It was a horror weekend for motorcyclists in NSW with four separate fatal crashes, at least two of which have been linked to a charity event in the Snowy Mountains on the weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Snowy Ride, an annual get-together for motorcyclists in the Snowy Mountains, had about 3000 registered entrants this year.
The first of the two crashes that police have linked to the event happened on Friday afternoon, when a group of motorcyclists riding from Wyndham to Bombala along Mount Darragh Road noticed a member of their group was missing.
They contacted police, who searched the road until nightfall, then resumed the search on Saturday morning, when the body of a 37-year-old woman from Wollongong was found near her motorbike down an embankment a few kilometres west of Wyndham.
Police believe she lost control of the bike and crashed on a sharp bend known as Curley’s Corner. Acting Inspector Nick Hallett said the group was en route to the Snowy Ride.
On Saturday morning, a 57-year-old North Nowra man crashed while riding with a group of friends near Cooma.
Inspector Hallett said the man was riding north on Maffra Road when he swerved to avoid two foxes that ran out in front of him as he was rounding a bend. He lost control, hit a rock, was thrown from his bike, and suffered a suspected broken leg.
His friends and a police patrol car were quickly on the scene and provided first aid to the unconscious man, but he died on the way to Cooma Hospital.
“It was a tragic set of circumstances," Inspector Hallett said.
A third death was also recorded in the region on Sunday and while police originally believed it was linked with the Snowy Ride, they have not been able to confirm whether the rider had attended the event.
The crash happened on Sunday morning near the far south coast town of Eden, when a motorcyclist hit a tree on the Princes Highway near Nethercote Road.
The rider, who was in his mid-60s, was with a group travelling northbound from Victoria. Police were on the scene within minutes, but were unable to revive the rider.
The crash prompted police to warn motorists that high winds, rain and sleet had created dangerous conditions for road users, particularly as a southerly change swept up the coast on Sunday.
The Snowy Ride is an annual event for the Steven Walter Foundation, which raises money for research into childhood cancer.
Event organiser and foundation director Allan McGuirk described the road deaths as a "tragedy", and said the organisation would meet with police to discuss ways to improve safety.
He said of the three deaths, only one happened as part of the actual event, while he wasn't aware of the details of the other two crashes.
“We do everything we can on the day of the Snowy Ride, and in 13 years we’ve never had a fatality. It’s unfortunate that we’ve had one this year, and the guy was doing the right thing," he said.
“We do everything that we possibly can that we know of, but I guess now what we’ve got to do is sit down with police and others and just see if there’s something that we can do responsibly to try and not just alleviate fatalities but to alleviate accidents altogether."
Mr McGuirk said he felt terrible when he heard the news, and said he felt for the families of riders.
“Any fatality is not a good result," he said.
“We’re trying to raise money to save children from dying from cancer. We don’t want a rider to lose their life trying to save a kid’s life. It is hard."
He said the event organisers put a great deal of effort into encouraging safety, and provided participants with extra information on riding responsibly. Police told him that instances of speeding were down for the weekend, and that officers were “very, very happy with the performance of the riders”.
“We do liaise with police prior to the event a number of times during the year. We obviously give a set of instructions to all the riders which emphasises safety very heavily. And it is a ride, it’s not a race,” he said.
“There is a much heavier police presence over the weekend, and we request that. It’s in our best interests to have more police on the road than less.”
Mr McGuirk said as it wasn’t a mass ride and riders chose their own routes between checkpoints around the region, there were often other bikers in the area who were not necessarily registered with the event, and said there would likely have been about 4000 motorcycles on the region's roads over the weekend.
The ride this year raised about $300,000, and Mr McGuirk said the Steven Walter Foundation had contributed about $5 million over the past 13 years to childhood cancer research.
In an unrelated incident, a 19-year-old man was killed in the Royal National Park south of Sydney when he came off his motorbike and hit a signpost on Saturday afternoon.
And a rider was taken to hospital with minor injuries after a crash in Canberra's south on Isabella Drive in Macarthur on Monday.
