It’s only about 10:45 AM, and it is already a rather humid day as the sun beings to make its usual climb to the center of the sky.
It’s still relatively early in the day and only the sounds of distant lawnmowers sporadically grooming their yards can be occasionally heard. You can feel the humidity in your lungs with each breath, and every bit of heat seems to radiate off of the pavement. Suburbia is still waking up. It’s a brief glimpse of the dog days of summer – a tease, if you will – and they are the type of days I live for. With Memorial Day looming in the near future, these types of days will become (thankfully) more commonplace. It would be a cardinal sin for me to not ride my cafe’d out 1981 Suzuki GS650E, a bike I’ve slowly built over the last year of ownership.
If you should know one thing about me, it’s that I have a deeply profound and almost disturbing obsession for motorcycles, cars and really anything that can be made cool-looking and fast. I can be found scouring craigslist daily for deals on beat-up project cars, motorcycles that need work or spare parts for my current cars. I’ve been a motorcyclist for about a year now, and every day off that I can I make sure to take my iron steed out of the stable and give it a good flogging down one of the local state routes.
As fun as riding a motorcycle is, there are also obvious hazards and risks. One must not only ride defensively, but always keep a sense of general awareness of everything and everyone around you. In Ohio the number of motorcycles that come out of winter hibernation to rock’n'roll on the streets increases daily as the days get longer and the temperature gets warmer and warmer.
While motorcycle riding is on the increase in the summer months, the practice of donating blood seems to decrease. Whether it is the fact that high schools are out for the summer, and the blood drives that typically set up at high schools obviously can’t be successful without a student body present, or the fact that a lot of families travel during the nicer weather, the need for blood absolutely never takes a holiday or vacation.
Along with the increase in general population traffic and travel comes an increased risk of riding a motorcycle in a heavier populated area, which can lead to an increased number of accidents. Motorcycle accidents are the highest during the summer months, and the age demographic of the riders who make up 85% of accidents is individuals between 20-26 years old. A recent statistic I’ve read that is realistically haunting is the fact that almost 67% of motorcycle-related accidents are the fault of the passenger car either not yielding or giving the right of way to the motorcycle involved.
An accident victim of a motorcycle or automobile accident can use anywhere from 4-100 units of red cells when it comes to immediate patient needs and trauma care.
Back in March 2011, Ed Mang, a motorcyclist in California, was involved in a multi-car accident while riding. He needed a large quantity of blood transfusions to survive his ordeal of being thrown off of his motorcycle after losing control while navigating a turn, hitting two other vehicles and suffering from a series of undisclosed injuries. His family made the plea for the community to donate in his name because the need was so great.
It’s not just motorcycle accident victims that your summer blood donations can directly affect either. It could be any of the following listed below:
- Kidney transplant patients
- Cancer patients
- Leukemia patients
- Open heart surgery patients
- Premature babies
- People with sickle-cell disease
The above list is only a few of the many reasons why we at Incept take blood donations so seriously. It is why we consistently push for our best with each of our Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) and each of the calls we make to the blood donors we connect with. If you are currently eligible to donate blood, what better time than now? In 2010, there were 3,615 deaths in America due to motorcycle-related accidents. That is the reason why I will be donating blood as soon as I’m eligible in the next two weeks.
What is your reason for donating blood during the summer months?