Stars Who Survived Motorcycle Accidents: Jay Leno, Brad Pitt, & More Celebs Who Had Close Calls

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January 27, 2023 11:40AM EST

Sometimes, it pays NOT to get your motor runnin’. From Jay Leno to Brad Pitt to Keanu Reeves, here is a look at some of the biggest stars who are grateful to be alive after surviving terrifying motorcycle accidents.

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Stars Who Survived Motorcycle Accidents: Jay Leno, Brad Pitt, & More Celebs Who Had Close Calls

Stars Who Survived Motorcycle Accidents: Jay Leno, Brad Pitt, & More Celebs Who Had Close Calls
MB Pictures/Shutterstock

There’s nothing more thrilling than hitting the road on a high-powered two-wheel steel horse – until, you wipe out. Then, it’s not so fun to ride a motorcycle. While taking all the right safety precautions make riding a motorcycle safely, accidents happen, and they’ve happened to some of your favorite stars. From Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Ann Margaret, some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have crashed and burned.

Jay Leno is one such star. Months after suffering serious burns on his face and hands when a fuel leak in one of his classic cars caught fire, Leno was involved in another accident. The former Tonight Show host was testing a classic 1940 Indian motorcycle when he noticed that there was a scent of leaking gas. He tested the vehicle, but someone had strung up a wire across a parking lot with no flag on it. Leno got clotheslined off his bike, resulting in a broken collarbone, two broken ribs, and two cracked kneecaps. Despite being banged up, the then-72-year-old comedian was in good spirits.

Leno, pictured here in 2005, was lucky. So are the following celebs. 

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Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt
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Brad Pitt was involved in a minor motorcycle accident in 2009. He was riding between a parked car, and a car stopped at a red light when Brad clipped the parked car with his handlebar. Pitt lost control of the bike and fell over, but only suffered a few scratches, according to Top Speed. Brad checked out his bike and talked with the other party involved. A tow truck came and took the bike, while Brad walked away.

Pictured here, Brad takes his custom, ‘stripped-down’ Harley Davidson, on a cruise down Sunset Boulevard. 

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Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves
Keizo Mori/UPI/Shutterstock

Keanu Reeves is an avid motorcycle rider, to the point that he founded his own custom motorcycle company – ARCH Motorcycle. So, it’s expected that he’s had a few spills and close calls, but one stands out to him. In 1988, when he was 23, he was riding his bike on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, one of the twisting links between the Los Angeles Valley and the Pacific Ocean, per Rolling Stone. He crashed and had to have his damaged spleen removed. He was left with a thick scar rising up from his stomach.

“I call that a demon ride,” Reeves told Rolling Stone. “That’s when things are going badly. But there’s other times when you go fast, or too fast, out of exhilaration. I remember saying in my head, ‘I’m going to die.”

Keanu Reeves, seen here, rides his brand motorcycle “Arch KRGT-1” during the event of the 2015 Suzuka 8 hours FIM Endurance world championship at Suzuka Circuit in Mie prefecture, Japan.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Broadimage/Shutterstock

Arnold Schwarzenegger needed fifteen stitches on his lip in 2006 after he collided with a car. At the time, Arnold was the Governor of California, riding his Harley Davidson down the street with his then 12-year-old son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, when another driver backed into the street. Arnold couldn’t avoid the impact, and he collided at a low speed. Both the ‘Terminator’ star and his son were wearing helmets, and outside of a few cuts and bruises, things were fine.

Here, Arnold rides his motorcycle with his entourage in 2012. Notice he’s still wearing a helmet.

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Pamela Bach

Pamela Bach
WENN.com/Newscom/MEGA

David Hasselhoff and his then-wife, Pamela Bach, were riding through Los Angeles when he crashed his Harley near a freeway overpass. A gust of wind reportedly forced David to lose control and hit a curb. David and Pamela were thrown from the bike. She suffered a badly broken ankle and wrist, while David reportedly fractured his back. Pamela later claimed the accident was the breaking point in their marriage, and it became a contentious issue during their divorce.

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Adrien Brody

Adrien Brody
People Picture/Willi Schneider/S

Adrien Brody was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in 1992. He flew over a car and crashed head-first into a sidewalk. Understandably, Adrien didn’t ride for quite a while after that. However, when a friend gave him a Ducati Monster as a present, he couldn’t help but get back into the saddle (h/t Auto Evolution.)

Adrien Brody, pictured here, rides at the 25th Life Ball in Vienna, Austria, in 2018. 

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Billy Idol

Billy Idol
Stewart Cook/Shutterstock

Billy Idol almost lost his leg in a 1990 motorcycle accident. He was riding his Harley Davidson in Los Angeles when he ran a stop sign and collided with a car. Idol wasn’t wearing a helmet and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Doctors operated on Billy for seven hours to repair his fractured forearm to save his right leg, which was broken between the knee and the ankle.

Billy later told Classic Rock that the accident had a silver lining. He wrote about it in his song, “Bitter Taste.” He said that the track was him “reflecting back on this accident: Was it something terrible, or was it something really good, where I took stock of everything and started to realize that I had to take control of myself in terms of the drug addiction?”

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Ann-Margaret

Ann-Margaret
©RAMEY PHOTO AGENCY

Ann-Margret, the star who played opposite Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas, suffered three broken ribs and a fractured shoulder in 1997. The then-59-year-old was riding in rural Minnesota when she hit a sandy patch. She was thrown from the bike, and landed hard. Thankfully, she was able to walk away from the accident.

Here, she poses aboard a Harley at the 1997 ceremony for the breaking ground of the Harley Davidson cafe in Las Vegas. 

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Lauren Hutton

Lauren Hutton
Shutterstock

Lauren Hutton, a supermodel who appeared on 25 Vogue covers, crashed in 2000 when riding her motorcycle. She was riding with a group through the rocky desert in Las Vegas when she got separated from the group riding 100 miles to celebrate the future opening of the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum. Jeremy Irons saw her pulled to the side of the road and gave her a helmet with a visor, replacing her open-faced helmet.

As she rode, she skidded on a curve, and the bike lost its grip on the road. Hutton went about 100 feet before going airborne. “She lost it on a corner, on a very slow bend,” Irons said, per ABC News. “She got onto the gravel at the side of the road and went into a slow skid which is very hard to get out of when you’re traveling at [that] speed and finally hit the bank and then flew through the air.”

She crashed on a pile of rocks. Both of Lauren’s legs were broken, as well as her arms. She also crushed three ribs and punctured a lung. She miraculously survived the accident.

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Ben Roethlisberger

Ben Roethlisberger
Archie Carpenter/UPI/Shutterstoc

Ben Roethlisberger was left in “serious” condition following a 2006 accident. He underwent several hours of surgery to repair “multiple facial fractures” after he was involved in an accident where he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was riding down a road and headed towards an intersection when a driver in a Chrysler, heading in the opposite direction, took a left turn and collided with the motorcycle. Ben was thrown from the bike, hit the car’s windshield, and then hit the ground first, per ESPN. Thankfully, his brain, spine, chest and abdomen were without serious injury.  

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Gary Busey

Gary Busey
Matt Baron/Shutterstock

In 1988, Gary Busey attempted to maneuver his Harley-Davidson around a bus but accidentally turned too hard. He started skidding and hit his back brake, which sent him flying over his windshield and to the pavement. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he nearly ” passed away after brain surgery and went to the other side,” he said in a 2020 interview with The Guardian.

January 27, 2023, 9:56AM