My husband was run off the road on his 650; laid it down in some roadside gravel. Broke his ankle and had a lot of road rash, which ended our enthusiasm for riding for a while. He always drove too fast, though. Young and stupid.
Been there and done that; was extremely lucky at times. One time riding my Kawasaki dirt bike; crossed a dirt parking lot, and headed home, not very fast, but fast enough to not be able to stop before an old schoolmate named Jimmy turned into a lot, real fast right in front of me. I missed his vehicle and ran right into the trailer he was pulling. I drove that trailer straight up in the air and if it wasn't for it being attached to the vehicle it would've turned over, it did land back on me. I thought I broke my arm and leg. He got out apologizing to me, it looked like it was on purpose, but surely it wasn't. We recognized each other and I told him this is a hell of a way to run into each other; after such a long time. He got my bike up on his trailer and took me back home. I was so sore, and barely moved the next day. I went on to ride many miles after that, as the years went by.
I dumped my bike when I came upon a newly repaved street intersecting the one I was on. While the street was barricaded on both sides of the construction, it was not marked or closed off at the intersection. I tried to stop, but, by the time I could see that it had been newly paved, I ended up sliding across the still-soft pavement, burning one side of my leg and scraping the other, with soft pavement in the wounds. I probably should have sued someone, but instead, I cleaned the bike off and limped for months until my leg healed.
Sounds like a lawsuit, that was waiting to happen. This day and time, they would be sued to high heaven and back. On the news, you see where someone's suing someone. I've wrecked quite a few times but only totaled one, my 650 Triumph. I was showing off like a dummy; to two of my school friends, how fast it was, and couldn't make the curb, I tried leaning all I could to make it, to no avail. Went right through a neighbor's yard and hit a ditch embankment; which sent me according to my friends, Doug and Roy, over thirteen feet into the air, and doing cartwheels. When I came down I saw the dirt right in front of my face, but hit my back shoulders, because of how fast I was going. began rolling so fast, it beat my clothes off. when I finally stopped rolling, I stood up and fell face-first, back down. Neighbors kids were laughing at me. Tore my bike to pieces, and Doug and Roy picked up all the pieces and brought me back to our house. Couldn't move for a couple of weeks I was so soar. My left leg was broken I found out, when I could finally move enough to get to a hospital. Still, I went right back to riding another, until I couldn't anymore. I've been telling some of my stories about wrecks, just hope I'm not doing it more than once; haven't gone back through the thread to see. Hopefully not, if so, my apologies to whoever reads them.
Motorcycles don't pardon even small errors in judgment. In twenty years as a paramedic, I never responded to a motorcycle accident in which the motorcyclist lived. It seemed that either they weren't harmed enough to require an ambulance or they were killed or injured too badly to survive.
I believe you; "on that". One of my sister's boyfriends, who she was dating, had a 350 Yamaha, which I used to ride all the time. They said he and his friends always rode to school every morning, and on his last ride, with them, a pulpwood truck pulled out into the road and he hit the trailer went across and when coming down on the other side, the post that held the logs on hit him in the back of his head, and killed him. Danny; was only 16 or 17 years old. The guys who rode with him said they didn't know why he didn't stop; they all did.
Another friend of mine, named Glenn, was around 23 years old; worked the night shift at the steel mill, and coming home, he must have fallen asleep or something; went off the road on his bike and hit something; they said and shot him head-first into a tree. He had his helmet on, and it split it and his head. Died instantly.
I had a Yamaha 80 when I was about twelve. This was no problem as long as we stayed on the local roads because it was extremely rare to see a cop on the local roads. The Sheriff's Department didn't care, and the State Police seldom left the highway. One summer, my cousins and I crossed the highway when a state cop was coming by. He turned his lights on and braked to turn around, so we drove our bikes into the woods. We had to push our bikes through a bunch of brush and over a winding river (the size of a small stream) a couple of times because we were afraid to go back to the roads. Over the next few days, we cleared some of the brush and put boards over the river so we had a path through the woods to my house and two of my cousins' houses. Wanting to put this into use, we drove around that area of the highway until the state police came by and hit the woods once again. As we were coming out of the woods near my house, the state police car was driving slowly down the road, clearly waiting. I don't know if he saw us, but we ducked back into the woods and hid out for several hours. I figured I was busted but never heard anything else about it, and we decided to stay off of the highway.
Sounds like us, we were always dodging the police, so we could ride on the pavement on our motorcycles with no tag, no license, and not old enough to get any.
Remember, men are from Mars. This is why I got rid of his motorcycle, he came home from work, and it was gone.