Glad to hear you lived to recount the tale, Coxy! There have been a few close shaves on the forum recently, as posted by Old Smokey and Oldswartout. It makes you think. I'm probably one of the few people who have come to motorbiking later on because I think it's actually safer than my transport before, which was mountain and roadbiking. In 30 plus years of roadbiking I have been hit twice, once in low winter sun (when I went through their windscreen 'cos they just didn't see me) and once after dark. Interestingly both were side impact. So, obviously that kind of visibility issue is key to all. But I'm curious, is survivability about luck, experience or an almost Darwinian level of natural selection that enables a brain to process information in a particular way? Coxy, you spoke of accelerating out of danger in your first near miss. At any speed that was extraordinary processing. In nano seconds you had to have first, realised you were in trouble, second, thought about your options to get out of it, and third, physically do what you intended. That is quite something. Is that experience, luck or the presence of guardian angels? (Maybe all of them.)
Don't know if anyone else has experienced this but when I wenrt through the windscreen it was as if it happened in slow motion. I can clearly remember swearing in that instant I realised the car driver hadn't seen me and knowing I hadn't a chance in hell to stop started preparing. I wasn't wearing a helmet so knew I needed to protect my head. I took my hands off the handle bars, put my hands on my head with my elbows forward and waited for launch. And it seemed to take ages. I was flipped over by impact and went through the windscreen shoulders and back first and finished up landing on top of the driver and his passenger. After the explosion of shattering glass I remember the silence. There was absolutely nothing. I was riding a busy road with lots of traffic and pedestrians with lots of background noise. The silence made me think I was dead but I think it was just the locality taking a sharp intake of breath. I climbed out of the car to a round of stunned applause from the onlookers. My tracksuit was completely shredded in an Incredible Hulk kind of way but apart from some minor abrasions on my shoulder I was completely fine. The driver and passenger were pretty lucky too. Despite having a 130 lb missile land on their laps the passenger was physically unhurt and the driver just had a few cuts to his hand from the breaking glass. I've seen many more innocuous looking accidents result in tragedy. It has made me very curious over the years as to why an accident that potentially should have killed me didn't even injure me.
So are we all leading charmed lives given our chosen methods of transport? Or is it that the power upstairs is the ultimate dictator of when we leave and it doesn't matter how careful or astute we are? Maybe that's a whole other question. I guess the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter how bad a day anyone has had - if at the end of it you are able to go home to your spouse, partner or dog it has to actually be a good day 'cos you are still in it! Glad to hear that you and Old Smokey are still in it, too.
