Pack Mentality – Motorcycle Rally Goes Wrong in NYC

First – the winner of Pineslayer’s BOB giveaway.  Straight from Pineslayer:

All right drum roll please…

With the help of my spaz daughter we have a winner, RLRG.
Congrats!
But wait there’s more.
I have to admit I was pulling for a certain 12 year old boy, so I am putting together another BOB for pinktlb (a.k.a. Pinkprepper) to give to her friends kid.
So if Jarhead or Calamity could give these winners my email address, I will get your mailing addresses and have a short conversation to see if these BOB’s work well for your needs.

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So there you have it!  Will the winners please contact me and I’ll get you in touch with Pineslayer and you guys can work out the particulars.

Congrats to the winners!

Now on to the post…

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As I’m sure you’ve seen by now there’s been quite a hoorah over the incident in NYC where a man trying to protect his family runs over a biker and a few bikes in order to get away.  They catch up to him 50 blocks later and after breaking his windows out give him a beat down in front of his wife and two year old girl.  They also tried to get the wife and child, but thankfully a good Samaritan stepped in and held them off.

In the above video the lawyer is seen staunchly defending the guy who got run over.  It’s too bad he got run down, but Piers Morgan makes a good point when he brings up the fact that the guy was an habitual offender who shouldn’t have been on that ride in the first place.  If he’d been abiding by the law he wouldn’t be in a hospital bed with multiple serious injuries.

And speaking of abiding by the law there are now reports that a couple of undercover cops were there as part of the ride too.  One even took part of the assault on the vehicle!

Running With the Pack

There’s a pack mentality that goes along with this kind of behavior.  You see it in all kinds of people when groups come together because they’ll act in a way together that they probably wouldn’t when by themselves.

Keep in mind this isn’t a motorcycle gang like the Hell’s Angels, this is just a bunch of guys who occasionally get together to perform illegal stunts (Hollywood Stuntz) in the middle of a city.

I’ve seen this pack mentality in many groups of people.  You get the “us against them” or “us against the world” attitude.  You’ve seen this too of course:  motorcycle clubs have it as do street gangs, but you’ll also see it in cops, military units, and anywhere else where there’s a “we are family” attitude.

Why do some of these groups get out of control and others don’t?  My thinking is that it’s because of discipline and strong leadership.  When you have a strong leader, or leaders, you’ll have organization of some kind.  In the military it might be a platoon led by a strong Lieutenant or Sergeant and the same thing for the police.  Even bikers and gangs will have some kind of leadership that holds them together as a cohesive unit.  When that leadership fails or doesn’t exist you get cops beating civilians, you get platoons run amok killing innocent non-combatants, and you get motorcycle “mobs” that run crazy on the highways.

You also see things like looting after a disaster, which leads me to my next point.

Mob Mentality

Ever watched the videos of people looting stores after a disaster?  Instead of running out with food and water many of these people are stealing T.V.’s, phones, and other electronics that have nothing to do with survival.  For some reason when a few people do this many others will follow suit even though they know it’s wrong and wouldn’t normally do it by themselves.

Fear can also cause people to act as a mob.  Many times I’ve read about a fire that’s broken out in a club or movie theater and there were hundreds of people found piled up near the exits, many times laying on top of each other.  When there’s a mass disaster people will want to run.  If you can reign in the fear and look around you might find another avenue of escape that nobody else has seen and make your own exit.

Back to the Bikers

I have nothing against bikers of any persuasion.  Many years ago I had a bike and used to ride with friends and always had a great time.  I even borrowed a friend’s bike once and took it up to 130 MPH, back when I was still immortal of course.  That was a Katana class motorcycle, something like the Ninja, and even then it made me happy that I didn’t own one or I’d probably have killed myself on it long ago.

Now here’s my opinion on the incident after studying as much of it as I could up to this point.  First, the bikers were doing illegal stunts.  If they want to go out to an old airstrip or take up a parking lot have at it; however, when you’re taking over city streets and driving down walkways and in general causing a bunch of trouble you better watch out, because you’re probably going to find it.

I don’t much care what the lawyers say, the dude on the bike that initially slowed down in front of the SUV was trying to stop the driver or intimidate him or both.  Bad luck got him when he got nudged and he’s lucky he wasn’t injured.  It’s hard to say with the guy who got run over, although he was operating his motorcycle illegally and shouldn’t have been there the lawyer and his wife say he was there trying to defuse the situation.  Honestly, I doubt that, but I wasn’t there and it’s hard to tell from the video.

Here’s the bottom line.  If I was driving down the road and was suddenly surrounded by bikers trying to get me to stop for reasons that looked distinctly unfriendly, and I was in my 4×4 1/2 ton pickup truck, I would react just as the driver of the SUV did to protect my family.  If I had a gun with me and it looked like my wife or children were about to be snatched out of the vehicle then there would be a few dead guys outside the truck.  But don’t kid yourself, if you stop eventually you’ll be over run.  If enough guys want to get you and they’re not afraid of injury they will get you.  So be prepared.

So what’s your take on the situation?  It’s been an interesting case and I’ve watched the media swing back and forth with their viewpoints.  I’m happy the family came out of it as well as they did and hope they can avoid legal issues.  You can be sure I’ll be watching as this plays out.

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor