Lawrenceburg fireman Brandon Stutts was the keynote speaker at a recent PSA event, hosted by state and local law-enforcement and emergency services, which stressed the importance of motorcycle safely.
Speaking at the event at Harley-Davidson of Columbia, Tennessee Highway Patrol Sgt. Stephen Ellis presented statistics and safety tips. In the last three years, according to Ellis, more than one-in-20 motorcycle-involved crashes in Middle Tennessee were fatal: 204 out of 3,090 crashes (6.6 percent) in 2023, 181 of 3,078 (5.88 percent) in 2024, and so far in 2025, 49 fatalities out of 913 crashes (5.37 percent).
To minimize the odds, Ellis reiterated both legal requirements and tips. Cyclists are legally required to wear a helmet and eyewear and turn on their headlights, and they’re advised to wear boots, long pants or riding suits to avoid road rash and cerebrospinal injuries.
Riding tips include avoiding tailgating and blind spots, and riding within one’s speed and distance tolerances, especially at night and in bad weather.
When riding in groups, cyclists should ride staggered on straight roads and single-file through curves. They should also designate an experienced group leader, others in the middle to transmit hand signals, and a “safety rider” for the caboose to lead lane changes.
One should never operate a motorcycle after drinking, and be careful about carrying an intoxicated passenger. The department also recommended attending annual training courses, especially the state Department of Safety’s Rider Education Program.
Stutts spoke of his lifelong love of small vehicles and what they represent: “That was my first introduction to a little bit of freedom,” he said.
Stutts learned about Harley-Davidson motorcycles in the Air Force, and shocked his wife by having one shipped home two weeks before he got back from deployment. Later he quit the Air Force to join the Lawrenceburg Fire Department and spend more time with his family. He made many memories, riding tens of thousands of miles, and even found new emotional depths in himself, in the saddle.
“Over the years, I found that being on a motorcycle wasn’t just about the freedom, it became my decompression chamber,” he reminisced. “It helped me get through some anxiety and depression and some mental things I didn’t even know I had.”
On an errand one evening, Stutts went through a yellow light and was hit by an SUV driver turning into his lane. He awoke to a spinal injury, fractures in his tibia, femur and wrist, crushed ribs, arterial bleeding all up and down his left side and an open facial wound that turned into aspirated pneumonia. His only consolation, as he faded in and out of consciousness, was that his own truck company from the fire department had been deployed to rescue him. He was flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he stayed on a ventilator for two weeks and in the hospital for a total of six or seven weeks.
“I really circled the drain, but I pulled through it, through a lot of prayer and support systems that rallied around me,” Stutts testified.
His fire-department comrades stayed at his bedside, to help him to the bathroom and sound the alarm if his fever passed 90 degrees.
“[In] those humbling things that you don’t think about, they were there for me,” he said.
With his friends’ and coworkers’ help, Stutts returned to the fire department in August — and bought another motorcycle in November, to everyone’s consternation. His second bike has racked up 40,000 miles in the meantime, and now he’s more passionate than ever about cyclist safety.
“Everybody deserves a piece of the road. It’s not just made for passenger vehicles and semis, it’s made for us too,” he declared. “[But] sometimes it’s the bikers that do dumb stuff. It’s still wrong to throw your leg across the bike if you’ve had a drink. If you’ve never been on two wheels… go take you a motorcycle safety course, get you some rain gear, a good helmet, all those things that Stephen talked about… Get out and enjoy your freedom.”
He closed with a prayer for the safety of bikers on the road.
