Jay Jackson

A 20-year-old woman was sitting in a car stopped at a red light when a motorcycle hit her from behind at about 124 mph. The bike weighed roughly a quarter of what her car did, and it still hit with the same energy as her car slamming into a brick wall at 62. This was in the city of Luhansk back in March, a little before 10pm. Russian outlets say the rider was 18, on a Yamaha R6, and estimated his speed from the footage at around 200 km/h. She was in the passenger seat of the second car waiting at the light. Here's how the math works. The energy something carries goes up with its weight, but it goes up with the square of its speed. So if you cut the weight to a quarter and double the speed, you end up in the exact same place. An R6 with a rider on it is around 575 pounds. The Lada she was in, a little Russian sedan, is around 2,300. At 124 mph that bike was carrying about 400 kilojoules, if you want to check my math, which is what the Lada would be carrying into a wall at 62. And all of it hit one spot. When a car hits a wall, the whole front end soaks up the impact. A motorcycle is about 27 inches wide at the handlebars, so everything got jammed into one narrow strip of the back of her car. Rescuers had to cut her out with hydraulic tools. Her car went from sitting still to roughly 22 mph in a fraction of a second, from behind, with nobody inside expecting anything. You might notice her car's taillights look dark in the video. Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered. At 124 mph you cover about 180 feet every second. Even if he reacted in one second flat, he'd travel 180 feet before touching the brakes, and a sportbike braking as hard as its tires can handle needs around 500 more. That's more than two football fields. He was almost certainly out of room to stop before he ever showed up on this camera. He wasn't out there alone, either. Russian outlets say another guy on a motorcycle was riding with him, and that rider made it through the same intersection fine. The 18-year-old died at the scene. She was hospitalized with multiple fractures, including her spine, and later reports out of Russia said she died in intensive care. However you feel about guys who ride like that, I keep coming back to her. She did the thing every one of us does a dozen times a day, stopping at a red light and waiting for green.