Doug Coulter, the owner of Scott’s Bicycle Centre, in Cleveland, Tennessee, is in the hospital following a November 7th motorcycle
Doug riding his bike, on the Tanasi Trails, with friends and customers
accident. Doug was riding his motorcycle with friends when he was struck by an SUV that turned into him.
His brother, David, sent email to people on the Scott’s Bicycle email list detailing the accident and Doug’s injuries. David continues to post updates to the Scott’s Bicycle Centre’s website. For the most recent updates, please visit Doug’s Accident Update page on the Scott’s Bicycle Centre website.
On behalf of all the members of SORBA-Chattanooga, I wish Doug a quick and full recovery.
The original email detailing the accident and Doug’s initial injuries is printed here in its entirety:
I wanted to begin with that comment because I panicked when I first got the call, and don’t want you to panic. For those of you not thoroughly acquainted with Doug, he is the owner of Scott’s Bicycle Centre in Cleveland, TN.
I am sending this email out this way because there is no way I can call or text everyone that means so much to us. Doug was out on a motorcycle ride on his Yamaha FJR this afternoon with 5 friends. He was riding sweep going east on 163 (also called Bowater Road) almost to 411 when a big Ford suv in the oncoming traffic turned left into him.
Doug got a helicopter ride from the scene straight to Erlanger (they have the best trauma unit in the area).
Emergency workers assist Doug after he was struck by a SUV.
The motorcyclists were riding a stagger formation (for you who ride streetbikes) and the first 5 bikes passed by the SUV safely, but Doug got run over when the SUV tried to turn through him (apparently wanting to turn onto a side road on the other side of Doug).
There was considerable damage to the SUV, but (by all accounts) there was more damage to the FJR. The FJR ended up on a fence (totaled) and Doug ended up on another fence. The damage assessment at this time has his left foot as the most serious injury. It has severe lacerations from about 1/2″ in front of the ankles all the way back around the heel. The bones were easily visable though the cuts.
I don’t understand the medical jargon, and can’t tell you the names of the bones, but as I understand it, the bone in his instep has a “compound fracture” and the two shin bones were pushed off the back of his foot. He was wearing leather motorcycle boots which, though destroyed, likely saved his foot.
His face is okay (wasn’t great before?), but he has cuts all over his arms, legs, back, and I didn’t see his belly. The pain is considerable, but they gave him something around 7:00 or so to help with that.
He went in to surgery at 8:00pm tonight to clean the rest of the wound site. They want to get the rest of his boots, socks, and whatever else that is in the cut-up foot (that should not be in there) out. {He has just come out of that surgery and is in recovery now.} The doctor said that everything looks okay.
He is scheduled for another surgery on Monday where an orthopedic surgeon will put some screws or something in his foot to hold the bones in place and then we wait. There is some chance of complications, but as I understand it, he will be able to ride his bike, so how bad can it be?
I will be posting updates on the website as they come available, so this will be the only email of this kind. I am sorry for not calling everyone, but Doug has too many friends for me to be able to call. If you have questions that I don’t answer in this letter, you can call us and we’ll try to answer them.
Thank you for all of the calls. You guys are great.
David
P.S. Doug is in Room 9114 at Erlanger.
Doug, I hope you recover soon, maybe some of the food from “The Farm” would help. A group of us from Indiana came down in Sept. and met you and your staff at Scott’s bikes, thanks for you hospitality and telling us about the great local flavor. Get well soon.
Andrew McComb