Luck, Good Karma, and Preparing for the Worst
Keith_Indy on Sep 02 2008 at 9:57 am | Filed under: Keith's Page, Travel, Uncategorized, motoring
I had a lesson in all three this past Friday (8/29.) As I was riding my brand new Triumph Bonneville (with 2 weeks & 650 miles on it,) to work, not more then 2 miles from my house I had a collision with a raccoon. The short story is that the bike and I are in about the same shape, a few dings, and some scrapes, but salvageable. Currently the bike is at the dealer, waiting for inspection by the insurance agent. The rider is at work, and other then a little pain from his knees, is doing fine.
Read the whole story, and view the gory details below the fold.
Mind you, I only had seconds to consider what to do, and it played out something like this.
Made a left hand turn onto the road, and accelerated up to speed, around 50-55MPH. The sun was just visible above the corn stalks that make a wall on either side of this road. Visibility was good, no fog. I settled in for the 40 mile commute to work.
After passing 1 intersection where a white truck was waiting to turn, I saw a movement not to far ahead. Maybe 20-30 feet. I immediately started braking, and as I got closer the movement resolved itself into a raccoon waddling along the edge of the road. As I got closer the raccoon stopped and I remember seeing it’s face. Right as my front wheel go to the raccoon, it decided at that moment that life wasn’t worth living and turned right in front of me.
I remember thinking, keep the wheel square and keep going. The advice I’ve heard on dealing with animals is, if it can fit into a pot, keep going, otherwise stop. As soon as I hit the raccoon, the front wheel decided to turn to the left, which took me down faster then I could react.
My bike skidded towards the center of the road, and I landed, as best as I can figure, 1/2 on the road, and 1/2 in the grass next to the road. At that point, as I rolled several times, I had enough presence of mind to think, oh sh!t, oh sh!t, oh sh!t, oh sh!t. I believe after the first roll I tucked my arms in close to my body. I ended up stopping on my back completely in the grassy ditch.
A quick assessment showed I could move my arms and legs, but my right side was completely numb from pain. Ribs and hip hurt the most. The white truck that was turning onto the road, stopped within view, as I waved to make sure they saw me. The man came up and I croaked call 911. With the amount of pain I was in I didn’t want to take any chances. As he was calling 911, I fished my cell phone out of my pocket, voice dialed my wife, then looked befuddled at the phone. I still had my helmet on and wouldn’t be able to hear her. Luckily another guy had stopped, so I handed the phone to him and he relayed messages to her.
Emergency response was within a few minutes of the call. A sheriff and Fire captain were first on the scene, then the EMT’s. I got a first hand view of the care they take with accident victims, as they carefully put me on a backboard and put a neck brace on. Total time from accident (~7:10am) to hospital (~8:00am) was around 50 minutes. The doctor, nurses, and x-ray tech all were positive and pretty cheerful once they saw that I wasn’t in real bad shape. No broken bones, no internal injuries, in fact, the only damage to me was a couple of bruises and two skinned knees, and even those were minor compared to full-blown road rash.
I can’t speak enough about how important it is to ride with all your safety gear all of the time. Helmet, jacket, gloves, and boots are essential for avoiding serious injury from minor crashes, let alone serious crashes. To many riders don’t wear helmets for varying excuses. They have the right to make stupid decisions, and I’m all for narrowing the gene pool. Riding is risk, and it’s one I’ve accepted, but I’m going to do everything I can to increase the odds of survival.
The extent of the damage on the bike. Mostly scrapes on the right side, and a small ding in the tank on the left side. I think that ding was my knee hitting the tank, which would explain the bruise I have there. My tank bag was also torn up, and my Canon S5 camera is toast.
This is what safety gear looks like after it’s been used. Next up, new helmet, new jacket, and m/c pants. My knees may have faired better if I’d been wearing m/c pants vs jeans.
The extent of the damage to myself, two scraped knees and a couple of bruises.
For anyone interested here’s the gear that I was wearing.
Helmet – HJC CL-Max
Jacket – First Gear Mesh-Tex 3.0
Boots – Icon Superduty
4 Responses to “Luck, Good Karma, and Preparing for the Worst”
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Keith–
I’m glad things turned out as they did. As you say, wearing the right equipment is so important. Take care of yourself.
Nadene
Yikes. See those scratches on the helmet kiddies? Imagine them as scalp lacerations. Yep. Helmets are not optional.
Keith…
It is great to hear that you are doing ok, and that the injuries aren’t more extensive. Having, and wearing good safety equipment is crucial in minimizing injuries – even low-speed crashes/offs/oh sh!ts involve a lot of energy and unfriendly surfaces to rub up against, impact into, or have run into you.
Personal experience makes me grateful for having made the decision to wear safty gear – the times I have gone down would have had much greater consequences if I hadn’t been wearing gear. I am glad that you choose to wear safety gear.
Take care…
Robert
P.S. By any chance was Rocky Raccoon clutching a copy of Gideon’s bible?
Yep, the scratches on the helmet, and the tears/scrapes in the jacket convince me that safety gear is an absolute requirement. I don’t think you should try and legislate commonsense though. I would say, requiring it of riders on learners permit or under 18, would at least get them started with good habits though.
Thanks for the good thoughts too.