Ouch

On my way to work last Thursday I was involved in a minor accident - luckily there wasn't much damage to either me or my motorbike.

There's a particularly bad intersection on my route to work - one road joins another at very sharp angle, and you have to turn right around to look behind you to see if anyone is approaching from the other road. It is now a stop street, but it used to be a yield, and many cars still treat it as such and are quite surprised when you stop. So what happened was that the car in front of me stopped, checked it was clear, and pulled away. I pulled away up to the stop street, stopped, checked behind me, saw a car was coming and didn't move forward. The driver of the car behind me was also looking behind him to see if the intersection was clear, and didn't notice that I had stopped, and went into the back of my bike. Luckily he was only just pulling away, so he didn't hit it with much force, but it was enough to drop the bike. I landed partly on the gravel, partly on top of the bike, and once again have had it proved to me that a full-face helmet is the only way to go - otherwise my chin, jaw and nose would have been shredded. As it was, I pulled pretty much every muscle in my body, got some really nasty bruises, as well as a couple of scrapes and burns.

The damage to the bike was mostly cosmetic, as well - the tail-light/licence plate assembly is cracked, the front indicator housing broke when the bike went over onto it's side, the back of the mirror got a bit scratched, and the main stand and gear lever rubbers got chewed up, but luckily the bodywork wasn't scratched or damaged, which is downright amazing.

The driver was very apologetic, and another guy stopped to help out as well (he's a biker himself - I love the way bikers always help out other bikers), so I got all his details and stuff and he said he'd pay for the damage. I'm still waiting for a quote, but it shouldn't be too bad. Even though I knew it was a minor accident and that the bike and I were okay, I was shaking like a leaf. Just an adrenalin reaction, I guess. I felt him hit the back of the bike, and heard the tail-light crack, and my first thought was, "You *idiot*, it's a stop street!". Then he came over and tried to lift the bike, scraping it along the ground as he did so - I was still picking myself up, but I just growled at him to leave my bike alone.

But as I said, he was very apologetic and was probably as shocked by the whole thing as I was. He phoned me later that day to check that I was okay, which I appreciated.

I rode home, phoned it to work to tell them I'd be late (although I ended up not going in at all - I figured it was a justified sick day!), and later on got my dad to look over the bike to see if it needed to go in to be assessed, or if we could just order replacement parts for the bits that looked broken, which is what we did. On a side note: I was really pissed off with the bike place. My dad went with me to the order the parts, since he knows the guy; my dad told them to phone me with the quote, so I gave them my number and then they asked for dad's too. The next day, I phoned up to add another item that we hadn't noticed the day before; he later phoned my dad almost to check that it was okay and to tell him that he'd only be able to get a quote on monday! Dammit, it's my bike, deal with me! Yes, I'm a female, get over it! It's not like I'm a kid needing my dad's permission to order parts.

Anyway, I had to file a Vehicle Accident Report with the cops to get a case number in case I needed to claim anything on insurance, which wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. In fact, it was quite amusing - they've made the report very easy for the cops to fill out, with check-box questions like "Was the accident at a stop street; yield sign; or other", with a little picture of a stop sign, yield sign, etc. "Was the road straight, curved to the left, or curved to the right?" with little pictures of a straight road, and road curved to left, etc. :-) But the funniest part was after I described what had happened, they ask all the standard questions: Was anyone injured? Was there any damage to the bike? Was the any damage to the bakkie that hit me? Err, yeah right....

I was lucky, it could have been a lot worse. I guess it's just a reminder that a bike is more vulnerable than a car, and I'd just like to remind all you car drivers that if you bump a car, neither of you will really notice and there might, at most, be a bit of damage to the bumper. But if you even just bump a bike, at the very least the rider will come off, the bike will fall, and there will be damage to rider and bike. And being sorry afterwards doesn't undo the bruises and scrapes and pulled muscles. So just remember that bikes are more vulnerable, and easier to damage, and just be a bit more aware when there's a bike in front of you.