not a good day

[stangmx13]

so about 4:45pm yesterday i leave my house for lab class. turn the corner outside our apt complex and make it another 500ft. for all of u that cheated n looked at the pic, u kno wats coming. a small SUV (mazda tribute i think) was parked on the right side of the road. road is 2 lanes w/ a center turn lane for the offshooting roads n driveways. well this SUV decided to make a u-turn w/out checking his blind spot. he turned out in front of me, leaving me about 15ft to stop from 25mph. def possible if my reaction time was 0secs, but of course it wasnt. at about 6ft from the car, i remember concsiouslt thinking "oh this is gonna hurt". i hit the driver side front tire at about 20mph and landed on the hood... stared into the drivers eye for a second. i then slid off the hood and started walking around, realizing that my left forearm was pointing in a slightly off direction n hurt like a b****.

instantly 8 ppl were surrounding me. alot of ppl like to take walks in my neighborhood and a few ppl came out of their apts. of course everyone said i should prob sit down, but ive been in plenty of MC accidents b4 and me still being conscious was a good thing. so ya, i tried to walk it off. i finally realized the pain in my arm was almost enough to put me in shock, so i sat down borrowed someones phone (charger was at the gf's so mine was dead) and started calling all the #s i could remember. left 2 msgs because no one picked up (no one picks up when its a # they dont kno).

by this time the paramedics were hassling me to get off the phone. told em several times my name, age, and medical allergies (sulfa btw). oh and i made a huge deal about finding out if my helmet was scratched. (not even a tiny scratch) if u rem ive had it less than 2 months since someone destroyed my old one. but ya, had em cut my backpack off n they fumbled w / gloves since i could exactly turn my left wrist over. made sure they didnt cut my jacket too. the whole time the driver of the SUV is sitting there to my left obviously kicking himself for turning out.

got on the backboard w/ a neck brace (worst thing ever but i dont blame em...and not my first). got in the ambulance... they said splint n i said morphine . they said college hospital n i said Kaiser (minor probs w that one). the kaiser hospital was about 30 min away so i got plenty of morphine... 14ml actually, not all at once but ya. believe it or not, this was my first conscious ambulance ride since i was 11 n the paramedics had a laugh about that. b4 we left, 2 of my best friends, one being my roommate, called the guy whos phone i used. they found out where i was going etc etc n were driving to the hospital.

so hospital experiences r boring so ill keep this part short. got some x-rays. doctor thought surgery but left me w/ the ortho guys to c wat they could do. received a hemotoma block (best thing ever)... stuck a 3" needle into the break a filled it w/ anesthetic... and proceded to bend my arm to try to get it to re-align. because i only broke 1 bone, it is impossible for them to reset it.. obviously the other one is holding out of place. so ya, surgeru TODAY in about an hour.

about 10pm we got back from the hospital n In-N-Out and visited the bike. a u all can guess, my lovely new forks, race stay, tach, projector headlight, and radiator are gone... my baby is dead and i seriously just spent 300$ on bodywork that is in the mail. ya ull get pics of the bike later...but here is the good one: my arm

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k112/stangmx13/Robert_s_Arm.jpg

[Mortifer]

wow, that looks reeeeeeeeeally painful.:(

sorry to hear of this, hope you heal up quick and the guys insurance takes care of you.

[bpw]

At least there were lots of witnesses. Hopefully make fighting insurance easier. The look on the drivers face must have been interesting. Heal up fast.

Ben

[cold100onhw1]

Sorry to hear about you crash. Glad you are telling us about a broked bone and not somthing alot worse.

[snowface]

Originally posted by stangmx13
...well this SUV decided to make a u-turn w/out checking his blind spot. he turned out in front of me, leaving me about 15ft to stop from 25mph...
...but ive been in plenty of MC accidents b4 and me still being conscious was a good thing...
...oh and i made a huge deal about finding out if my helmet was scratched. (not even a tiny scratch) if u rem ive had it less than 2 months since someone destroyed my old one...
...so ya, surgeru TODAY in about an hour...


(1) that sucks, and sounds really painful. sorry bud. :(
(2) please post back after the insurance is settled. since we weren't there, is there anything you can add in respect to avoiding this accident? if the guy pulled out blind with no blinker right from the side of the road, there's not much anyone can do. but if you were wearing dark colors, and he put a blinker on, and you were speeding...etc... just so we can learn from this one.
(3) the helmet is most likely compromised. i wouldn't risk it.
(4) good luck with the surgery - i know life sucks right now but you definately got out lucky.

[Ironbutt]

"they said splint n i said morphine . they said college hospital n i said Kaiser (minor probs w that one). the kaiser hospital was about 30 min away so i got plenty of morphine... "


Awsome!

Awww shit man.. that blows..Your getting PAID though!! YEAH!

(if it makes you feel any better)

Come to the BBQ today.. In Concord..

[stangmx13]

Originally posted by snowface
(1) that sucks, and sounds really painful. sorry bud. :(
(2) please post back after the insurance is settled. since we weren't there, is there anything you can add in respect to avoiding this accident? if the guy pulled out blind with no blinker right from the side of the road, there's not much anyone can do. but if you were wearing dark colors, and he put a blinker on, and you were speeding...etc... just so we can learn from this one.
(3) the helmet is most likely compromised. i wouldn't risk it.
(4) good luck with the surgery - i know life sucks right now but you definately got out lucky.

oh ya, def really painful at the moment. as for avoiding the accident... driver did not put a blinker on. i was doin the spped limit and already off the gas to stop at the light 100ft ahead. my A* jacket is black but my helmet n gloves are mostly white. my headlight was on, but its a projector lens w/ a sharp cut-off so he might not have seen it... esp since he was slightly uphill from me.

in hindsight, if i had turned slightly right instead of slightly left, i might have missed him... but there was def more room on the left side of the road which is y i went that way. if i hadnt turned, i prob would have hit his door, possibly injuring him also. as for the helmet, its an Arai m ive got 4 weeks to mail it to em for testing, but im almost positive its 100%, unlike my arm, hehe. i didnt hit my head on his windshield or anything n never touched the ground, so ya.

surgery went ok, just dont have all the feeling back in my thumb yet. kinda feels like its not getting enough circulation, but it does still have a pulse so ill wait it out. thanks for all you support everyone.

[Don Tuite]

Nasty break (not meaning any pun). I'm sorry to hear about it.

From the rest of you, any comments about the "turning right" option? I read some years ago that the idea is to turn towards where the other vehicle has already been, instead of where it's headed, but it seems more intuitive to head in the same direction and hope for a graze.

Don

[jboat]

Glad you're here to type this. I had a similar break years ago (20), but I guess I got lucky and broke both bones. Having 2 big doctors hold your arm down and snap it back into place is quite an interesting and very painful experience...

I had another incident similar to yours as well. I had an AT&T Van pull out from the shoulder to make a U-turn right in front of me one time!!! I almost t-boned that sucker, but he saw me at the very last second and stopped, blocking the middle of the road and I was able to avoid him by going wide left. That ranks as one of the (many) scariest close calls over the years...

I guess one thing to be learned from this is always be cautious when approching vehicles which are parked on the side of the road. You never know what they are planning to do or if they see you coming...

[ryan_m]

So did you break your arm when you hit his windshield or in the crash?

[clutchslip]

You want to talk some more about the accident? I don't know if anything could be done. Sometimes there just isn't enough time/room to avoid a collision.

One question - How come the x-ray says 2/5/07 on it?

[snowface]

^^^ not sure if this was directed at me, but i'll bite anyway.

i just wanted to know all the details of the crash to help avoid shit like this in the future. the original post had lots of details of the aftermath, and little of the actual crash.

you may look at this crash as being "100% the driver's fault", but i disagree. there is always something you can do to help yourself in these situations:
(1) i believe the rider could have worn brighter colors, with a better front headlight to make himself more visible (the whole reason the driver "jumped out" is cause the driver thought the road was clear).
(2) even if the driver did jump out leaving little reaction time, the rider should have moved to the right, not the left (this is a reaction you have to practice since your gut will probably tell you to go left).
(3) covering the brake may have provided just enough additional brake time to keep the rider from hitting the car even if the rider did go left on instinct.

if you think this accident was out of his hands, then it will be out of your hands too when it happens to you. do you look left and right when the light turns green, or do you simply just GO? when a red-light runner hits you, it's going to be his fault, but you could have prevented it by double checking before you gas it.

take control of your actions, and control of your bike - that's what this forum is designed to help us all do.

[stangmx13]

well iono y the x-ray says 2/5/07 on it. they prob just didnt set the date properly on the flouroscope. those arent the official x-rays, just somethin the ortho guys printed up for me while they were trying to re-set the bone.

as jboat had said, he encountered a similar situation, but the driver stopped, which would have left me tons of room to pass. i guess thats wat i was hoping for... especially since there was a string of cars parked on the right side of the road. i feel i made the best decision w/ goin left. would have been worse to avoid or bounce off the suv, only to hit a row of parked cars.

there have been plenty of discussions about covering the brake (MSF says no etc etc) so we dont need to get into that. however i did find a 6ft long rubber skid mark, and a 3ft one... meaning i def was on those brakes as hard as possible to lock even the front. n dont gimme crap about skidding being the worst way to stop, i know... but it obviously wouldnt have mattered.

[bpw]

I had to go to the right behind a car pulling in front of me once but seems pretty case by case. Never knew my old dodge omni could corner like that though. Was in a car and the driver still did the look righ at me and pull out thing. I have also swerved left to avoid someone. definetly depends on the situation.

Sometimes there really is nothing you can do. No matter how bright your clothes or how fast your reaction time there is no agueing with the laws of physics. We do what we can to minimize the chances of something happening but motorcycles will never be totally safe.

No matter how little trust you put in other drivers we all are required to put some faith in them having some level of skill and not wanting to try to kill us. What could you really do if an oncoming car swerved hard into your lane at speed?...nothing. We just have to hope people arent completly suicidal out there and hope for luck on the few that are.

Ben

[masameet]

Years ago while riding the Cinderella Century in reverse (it's a bicycle race of sorts for females), that scenario happened to me. Separated from the other Sierra Club participants, I found myself cycling down a tree-shaded rural road when a car coming towards me in the opposite lane all of a sudden charged into my lane and directly at me. So I did the only thing I could. I rode into his lane and he missed hitting me.

Maybe he meant to miss me. And maybe I have quick reflexes. Anyway he succeeded in scaring the hell out of me. So badly that I could barely speak intelligibly after knocking on somebody's front door to ask if he'd call the local LEO for me. (The smug homeowner refused my request and I was crying.) A few hours later I came across a Dublin LEO in a parking lot. He said unless I could identify the driver (his windshield was tinted dark) and his license plate (I wasn't staring at that when I suddenly realized the car was gunning for me), I was SOL in trying to file an attempted murder complaint. But I probably should have made a complaint with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, just so they'd be alerted to some asshole playing chicken with bicyclists.

[spddrcr]

ive always been lucky in that ive been unconcious for my ambulance rides:teeth
but ill tell you the one compound fracture i did have was when i was 12 and they couldnt get ahold of my parents so they called my grandparents to come and get me, so i had the ride from hell going from concord to oakknoll navel hospital in oakland. we get there and then some bone headed navy dock decides to set my arm without drugs, when the bone slip off each other 4 times its then time for surgery, well my parents are nowhere to be found (this was due to them being in a nasty divorce and they were with significant others at the time, and back then there were no cell phones) finally after being at the hospital for about 8 hours my mom shows up and gives them permission to administer pain killers and do the surgery. i still have to this day a funny bend in one of the bones in my wrist. although a tramatic experiance i can actually say ive had worse pain in my life, actually last week getting a steroid injection into the joint in my ankle hurt more than i remember that break hurting. anyways heal up and get back on a bike and good luck with the insurance claim. in the future be careful out there its the car you dont see that ends up maiming/killing you.:wow