I average 1000 miles a week and have recently had my 1st off in 26 years.
Although not inevitable, I think it's highly likely that most will have an off at some point.
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I average 1000 miles a week and have recently had my 1st off in 26 years.
Although not inevitable, I think it's highly likely that most will have an off at some point.
Did most of my crashing on mopeds back in the mid 70's when we did stupid things - learned a lot from them slow speed offs
During that period I had 2 close mates killed in bikes accident (all their own fault and one had is wife on the back) all their own fault.
Then I had a Yamaha RD 250 at 17 and about a month after owning it I came off it and went over the handlebars landing on top of my head. The crash punched a hole through the top of my helmet that you could get your fist in right down to the lining. I've never listened to any idiot who says they want to ride without crash on its the number-one piece of kit.
Luckily over the years I have never had another off and sometimes override like a bit of an old woman, if I think some think is even slightly risky I will air on the side of caution.
Trouble is you cannot rule out the accidents that are totally out of your control. How many times have you been round a blind bend and thought to yourself if somebody was stupidly overtaking a car coming the other way there would be nothing you could do.
In our daily lives of driving we have all seen people do stupid similar things like that and thought for ourselves that could have caused a nasty accident but it didn't just because of the circumstances of nobody being like you or me.
I know you can go out and get advanced training but how good is the advanced training. I am not one of these riders that like this idea of when you ride motorcycle you have to "make progress".
My next-door neighbour is a policeman and has done some work on traffic and he has told me that over the years they have been to a few colleague motorcycle accidents involving police officers.
My neighbour rides a BMW or he used to because coming back from Salisbury a couple of years back he was involved in one of those pure chance accidents. He was riding along on a nice clear piece of road in broad daylight at only 50 mph when a deer jumped out in front of him from the hedge. It jumped out in front of him just a few feet in front of him. With no time to react at all he hit it square on and killed instantly unfortunately the crash broke his neck and for a few weeks they did not think he would walk again.
Mind you the ward he was in in Salisbury had other neck injury people and most of them it was the result of falling off of bicycles.
I'm just thinking of another pure chance accident as I am writing this. A few years ago a mate of mine was riding to work at Honda in Swindon when a deer jumped over the hedge in front of him and he thought to himself "that was close" when a second deer jumped over the hedge and landed clear on top of him which resulted in a broken shoulder.
Have you ever noticed that all these real-life emergency and accident programmes on TV always have a good number of motorcyclists that they have to attend to.
There is a lot to be said with riding old classic bikes because if you do have an accident you will be going slower when it happens.
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