My Last Motorcycle Accident

Going down . . . but not in a good way.

My last motorcycle accident was typical in that it happened within five miles of home and involved a cager (car driver) turning left. You try to anticipate cagers turning left into your path, but this one came out of nowhere.

I was riding west on a multi-lane street (three lanes in each direction), approaching a red light. Cars were backing up and stopping in the center and right lanes, but the left lane was empty so I moved into it, slowing down as I passed the line of stopped cars on my right just in case some impatient driver got the same idea.

It’s a good thing I slowed down, too. Invisible to me, a woman in a compact pickup truck was leaving a supermarket parking lot on the north side of the street, nosing through the stopped traffic at a right angle, trying to turn left. Someone had politely allowed her to nose into the curb lane, someone else had politely allowed her to nose into the center lane . . . and then that same someone politely waved to her that the median lane was clear.

But it wasn’t clear, because I was in it, fat, dumb, and happy, as she suddenly lurched out of the line of stopped cars on my right, broadside on, and in that split second I read her lips, and she was saying Oh!

There was no time to react. I may have touched the brakes, but don’t really remember (there were no skid marks on the street afterward). There she was and just like that I smacked into her left front fender, fortunately going only 20-25 mph. I went over the bars, through my windshield and fairing (I was riding an Electra Glide), and onto her hood.

I wasn’t wearing a helmet (yeah, I know, how foolish). If she’d pulled another foot or two forward my head would have gone through her driver’s side window. I don’t even want to think how serious my injuries (and hers) would have been had that happened. As it was I was the only one hurt, with a broken metacarpal bone in my hand, a cracked kneecap, and a couple of deep cuts.

Naturally, the SOB who’d waved the woman into the “empty” lane drove off as soon as the light changed. I’ll always wonder if he actually knew I was coming and did it on purpose, just to see the fun.

Lessons learned? Left turning cagers can come from directions you never thought of. Helmets are good. Be extra alert when passing stopped traffic.

Perhaps you noticed that I described the accident as my last one. I wish I meant “last” as in “I’ll never have another motorcycle accident,” but as any experienced rider will tell you, all “last” means is “most recent.”

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