. Two of those involved collisions with moose. Others were crashes with no obvious signs of blame.

“But some of those were due to people driving in a way they shouldn’t be driving,” said Maine State Police Col. Craig Poulin.

Like riding wheelies on a dead-end road.

Prosecution on the driving-to-endanger charge could have cost Sturgis his license and might have kept him away from Foss Road the night he was killed. In addition to four prior speeding tickets and convictions for excessive noise and driving beyond license restrictions, Sturgis lost his license to ride for a year in the late 1990s. The charge was driving with a suspended license.

Problems vary

So far this summer, four people on motorcycles in Lewiston have been charged with driving to endanger or speeding. But that’s out of dozens of complaints police have received.

The people who ride the “crotch rockets” – high-performance racing bikes designed for street use – tend to be men in their late teens and their 20s. They pay exorbitant insurance premiums because their bikes are fast and powerful. Police say the most common complaint about those riders is speed and reckless driving.

Harley-Davidson riders carry their own stigma. They are viewed by some as lawless men and women who fly through the streets day and night on deafeningly loud bikes. They tend to be older than those who ride sport bikes. The No. 1 complaint about this group is excessive noise.

“Each particular group presents its own unique set of problems for law enforcement,” Avery said.

With those complaints in mind, even police do not say all motorcyclists are trouble. And those who are hurt or killed in crashes are not always at fault.

Too risky

Dale Tripp of Auburn had been riding motorcycles for 20 years. In September, he was driving his 2002 Harley east on Cedar Street in Lewiston when a teenage girl in a car turned in front of him. Tripp was thrown from the bike. His injuries were severe.

“He was in very bad shape when we got there,” Avery recalled. “The paramedics didn’t think he would make it. We treated it as a possible fatality.”

But Tripp survived. Nearly a year later, he is living with relatives and still recovering. He continues to suffer effects from his head injuries, such as halting speech and difficulty walking.

“I use a cane to get around,” Tripp said. “I just had another operation on my leg.”

The physical and mental damage from the crash left Tripp in no condition to get back on a motorcycle. It doesn’t really matter. He has no desire to ride again.

“I see a lot of people getting killed on motorcycles. It almost happened to me. I just don’t want to take that chance,” he said.

Police said Tripp clearly was not at fault when he crashed. It was another case of a driver in a car failing to see an approaching motorcycle. But being cleared of blame does little to assuage Tripp’s regrets about the crash.

“I wish I had been wearing a helmet,” he said. “I wouldn’t have had such serious head injuries.”

The helmet debate

Studies show that 50 percent of motorcycle riders killed in this state aren’t wearing helmets. Some people argue that the number of bikers getting hurt – there are roughly 500 bike crashes yearly on Maine roads – cost taxpayers money for the police and rescue efforts. They argue that it jacks up insurance rates for all motorists. Others counter that bikers who crash hurt themselves but almost never anyone else. It’s the crux of an age-old argument about mandatory helmet laws.

On July 23 in Auburn, a 47-year-old New Gloucester man was killed when his motorcycle collided with a utility truck on Washington Street. Kenard Griffin was wearing a helmet when he crashed, yet it was a head injury that killed him. For some who argue against mandatory helmet laws, that death serves as a reminder: Helmets aren’t a guarantee that a motorcycle rider will survive a crash.

Currently in Maine, licensed motorcycle drivers can choose whether to wear a helmet. Most bikers would like to see it stay that way.

“Whoever rides should decide for themselves,” said Jandreau, the 50-year-old Lewiston woman who, with her husband or others, rides her 2004 Harley Heritage soft-tail classic all across the country. “I wear one, but that’s just me, personally.”

There was a time when Jandreau would ride without a helmet. It can be much more liberating that way, bike enthusiasts say. You feel the wind more. You hear things you wouldn’t hear through a helmet. It’s cooler, and you have more mobility.

Then Jandreau was riding with a group of people in South Carolina. A woman she had been traveling with crashed near Myrtle Beach. Jandreau heard about it later. Her friend survived, but with various injuries. She received 32 staples in her head to repair damage to her skull.

“It kind of set me back. I almost thought about not riding anymore.” Jandreau said. Then she came to a compromise with herself.

“It was time to put the helmet back on,” she said.

Some lawmakers would like to make that choice for riders. The people who argue for a mandatory helmet law are typically ready with statistics and figures.

Law repealed

In Maine, there are 34,000 registered motorcycle owners, an all-time high. In a typical year in this state, there will be 17 fatal crashes. This year, by Aug. 3, there had already been 15.

Nationwide, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that people in motorcycle crashes are 26 times more likely to die than if they’d been in car wrecks. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that wearing a helmet reduces the risk of fatal head injury in a bike crash by 40 percent.

Maine first enacted a mandatory helmet law for all riders in 1967. It was repealed 10 years later. Since then, six attempts to pass new helmet laws have failed.

The latest statistics on motorcycle safety are unlikely to sway riders from their favorite pastime. It becomes a way of life that bikers have no problem describing.

“It’s the freeness of it,” says Turcotte. “There’s nothing around you. There is no feeling quite like being on a motorcycle.”

“It’s freedom,” echoed Jandreau. “You see and smell things you would never see and smell from a car or truck. There’s nothing like it.”