11.11.2016 **shudder**
Was riding My CBR1200XX north on the North Circular A406 from the Chiswick roundabout.
Stopped at the next set of lights... all good.
Got to pole position and took off sedately .... about 300 yards up the A406 narrows from 2 lanes to 1 and there is a place for oncoming traffic to turn across your path into a side road.
As I approached this area at about 40mph an oncoming car duly lurched across my carridgeway without warning, stopping or indicating.
Wet and slippery road... no time to react... T-bone or stamp on rear brake and slide.
I took option B....
Bike went down right side and spat me off awkwardly.... bike slid around the front of car just missing front bumper but I spun around and smashed full force into the passenger door... back first.
3 broken ribs and 2 cracked vertebrae in spine...
Luckily I happened to be carrying a client's quite bulky metal chassis laptop in my backpack.... upon inspection later the battery area had been crushed to 10% of it's original thickness... think this definitely saved me much more severe spinal injuries. Also lucky the battery pack did not explode!
Car was written off
As I was lying by the roadside the (clearly myopic) car driver kept trying to hand me his own car keys as his eyesight was so poor he could not clearly see what was in his own hands let alone oncoming frigging traffic
Silver lining: I strongly suspected that ABS would have saved me ....which led me to purchase a S1000RR in Jan 2019...and this forum![]()