AVANT, Okla. -- A motorcyclist survived after he drove into baling wire that someone strung across a rural road in Osage County.
Carl Smith said the collision happened Tuesday at about 2 a.m. near County Roads 2230 and 2275, west of Avant. His headlight illuminated the wire in the darkness, but Smith said he mistook it for a spiderweb.
"It went right across the top of my windshield and didn't touch the bike at all," Smith said. "It hit me perfectly right in the neck."
The wire wrapped around his neck and nearly knocked him off, but somehow he maintained control of the bike. Luckily, the bailing wire snapped a few feet after he drove into it.
"It sounded like a gun going off, but it was the wire popping," Smith said.
"It stretched and popped," he added. "If it had been a different type of wire or anything, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Smith said he ripped the wire off his neck and dragged it back home behind his bike. "I thought I was bleeding because I was wet from the rain, so I hurried home real quick," Smith said. "I realized I wasn't bleeding, and that's when I called the police."
A sheriff's deputy from Osage County responded, collected the wire and told Smith that this wreck was unlike anything he's worked after years on the job. "He was surprised that I was still here," Smith said.
Smith has since stopped at the curve several times and found no wire stretched across the road. He, however, remains worried about the safety of his family members and friends who also enjoy biking.
"If something was to happen to one of them like this," he said, "I couldn't bear it."
Sheriff's deputies are still looking for the people who placed the wire across the road.
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