Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel


Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel - by Tom Boster
	My association with Mr. Knievel began on 15 Jan 1986 when I was contacted by attorney Larry J. Ince of San Jose , CA , to work on a motorcycle helmet case known as Gray vs. Land Tool Company, et al. This was a very high profile case where Mr. Gray was seriously injured when his helmet split into two parts following a very mild automobile impact resulting in major brain damage to Mr. Gray. Mr. Ince hired experts from California , New York , Maryland and Mr. Knievel from Butte , Montana , to assist him in this case of defect in design of the subject helmet.
At our first meting in San Jose on 10 Dec 1988, Mr. Knievel told me that he “was not going to work with a pin-headed scientist (like me) because he had been doing things all his life that people (like me) told him he could not do.” I, then, walked in front of him and said in a rather loud voice, as there were several other people in the room, “Well, Mr. Knievel, if you would have listened to the advice of people (like me) you would not have broken nearly all of the bones in your body.” Mr. Knievel then thrust an index finger into my chest and said “Tom, I want you to call me Evel! What kind of motorcycle do you ride?” Evel and I were both deposed after we had taken apart one of his helmets he was wearing in one of his crashes, and after I had completed all of my physics, engineering and accident reconstruction calculations. In keeping with the fine work by Attorney Larry Ince, the case was settled out-of-court for a very substantial amount and there was no jury trial. Evel and I discussed his past attempt to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas years before. This was very close to the time when his son Robbie was planning a jump over the same Caesars Palace fountains. There were many difficulties to this jump which I attempted to analyze (including the fact that one can only run up to the ramp and not pass by it to obtain a proper launch speed). On 18 Feb 1989 I wrote a letter to Evel and later shared some of my thoughts with him. Needless to say, the jump by Robbie was a success even though he was low on his ramp speed by about 3 mph. In a later video interview Evel did say, “if the old ramp configuration had been used, Robbie would have impacted the landing ramp edge at the approximate level of his chest and not survived.” To this day I do not know if Evel (or Robbie) used any of my suggestions (Evel was not known to be much of a letter writer), but I do know that the motorcycle used by Robbie was much better for jumping than the older style available to Evel. Many discuss who was the better rider, Evel or Robbie. I can not answer this question, but I do believe that Robbie had the better bike and a better “game plan.”