BonnevilleAmerica.com: Laying it down vs braking

In December of '08 I was riding along and entering a curve to the right...I was at about 35 mph when I noticed a white Dodge Neon full of kids exiting the drive of an In and Out Burger joint to my left. They we going to make a left turn onto the roadway into my path. They crossed two lanes of Southbound traffic and then into the Northbound lanes and would have hit me on the left side if I had not applied the brakes heavily. So heavily that the bike went down on the right side really smoothly. By the time it went down I was at 20 MPH or less and I avoided the collision. I ended up against the curb on the right side of the roadway at night with traffic coming up behind me in two lanes. Luckily a lady with a big GMC Suburban stopped behind me and shielded me from the on coming traffic. The bike was still running. I reached up and killed the engine but the bike was resting on my right leg. I could not get up. She and her son and a pair of passing by teens pulled the bike up and got me out from under. We got the bike to the edge of the road and up on the kickstand. I was in some severe pain in my right ankle, left wrist, and had some bruising on on right leg in a few places and my riding jacket was torn on the right elbow and shoulder. Those armor pieces did their job. The double fabric pants also were torn and a layer of fabric was gone buy my skin was whole although bruised badly. My left wrist was sprained. Generally I was shaken up pretty badly but able to move albiet kinda slow.

Damage to the bike was to the end ball of the right brake, right highway peg was scraped down some, top edge of right saddlebag was abraded pretty good and I had a new scrape on the right side of my helmet. Other than that I was good to go. I rode the bike home 4 miles. The next day I could hardly walk on the right leg. I ended up going to the hospital and then I learned that the right fibula was broken and I ended up in a cast for 12 weeks. It never healed right and in August of '09 they installed a titanium rod into my right leg with 7 screws. Another 12 weeks in a cast and I still am having issues with swelling and tenderness and pain at times in the right ankle.

The alternative was to allow the neon to smack me on the left side and I am sure that the injuries would have been more serious than I suffered. Oh, by the way, the Neon stopped 1/4 mile away a kid got out to see what had happend to me and then they sped away.

I needed to have straightened up the bike by steering left and then applied the brakes but I would have hit the Neon anyway so I really have not any solution to this situation. Sometimes ya gotta just take your lumps.

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07 Speedmstr, Long Tors, bags, sissy bar and rack, windshield, engine bars, 2 ww lights, 2 fast eddy stickers and a .45 ACP.

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