{"id":39,"date":"2004-08-21T18:31:41","date_gmt":"2004-08-22T01:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=39"},"modified":"2008-08-03T11:31:47","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T18:31:47","slug":"my-last-motorcycle-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"My Last Motorcycle Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going down . . . but not in a good way.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t clear, because I was in it, fat, dumb, and happy, as\u00a0she 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!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}