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Guest Richzx6r
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Guest Richzx6r

So the story starts nearly 16 years ago when I was 17 years old I was the proud rider of a 52 reg Honda cg125 which tbf I thought was the mutts nuts and I too being 17 thought I had the skills of Marc Marquez......which I definitely didn't then or have even now, anyway I was working for a hgv repair shop and chose to go in on a Saturday to pickup some overtime and had left slightly later than I should have owing to being a pot smoker at the time (not touched it since the fateful day apart from weekend in Amsterdam) so I was riding like rossi down a little country lane wringing every bit of something out of the Honda and it was my daily route to work so I knew the road well and I guess I got complacent as there is a long straight followed by in the high of summer a right hand bend that is blind, well that corner had a nice black line through it and from my daily commute I knew that if my front tyre was on that black line I could keep her pinned going through the corner, well on this occasion I hadn't given it any thought that a car (a Nissan almera) would be coming the other way but it was and as such the Honda ended it's short life crashing through the engine block of the car at full chat meanwhile saving my life by catapulting me over the top of said car to land about 50ft behind the car, well the impact which was like riding in to a wall at 120 ish as the car was doing around 60mph too broke.....I mean shattered my left elbow, left hand and right wrist and my left knee hit the top of the windscreen and that gave me a compacted knee cap, I didn't realise any of this at the time all be it that I was awake throughout the crash I still tried to get up to get back to the bike, I spent 2 n bit weeks on hospital getting out the day before my 18th birthday, and now I have 2 plates and 13 odd pins holding my elbow together, I have wire holding my hand together and a plate and 3 pins in my right wrist but apart from that I'm fine, so the pics are me a couple of days after the accident and the Honda


I do apologise if it's a long read but that's the short version


I hope someone somewhere can take something from and learn from my mistake

15504431027344359582143403284412.thumb.jpg.209cf35fefa01ba5c997ff559532fc96.jpg

The poor honda

1550443136544782759847383257933.thumb.jpg.b88c1b66ca75903fc561f2437523e53d.jpg

Me a day or two later

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Guest Richzx6r

Ouch! :shock:


Thankfully you lived and learned

 

Yea I definitely learned, only other thing I'd say is to anyone new to riding get your test done either 33bhp or das and get yourself on something bigger as its more dangerous to be on a smaller machine than a bigger one imho

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Guest Richzx6r

Lucky you weren’t badly hurt!

 

Well I think shattering of my elbow hand and wrist constitute fairly badly hurt, I was close to losing my left arm and was bleeding out quite badly apparently oh and when the police arrived they brought over a body bag for me because they had just been to a fatal accident and thought I'd be the second

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Lucky you weren’t badly hurt!

 

Well I think shattering of my elbow hand and wrist constitute fairly badly hurt, I was close to losing my left arm and was bleeding out quite badly apparently oh and when the police arrived they brought over a body bag for me because they had just been to a fatal accident and thought I'd be the second

 

Hi matey , I know people say "as you get older you get wiser" , forget that I'm in my late 60s and I still do things I shouldn't on the bike , and having that Blade doesn't help, but I aint gonna sit in a rocking chair looking out of the window :wink:

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Lucky you weren’t badly hurt!

 

Well I think shattering of my elbow hand and wrist constitute fairly badly hurt, I was close to losing my left arm and was bleeding out quite badly apparently oh and when the police arrived they brought over a body bag for me because they had just been to a fatal accident and thought I'd be the second

 

My fault for not using an emoji - of course you were badly hurt, mate. How much of an impact has it left in terms of residual pain, etc?

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Blimey - that's a bit of a steep learning curve.


I used to ride a similar road in a similar fashion. It was a lovely road with sweeping bends and one that wasn't tight but certainly you couldn't see the exit from before the apex but I always took it flat out. I shall never forget the day I leaned into the bend and the voice of my riding instructor flashed into my mind - always stop in the road you can see - and I backed off.


As I came out of the bend there was an artic on its side blocking the entire road from wall to wall. I'd have had no chance of stopping and nowhere to go. I learnt a lot from that experience!


Thanks for sharing - your experience just might make someone think twice and if so you've probably saved someone a lot of grief and pain.

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Thanks for the post, Rich. As I said before - there's always a lesson to be found in these things and I think MB has nailed it here - that lesson is "always be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear". Yup, sounds boring, but..........


I used to be a member on the old Bike forum before it went west, and there was one guy on there who had done a couple of trackdays and rather fancied himelf. Got about 18 months under his belt and rode, as I recall, some sort of Honda IL4. We had a long correspondence along the lines of "but at the track school they taught us to corner like this.......why can't I do it out on the road?" To which my reply was always "the road ain't an effing racetrack, that's why.......you don't normally get people coming the other way on a track, etc. etc....."


What people fail to take into account is that you only have a certain amount of - let's call it "mental processing power" - that you use to conduct yourself when you're out riding. "Normal" riding only uses about 50% of this processing power, so that when little things like blocked carriageways, people running out on you, oncoming vehicles on the wrong side etc. crop up, you can still deal with them using what you have left in reserve. But as things start hotting up, corners are coming faster, lean angles increase, you're having to devote more attention to the line and road surface etc., more thinking has to be done in less time and the amount of processing needed for the ride increases exponentially, leaving less and less in reserve to deal with the flankers. WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY HAPPEN. :shock:


Edited to add (I knew there was something I left out!) .....on the track, you can get away with using 95% processing power...'cos nothing is likely to happen that you weren't at least expecting, but on the road....you need at least 20% in hand, or else.....


The assumption that the "road will be clear" is one of the most common - and most deadly - traps that a rider/driver can fall into. Yep, 99% of the time you will get away with it........but it's the 1% of times that you don't that will very effectively kill you.


Rich, you were very, very lucky. That photo (poor bike! :crybaby:) is a sobering reminder of why you should be "able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear". Thanks for sharing with us.


Anyway, my mate off the Bike forum found out for himself that the A44 wasn't Cadwell Park. Just that he did it the hard way.


Cheers


S23.

Edited by Anonymous
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Guest Richzx6r

Blimey - that's a bit of a steep learning curve.


I used to ride a similar road in a similar fashion. It was a lovely road with sweeping bends and one that wasn't tight but certainly you couldn't see the exit from before the apex but I always took it flat out. I shall never forget the day I leaned into the bend and the voice of my riding instructor flashed into my mind - always stop in the road you can see - and I backed off.


As I came out of the bend there was an artic on its side blocking the entire road from wall to wall. I'd have had no chance of stopping and nowhere to go. I learnt a lot from that experience!


Thanks for sharing - your experience just might make someone think twice and if so you've probably saved someone a lot of grief and pain.

 

I'm all about having a good time on the bike but theres a time and place, and yeah that's my goal if I can save someone from doing as I did then good as they may not be as lucky as I was

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Guest Richzx6r

Lucky you weren’t badly hurt!

 

Well I think shattering of my elbow hand and wrist constitute fairly badly hurt, I was close to losing my left arm and was bleeding out quite badly apparently oh and when the police arrived they brought over a body bag for me because they had just been to a fatal accident and thought I'd be the second

 

My fault for not using an emoji - of course you were badly hurt, mate. How much of an impact has it left in terms of residual pain, etc?

 

Its fine I knew what you meant, and impact hasn't been as bad as it could have been, I can't straighten my left arm fully I'm about 1 1/2 - 2 inches shorter than my right arm, and there are still bones in my hand that haven't knitted together so I can move it at the break but best of all I can still play rugby

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Guest Richzx6r

Thanks for the post, Rich. As I said before - there's always a lesson to be found in these things and I think MB has nailed it here - that lesson is "always be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear". Yup, sounds boring, but..........


I used to be a member on the old Bike forum before it went west, and there was one guy on there who had done a couple of trackdays and rather fancied himelf. Got about 18 months under his belt and rode, as I recall, some sort of Honda IL4. We had a long correspondence along the lines of "but at the track school they taught us to corner like this.......why can't I do it out on the road?" To which my reply was always "the road ain't an effing racetrack, that's why.......you don't normally get people coming the other way on a track, etc. etc....."


What people fail to take into account is that you only have a certain amount of - let's call it "mental processing power" - that you use to conduct yourself when you're out riding. "Normal" riding only uses about 50% of this processing power, so that when little things like blocked carriageways, people running out on you, oncoming vehicles on the wrong side etc. crop up, you can still deal with them using what you have left in reserve. But as things start hotting up, corners are coming faster, lean angles increase, you're having to devote more attention to the line and road surface etc., more thinking has to be done in less time and the amount of processing needed for the ride increases exponentially, leaving less and less in reserve to deal with the flankers. WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY HAPPEN. :shock:


The assumption that the "road will be clear" is one of the most common - and most deadly - traps that a rider/driver can fall into. Yep, 99% of the time you will get away with it........but it's the 1% of times that you don't that will very effectively kill you.


Rich, you were very, very lucky. That photo (poor bike! :crybaby:) is a sobering reminder of why you should be "able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear". Thanks for sharing with us.


Anyway, my mate off the Bike forum found out for himself that the A44 wasn't Cadwell Park. Just that he did it the hard way.


Cheers


S23.

 

Yea it was a sobering moment that's for sure, and yeah I agree ride to what you can see and stop in safely, slow isnt always boring......... after all riding is all about being out in the open enjoying the sights and smells with the occasional blast when the time and conditions are right

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when im out on the bike I always ride on my own never in a group because sometimes you can get dragged along by some johnny fireblade and that's when it can all go wrong I ride at my own speed and go where I want :|

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