My 1.5th accident...

Talk about that last great ride or perhaps, the next one. Ride reports here.
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Nelsonmd
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 4:35 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

So I had another little accident yesterday, this time on my V-strom, thought I'd share it with y'all.

I was running late for an important meeting, and was waiting to turn left off a main street onto a side street. The oncoming traffic had a straight lane and a right turn lane. I left turned in-between cars going straight (it was a tight gap, but it was enough). The car in the turn lane, instead of turning (I was going to turn in close behind him) decided to go straight instead and cut over in front of me (see illustration, the right lane there is right turn only, I kind of covered it up with the car clip-art). I was already well into my lean/turn, so I just hit the brakes and fell over onto my left side. I didn't get my left leg under the bike I was able to dismount as the bike fell, but my right leg hit the bike pretty hard and I have some sizeable bruising and scrapes. The damage to the bike was pretty minimal, the engine guards took the most of it without even deforming (except for the highway peg, I'll have to bend that back). The rear passenger footrest took some contact, but not bad, and the upper fairing corner got a bit scraped, but again, not too bad. I was so surprised that I just focused on getting the bike up and out of the middle of the intersection, and just waved the idiot out of the way because I really didn't have time to file an accident report or anything. I didn't even realize at the time that he had cut me off, later once I calmed down I realized that he cut across from the turn lane illegally.

Image

My thoughts on it after I calmed down:
1. I should have expected this guy to do something like this. I know this intersection and I see people do this all the time.
2. I was riding a bit aggressively. I was late and let that affect my riding.
3. I didn't see the turning car hardly at all because I was focusing on the car going straight that I was going to turn behind.
4. I was not wearing any of my safety gear because I was in rush and was just going a short distance in the city. I should have at least been wearing my riding boots because they may have reduced the scraping on my shin, and had my left leg gotten pinned, they could have saved me from some serious damage. I will not make this mistake again, if I'm on the bike, my boots will be on my feet.
5. I was flustered in the moment and just rode away from it. If I hadn't been late, or if the bike had been more damaged, I would really need to make the guy stop, and file an accident report.
6. While the V-strom is a bit big for me (1kcc, I can just barely get both my heel down at a stop), I was able to pick it up very easily using this technique...
[youtube]cfsUZDA8CoI[/youtube]
It's been posted here before, and I had tried it when I first saw it by gently laying my XJ down, but I thought I liked better just grabbing it and muscling it up, because I was facing the bike and it felt more stable. I am not able to muscle the V-strom up, but using this technique, I pulled it back up and was back on pushing it out of the intersection while hardly even interrupting traffic.
7. This kind of woke me up to the dangers of riding in the city. I ride the hgihway so much that I tend to see the highway as being more dangerous, but after this, it reminded me that riding in the city, especially one with so much traffic and so many selfish/self-centered/ignorant drivers as Boston has, there is alot more opportunity for an accident when riding in the city. I might have been able to hold my XJ up and not drop it, so I will lean more towards tooling around the city on the smaller bike.
8. The engine guards took the brunt of the impact and damage. They are WELL worth it, even if they are expensive (as if I hadn't learned this lesson in my first accident... My First Accident). I may look into installing some type of sliders to move the other impact points should this happen again, so that I'll take even less damage next time.

So some good lessons learned for me at a relatively low cost. Partly my fault, but the driver is the one that violated any rules o the road; I was just guilty of pushing it a bit, but that's the only part I can control, so I need to do better. What are you're thoughts?

EDIT: Just to clarify why I chose to not call it in, I had in important meeting scheduled with some friends, and I valued getting there to be with them more than *maybe* getting compensated for the minor damage my bike took. Hopefully I won't find any bigger damage down the road, but I won't regret the decision.
NelsonMD's 92 XJ600 Project Thread

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