ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — Michael Esposito’s love of motorcycles began before he could even walk. It is a joy he has shared with his wife and was passing down to his children.
“It was just something that I loved,” he said.
But on April 18, as Michael was leaving his job in Broward County and driving back home to St Johns County, a driver making a left turn changed everything.
“He must have just assumed it was good to go, but it wasn’t,” said Esposito holding back tears.
Michael’s wife, Eliza Esposito, was having dinner with the couple’s two children when she got a call from an officer.
“She asked me ‘are you Michael Esposito’s wife’ and I immediately knew something was wrong,” tells Eliza Esposito.
She was told Michael likely wouldn’t survive. He had numerous injuries, a traumatic brain injury, broken bones and even his teeth had been knocked out by the impact.
But miraculously, he held on.
“I think the hardest part was realizing how bad I was injured,” tells Michael Esposito.
A single moment had forever changed the lives of the Esposito family. As she sat in the ICU, Eliza Esposito says she relied heavily on her faith.
“As a person who believes and is a Christian, I said ‘you know God, I know that you knew this is where we would be before you ever created us and I trust you’,” she described.
After 79 days in the hospital, Michael Esposito was allowed to go home.
Their ‘Miracle Mike’ still has a long recovery ahead and the Esposito family hopes by sharing their story, drivers will slow down and take the time to watch for motorcycles because momentary decisions can have long term consequences.
Last year, Florida Highway Patrol reports there were 1,886 crashes they responded to involving a motorcycle, of those, 169 of those crashes were fatal.
“There’s a lot more traffic than there used to be,” tells Eliza Esposito. "Double check, triple check because it takes a second to change someone’s life and ours could have ended tragically, and we were really given a one in a million chance."
Here are a few steps you can take to share the roads with motorcycles:
1) As always, check twice when changing a lane.
2) Encourage passengers to alert drivers if they spot a motorcycle. People in different parts of the car have different vantage points, they may see something you don’t.
3) It is easy for drivers to misjudge a motorcycle’s speed and distance, so give them extra space and extra time.
4) Slow down when going through intersections, it is one of the leading places of collisions between motorcycles and cars.
If you would like to donate to help the Esposito family, here is a link to their GoFundMe page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6p-QoRWMrg