Double Whammy: Man Survives Lightning Strike and Motorcycle Crash

By Adam Pockross - August 18, 2015

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Crashing your motorcycle really stinks. Obviously, there are varying degrees of how bad it stinks, but laying your bike down is never good for you, or for your bike.

You know what else really stinks? Getting hit by lightning. Few things hurt more than 1.21 gigawatts coming straight from the sky and filling you with electricity.

But you know what’s even worse than a either of those dangerous experiences? How about combining them?

Miraculously, we can ask Eugene Villines what that’s like, because the Colorado man recently underwent such a frightening ordeal. And he lived to talk about it, albeit with three broken ribs, a partially punctured lung, and a very beaten body.

Villines, an active Army Guard Reserve member, was still in uniform when he attempted to drive his Suzuki motorcycle home after a storm. Or at least he thought the storm had passed.

Lightning Strike Motorcycle Crash

“Eyewitnesses say there was a bright flash. Villines appeared to stand straight up in the air on his motorcycle and was then thrown from his bike,” reports Denver’s ABC 7 News.

Helpful motorists stopped to help, including an ICU nurse, reportedly. But Villines had major injuries, including bleeding from the brain. He had to be rushed to the hospital, where his survival was “touch and go” for a few hours.

Fortunately, Villines was geared up, including his Scorpion helmet that is now badly scuffed, as you can see above.

As far as riding his bike again, Villines says there’s going to have to be a conversation with his wife about that. Sounds like an argument Villines is going to lose. But for a man who has an exit wound from a lightning bolt, there are certainly worse things to lose.