Two serious injuries on Macedonian roads on two consecutive days. One is a motorcyclist on the "Partizanski odredi" boulevard in Skopje. The other is an 88-year-old cyclist near Rankovce. Both are road users with no metal around them.

The Skopje crash happened this evening in the Karpoš 4 neighbourhood, where a car and a motorcycle collided. An emergency medical team responded at the scene and the injured motorcyclist was taken for further treatment. The investigation lasted until late at night, and traffic on that stretch of the boulevard was disrupted.

Rankovce, 18:10

The previous day, at around 18:10 in Rankovce, a "BMW" passenger car with Kumanovo plates, driven by a 62-year-old from Kumanovo, hit a bicycle ridden by an 88-year-old from Trubarevo near Skopje. The cyclist was found to have serious bodily injuries at the Kumanovo general hospital. The scene was examined by a police team from Kriva Palanka.

Two cases, the same vulnerability

The cities differ, the vehicles differ, so do the ages of the injured. What they share is the thing every driver in this country knows and rarely admits behind the wheel: a motorcyclist and a cyclist pay the entire physics of a collision with their own body.

For an 88-year-old on a bicycle in the evening hours, when visibility drops, that bill is heavier still. Does anyone even keep statistics on how many of our serious road injuries involve people who are not in a car?

Official information on the circumstances and on the injured motorcyclist's condition is expected during the day. In Rankovce, the scene examination is complete and the case is with the police. What stands is what has already been established: two people seriously injured, neither of them in a car.