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FORT STOCKTON, Texas (AP) - Pittsburgh motorcycle training expert Larry Grodsky has died from crashing his motorcycle on a rural West Texas highway.


A Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman says the 55-year-old man known as "Mr. Safety" struck a deer on Saturday night. Grodsky was thrown from the bike and pronounced dead at the scene. He was wearing a helmet.

Grodsky had been writing the "Stayin' Safe" column in Rider magazine since 1988. He led riding tours throughout the country.

Survivors include his father and mother, Violet Grodsky, and his sister; and his longtime girlfriend, Mary Ann Puglisi.

He was the nephew of Myron Cope, the longtime Pittsburgh Steelers announcer who retired last year.

Well, this does not necessarily shed a negative light on his status as Mr. Safety.

If you are at the wrong place at the wrong time (example perhaps going 60 plus miles and hour and a Deer jumps right in front of you from out of the brush at last instant at night) You may well end up dead .....with no oppurtunity to react. You get a brief nano second in which you realize that something very bad is about to happen.

Unfortunately some will make light of his Mr. Safety status no doubt.

Kinda like minding your own business and having someone cross the center line unexpectedly and take you out head on...not much you can do to prepare for some things. You just hope it aint your time to go in that manner.

I almost never ride at night if I can help it. It's just too dangerous. Too many critters and drunks.

Cody

I enjoyed reading his monthly article in Rider magazine. His latest article was about braking and in particualar the front brakes. This is a link to an article about him on the AMA website http://www.amadirectlink.com/news/2006/Grodsky.asp. There is not much additional information in this article. He was heading home from California to Pittsburgh. I wonder where in West Texas this happened. I know that there are alot of deer in that part of Texas.

There's this obit in the Pittsburgh paper with more details.

Eery quote from his girlfriend, Maryann Puglisi; "Just a few weeks ago he said to me, 'That's how I'm going to go, it's going to be a deer.' He could deal with all the idiot drivers, but at night when a deer jumps in your path, that's it and he knew that."

I won't ride at night in the Arizona mountains...too many elk up there, and I've lost one friend who hit one on his bike.

I saw that on a website somewhere. I assumed the accident occured around Pittsburgh. Too bad, hate to lose an advocate for the sport.

I avoid night riding. Animals, objects in the road, pot holes and drunks. Thinks that are hard to see even at reduced speeds. Still the deer are scary anytime of day. They are big and stupid.

Sorry to see a good guy go like that.