Post your near miss / Accidents

[Kiwiscoot]

I'll have to describe this different to the real incident as you guys drive on the right hand side and we on the left. I learnt a lot from that near miss. I have a friend in hospital who had the same thing happen to him, but he was driving a Harley and they have brakes just as ornaments!! ;D ;D

Imagine yourself driving in a main road, single lanes both ways, behind a SUV who wants to turn right into a side road. Now your are at the left behind the cager because he is going to get out of your way soon and you can accelerate back to the 80km/h speed limit. In this side road at the stop is another cager who sees only the SUV (your hidden behind the SUV), who then crosses your lane to go into the lane going the other direction than you. One minute you have a right turning SUV in front of you and the next minute a car crossing your lane. Now the old driver panics, lets go of his clutch to quick and stalls the vehicle right in front of you. Whamo!! T-bone style! Luckily for me I saw him in the side road and just as the SUV turned I wondered if he saw me and decelerated, that gave me about 3 meters more room. I was hard on the brakes and swerving behind him, a balancing act of not locking the brakes, staying on top of the bike and avoiding him. Luck was on my side and I missed him. Other cars at this time had to do some avoidance maneuvers too.
Moral of the story and the lesson I learned: When behind a turning vehicle always assume the cars in the side road did not see you, fall back to give you plenty of room and expect a cager blocking your road in the next 3 seconds (you observed the 3 second follow rule).
Unfortunately for my friend his experience did not end so fortunate last Thursday. He's still in hospital, but with 3 broken ribs and a collapsed lung he is already up on his feet. Quite a feat for a 78 year old die-hard. He has thousands of kms under his belt and is very experienced. Happened to me and him in the country side. I think some locals in the country side is just not so traffic aware.

[scosgt]

Anyway, my close call was on my Yamaha razz 50cc back when I was 16 or 17, going down a side street in the middle of the night. I was cruzing about 35 when all of a sudden a huge white possum ran out from under a car into the street right into my path. I didn't even have time to hit the brakes before I "jumped" the poor animal. It was crazy the bike actually came off the ground, and I came down uneven and sloppy, almost wiped but somehow managed to gain control and come to a stop. I looked back and must have broke the possums back as it was screaming and trying to pull itself around with its front legs. My heart was beating 1000x a second and I could not believe I actually rode it out. That was def. the scariest thing ever, just crusing along then without warning a moving "ramp" runs out in front of your scoot. I'm 27 now and I still remember that night.

That one just gave me a chuckle. Last summer I was riding my hybrid bike (as in bicycle) which has narrow 700c tires pumped up to 120 PSI. So I'm riding in the park, doing maybe 10MPH, and a squirrel runs right onto the path right in front of me. I had no time to react, so I just ran over him with both tires. Just a small bump in the road. The squirrel was last seen heading for the hills. I guess they have elastic backbones.

So on the scoot, I guess I won't swerve for anything smaller than a dog. Probably safer that way.

[monkeywrench]

Read the story of my accident, what I learned, and what I did about it:

scootdawg.proboards59.com/index.cgi?board=tipsandtricks&action=display&thread=18847