Most people fall off once or twice during their motorcycling life. I, on the other hand, have developed an all too frequent habit of eating dust. This could be expected during the first few frantic months of FS1E ownership, some seventeen years ago, but is rather more annoying and dangerous during these days of GSXR750 ownership. And a hell of a lot more expensive.
The last and first time I fell off are rather too similar for my liking. When the FS1E slid down the road due to rather over-enthusiastic use of its drum brakes on a wet road, it left me sailing along the tarmac, most of one side of my jeans and flesh being torn off in the process. The GSXR performed the same trick, at about three times the speed; only the fact that I was wearing full leathers, by then having become totally paranoid, saved me from serious injury.
I have owned the big Suzuki for the past nine months and fallen off eleven times in all. The ferocious acceleration that this device delivers is breathtaking, mind boggling stuff, but it’s also dead easy to apply too much power to the back wheel, causing the bike to fly off the road. That excess of power caused five encounters with the road, the machine ending up more mangled than my own frame. The acceleration was also to blame for three of the other accidents, this time because the machine powered forward so rapidly that before I knew what was happening I was on a new, uncalled for trajectory. Panic braking, wrestling with the beast managed to mitigate the otherwise brutal need of the machine to impact with autos at dangerously high speed. Again, damage to the machine was much more costly than to its rider.
The other accidents were caused by the inconsiderate antics of cagers, who blind to everything insisted on cutting up the Suzuki something rotten. Admittedly, I might've been travelling rather faster than the legal limits at the time of the these incidents, but I fail to see how anyone could ignore the full beam of the headlamp or the wail of the non-standard four into one exhaust.
The most serious of these accidents involved the Suzuki plunging into an Escort up to its tank. The sudden retardation throwing me over the bars with enough viciousness to leave a large dent in the roof where my helmet impacted and to require traction and months in hospital to sort out my neck and spine which suffered from the resulting whiplash.
The GSXR‘s frame snapped around the headstock, the whole front end was a useless pile of scrap and there was enough damage to have the bike written off by the insurance company. I bought the wreck off them for a pittance, did the rounds of the breakers, where as you can probably imagine, my face is very well known, and put the bike back on the road for about a third of the insurance pay out.
I am only able to get insurance, these days, because the more minor accidents are not reported, using my breaker contacts and a lot of bodging to fix the machine for relatively minimal amounts. If I had reported every accident that I’d ever had I would have been banned by every insurance company in the land about ten years ago!
The most serious accident I ever had in my life involved a 1973 CB750 four. Yes, one of those so-called classics. At the time, this was one of the more powerful machines on the road and my finances were so constrained that I could do little about the sloppy forks or pogo stick shocks. I had experienced a few vicious weaves when going past the ton but the speed wobble when it appeared was something else.
To my mind, there is no point owning an expensive, heavy and powerful machine unless its speed is employed whenever circumstances allow. An early morning jaunt on a sparsely populated motorway seemed like the ideal circumstances to cruise the brute at 120mph. These early fours were nowhere near as civilised as later efforts, fierce secondary vibes rumbling through the machine as 7000 revs were passed.
The weaves came in at about 80mph, growing in amplitude until about 110mph where the Honda appeared to settle down to a queasy ride. It wasn’t so bad that more than one lane of the motorway was required. I was sort of crouched over the wide tank with my elbows up at helmet level, my neck taking most of the strain of the fierce wind blast as the speedo broke through 120mph. Momentarily, the weave disappeared, then all hell broke loose.
Panic enveloped me as not just the bars but the whole bike went into an uncontrollable wobble, the whole machine seeming to oscillate wildly across the whole width of the motorway, the forks banging away at their stops, the bars trying to wrench themselves out of my grip and the engine sending out the fiercest vibes I’ve ever experienced (the revs hitting the red sector as my right hand had assumed a death grip on the throttle, holding it wide open).
I can still recall the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach as death, in the form of hitting the crash barrier, hove ever closer. My reaction, when it eventually came, was fairly predictable I rolled off the throttle and jammed on the brakes. Veterans of speed wobbles will tell you that it’s the worst possible thing to do, as it tends to amplify the oscillations. So it went with the Honda. The bike seemed to jump at the crash barrier with a wild fit of enthusiasm. For a moment I thought it was going to leap clean over the barrier and deposit bike and I in front of traffic coming in the opposite direction. That was just an illusion on my part. The bike careered into the hard metal, crushing my lower leg in the process, then adding insult to injury by throwing both of us over the barrier.
I was dead lucky, the few car drivers coming in the other direction were awake enough to take avoidance action. After landing with a sickening thud on the tarmac, bike and I parted company. The Honda did a total self destruct act by the time it had reached the hard shoulder. I sort of somersaulted and rolled across the motorway, coming to a halt, and losing consciousness, in the slow lane. The next thing I remember is the pain of waking up in hospital. Remedial action to my leg involved the efforts of the best NHS surgeons, several metal pins and enough pain to turn me into a morphine addict.
Large areas of flesh had also disappeared, a couple of ribs were broken and I had to wear a neck brace for about twelve months. The doctors, nurses and even the cleaning woman gave me stern lectures about the horrors of motorcycling but as soon as I was able I was back on one, this time an innocent little CB125, all I could afford as insurance on the 750 had been third party. I found this a very dangerous machine indeed... I kept forgetting how poor was its acceleration, starting to overtake cars and finding the space I'd assumed available disappearing before the Honda could reach it.
I actually caused a six car pile up in this mode, although I escaped injury myself by swinging the Honda across a car into someone’s front garden. The wretch of a car driver who was at the head of the pile up went berserk and would have beaten me to a pulp had not about half a dozen pedestrians managed to restrain him. The next day I swapped the Honda for something bigger, but that did not stop the accidents.
In case you're wondering, yes, I have passed my motorcycle test and even managed to pass the advanced test (on the third attempt). What I don’t seem to have developed is that sixth sense that makes you aware of a dangerous situation before it becomes evident to your consciousness. Many friends who started out at the same time as myself have not had an accident for years and years, although they do just as high a mileage as myself (about 14000 miles a year).
Some of these friends have become so worried about my riding ability that they refuse to let me accompany them on their weekend runs, although I’m welcome to take up the pillion seat. This might have something to do with the time when I rode into the back of one of them he was on an immaculate Ducati 750SS when I hit him at about 40mph, having twisted in my seat to admire the passing view of a pair of birds wearing the most minimal mini-skirts. Much to his chagrin, I stayed upright whilst he was thrown down the road, wrecking most of the Ducati’s cosmetics.
My only consolation, is that if I did the same antics in a cage I would do much more damage to everyone, most times coming off the bike it’s just myself and the machine that get hurt.
AJ