Just had my first accident...

[Nelsonmd]

So I had my first accident on my lunchtime ride with co-workers today. Here's what happened. We were cruising down a back road in southern Mass that has nice curves, and on our way back, we came to an S-curve on a hill. It's a short steep hill, so the hill starts as you enter the s-curve, and tops out right as you exit the S. It's also a very tight curve. Anyway, we were coming up the hill with me in front, and as I came over the top and was leaning in the exit turn, I see a car coming that I thought was just coming the other direction. It turns out he was turning into the driveway right at the exit of the S-curve but I couldn't see his turn signal because to hill occluded it, and I wasn't able to swerve around him (into the oncoming direction). Anyway, I skimmed his passenger side, felt some decent contact, but just kind of bumped off him and was able to keep it upright with no contact to my leg or foot (maybe a tiny bit of contact on the foot, but no pain or anything). We pulled over, checked everyone out, all fine, and started checking the damage.

It looks like my engine guards hit his out-turned front passenger wheel and that is what bumped me away from his car. The engine guards bent into the engine a bit and took out a good chunk of a fin, and got a little scraping on the guard itself, but that is it for the damage to my bike. His car however suffered a broken tie rod, broken hubcap, bent rim, my co-workers say a couple of his lug nuts are messed up (though I can't imagine how I would have done that...). Anyway, all in all, the XJ fared much better, and I think the engine guards saved my foot from taking a severe crushing.

Cops came and took some notes, and that was about it. I am not sure how the fault is going to land, though I think it should be no-fault since it was such a blind corner. Either way, I will have to fix her out of pocket anyway, though it doesn't appear that I'll have much to fix, I just have to try to bend the engine guard back into shape. I will say that I am glad that I had the Jama engine guards, I am not sure the OEM ones would have fared nearly as well.

I'll post some pictures when I get home.

One big mistake I made though... I wasn't wearing hardly any of my riding gear. I commuted to work on the bike, so I wore my steel toe boots, full jacket, helmet and gloves this morning, but because it was so nice out at lunch, I ditched the jacket and boots. Had the accident been worse, the lack of those 2 items could have done some real damage to me. So I got away with it this time, but it was definitely a big mistake to not wear them.

As far as avoiding the accident, I don't feel there was much I could have done other than the default of slowing to 5mph going around the corners, but that just isn't feasible. We weren't going very fast, and I consciously slowed down alot for the curve. I doubt I was speeding (25mph zone).