Mom: Motorcycle killed my son
Mom: Motorcycle killed my son
Friday, September 19, 2008
Max Valdez
By David Rupkalvis
[email protected]
Almost one year ago, Cyndi Martin learned firsthand how dangerous high-speed motorcycles known as crotch rockets can be.
On Sept. 27, 2007, Martin’s life was turned upside down when her son, Max Valdez, was killed riding a crotch rocket. Valdez died one block from his home, riding on a street he had been on hundreds of times.
The difference on that night was Valdez was riding a crotch rocket for the first time.
Max Valdez grew up riding motorcycles, excelling on dirt tracks.
“He rode dirt bikes, raced them for years,” Martin said. “But this isn’t a bike. Those things will go zero to 60 in four seconds.”
That speed is what killed Valdez. Martin said he bought his motorcycle at 6 p.m. on Sept. 27, drove around for a little bit and came home. At 11:45 p.m., he went out with two friends, accelerated down the street, smiled back at his friends and turned around to see a semi-truck turning in front of him.
On a normal motorcycle, that would have been fine, but with the acceleration rate of a crotch rocket, Valdez was going too fast to stop. He did the only thing he could to try to save his life, dropping the motorcycle and trying to slide under the semi. Instead, Valdez hit his head on the truck, sliding 280 feet before he stopped.
Valdez died on the road from a series of major injuries including a broken neck. At that moment, Martin’s life changed forever.
“My heart was broken,” Martin said. “I was very broken. My first thought the day after Max passed away was I thought about God. I told God, ‘I now know how you felt when you let your son die. I know how your heart was broken.’ I locked myself in my house for 11 months.”
Martin has raised three boys and all of them are very special to her. But Max was her best friend. Even as an adult, he would sit with his mom and tell secrets, sharing the biggest details in life.
When he died, he was on the verge of making a big leap in his life. As an oil-field worker, Valdez had distinguished himself to the point the company wanted to invest in his future.
“He was to leave the next week, making $90,000 a year and going to college,” Martin said. “The only thing he was waiting for was to find a way to tell me. He told me on Thursday and died on Friday.”
That Friday marked a dramatic change in Martin’s life. She not only lost her son and her best friend, but she began a mission to find out everything she could about crotch rockets.
“He was a beautiful kid,” Martin said. “He was the ultimate small-town kid. He knew everybody in every facet of life. Whether you had no money in your pocket or all the money in the world, he was your friend.”
In his 20 years of life, Valdez made enough friends that close to 500 people attended his funeral. Those friends also raised $6,600 to buy a cemetery plot and pay for a headstone. To this day, the friends of Max Valdez are obvious because they have stickers on their cars in his memory.
After the initial shock wore off, Martin began looking into how her son died — specifically concentrating on the vehicle he was riding.
“It was more motorcycle than he had ever had,” Martin said. “When he gunned it, it was like a bullet. This was just a senseless death.”
As Martin did her research, her sorrow began to turn into anger.
“When I started to look into all of the facts, I found myself shocked and bewildered,” Martin said. “Max did not have a motorcycle endorsement on his license. When I realized it was Texas law that you have to have one to ride a bike, I wondered why it had not been enforced the day he bought the bike. I called the dealership and asked them about it. The salesman informed me that although it was state law, it was not the responsibility of the dealership to check.”
But that was just the beginning of what Martin found.
“I found that your life expectancy drops to five years from the day you buy the bike, in most cases to six months,” she said. “I also realized there are not speed governors put into these bikes, and they go off the lot able to reach speeds of 125 to 140 mph.”
Martin said in a country that has laws limiting everything from smoking and drinking to buying guns, she was stunned to learn there were no laws regulating crotch rockets — especially when they are proven to be deadly.
“Some form of our government needs to start paying attention,” Martin said. “This needs to be governed. You could put a governor on a bike that would shut it down at a certain speed. We need to get our governments’ attention here, and we need to do something about this.”
After 11 months of basically hiding in her house, Martin ventured back into the world this month. She got a job and decided it was time to tell her story. She said she hopes her story and her son’s death will help one other mother and one other son.
“I want parents to read this and say, ‘My gosh, I need to talk to my daughter because her boyfriend has one of those,’” Martin said. “I want them to talk to their sons. Max is gone, he doesn’t have to deal with the pain. He had one 30-second ride. The rest of us have to live with it.”
Martin is also determined to get the government’s attention.
“I’m angry,” she said. “I’m angry at the government. I’m angry so many children buy these and die or ruin their lives for nothing. They’re targeting 16 to 30 year old kids, and there’s no guidance that goes along with it.
“It has to come from the top. They’re going to have to start with Yamaha and Suzuki and tell them, you can’t do this. You can’t build a bike that goes 150, you can’t make them go zero to 60 in four seconds.”
Even as Martin fights to educate others on the danger of crotch rockets, she said she is unable to forget Max. She visits his grave frequently, spending hours talking to her son, telling him secrets like she did for so many years. Only now, she is alone.
“It’s really, really hard,” she said. “I miss him so bad. But if my son had to die, maybe someone else will listen.”
