I live on the tropical paradise of Bali, and use my CBR for driving to clients every day. Two wheel are the only way to go here, as the traffic is horrendous and two wheels are normally twice as fast as four.
I come from a biking environment of northern Europe, where I used all the safety gear: boots, gloves, leathers, back protector, helmet -- the works.
Once I started biking here, these things sort of fell by the wayside with the usual lame excuses of "it's too hot", "the traffic doesn't move that fast", "the drivers are all carefull" and all the other BS we invent for ourselves.
For my case, my normal riding gear was helmet, gloves, shorts, and flip flops -- and I paid the price last tuesday.
I was doing a right hand turn into a side street from a busy main road (we drive on the left here, so the equivalent would be a left turn in Europe and North America). The road was clear, and off I went. Then to my complete surprise there was a taxi in ramming position on my left hand side. Seems that he had been standing still on the main road, had started up and was concentrated on looking at the traffic behind him and did not see me at all.
Everything started going in slow motion, I remember thinking "he's got to stop", "He's not slowing down", "He's going to hit me", which he proceeded to do -- a full broadside to my left leg, with my leg between the taxi and the my bike.
I knew straight away that it was really bad, but thank heavens for shock - I was able to call my wife, people from my office which was 20 meters from there, call my friend who was chief of emergency medicine at a western hospital to organise an ambulance. It was only then that I dared look down at my leg and saw a bone sticking out, a huge lateral gash and my foot hanging off in a completely wrong direction.
But then the ambulance crew arrived together with my doctor friend. 5 shots of morphine were administered and the repair process began. At the end of it all, I found out that I had been extremely lucky - if the taxi had hit my foot 1 cm lower it would have severed a major blood vessel, and the chances of bleeding out at the site would have been very real. Any more force, and my foot would have been taken completely off. As it was, there was no nerve damage, no vascular damage and tendons were frayed, bur none ripped over. This means recovery time to normal walking will be 3 months, and sports activities in 6 months.
Lessons to take away? Wear proper boots. Wear pants. Look a third, fourth and fifth time -- cars do not see us! And for the not so squeamish, here is my leg after repair:
I come from a biking environment of northern Europe, where I used all the safety gear: boots, gloves, leathers, back protector, helmet -- the works.
Once I started biking here, these things sort of fell by the wayside with the usual lame excuses of "it's too hot", "the traffic doesn't move that fast", "the drivers are all carefull" and all the other BS we invent for ourselves.
For my case, my normal riding gear was helmet, gloves, shorts, and flip flops -- and I paid the price last tuesday.
I was doing a right hand turn into a side street from a busy main road (we drive on the left here, so the equivalent would be a left turn in Europe and North America). The road was clear, and off I went. Then to my complete surprise there was a taxi in ramming position on my left hand side. Seems that he had been standing still on the main road, had started up and was concentrated on looking at the traffic behind him and did not see me at all.
Everything started going in slow motion, I remember thinking "he's got to stop", "He's not slowing down", "He's going to hit me", which he proceeded to do -- a full broadside to my left leg, with my leg between the taxi and the my bike.
I knew straight away that it was really bad, but thank heavens for shock - I was able to call my wife, people from my office which was 20 meters from there, call my friend who was chief of emergency medicine at a western hospital to organise an ambulance. It was only then that I dared look down at my leg and saw a bone sticking out, a huge lateral gash and my foot hanging off in a completely wrong direction.
But then the ambulance crew arrived together with my doctor friend. 5 shots of morphine were administered and the repair process began. At the end of it all, I found out that I had been extremely lucky - if the taxi had hit my foot 1 cm lower it would have severed a major blood vessel, and the chances of bleeding out at the site would have been very real. Any more force, and my foot would have been taken completely off. As it was, there was no nerve damage, no vascular damage and tendons were frayed, bur none ripped over. This means recovery time to normal walking will be 3 months, and sports activities in 6 months.
Lessons to take away? Wear proper boots. Wear pants. Look a third, fourth and fifth time -- cars do not see us! And for the not so squeamish, here is my leg after repair: