It would be interesting if responders would state their age and aslo if they have ever dumped their bike at speed.
OK...here's a post from another thread that should lay it all out. I'm 57 this coming June.
crash and burn...tales of woe
at 18 I got a call from a friend to fix his flat rear tire on his 500 Triumph and save his ass...after the fix I was on my way home when I noticed a bungie dangling from my rear rack on the left...the cost of being stupidly hasty. I was doing some acrobatics at 35mph before it got caught in the spokes and...well...let's just say mis-negotiated a left hander curve. when I looked forward to juggle 2 things at once, I saw a big yellow curve arrow sign and one of those old post and cable guard rails starting to the left of it...had just enough time to duck...so I wasn't in control of anything, and this is where the angels on the shoulder stories come from. I had my head tucked down and probably had my eyes closed...the bike cleared the guard rail and turned left to follow the cleared spot on the bad side of the cables thankfully because straight ahead and to the R was trees...big unforgiving ones...the bike steered itself along the hillside long enough to find a right of way cleared spot before dropping over a 30' embankment/cliff...I did an endo, flipping me over the bars and landing square on my back at the bottom of it...knocked me out long enough for the guys at a gas station across the hollow to jump in their tow truck and come see if I was still alive...at 18 you're bullet proof, so I stood up and shook it off...the bike was still 1/2 way up the embankment with a bent fork and no headlight...they dragged it up with the truck winch at my request before the fuzz showed up, and took it to their gas station where I got enough bend out of the handlebars to ride it home and start disassembly...when the adrenline wore off (fairly soon after), I discovered my upper back between the shoulder blades was waaay out of place and had to quit... I went and laid down for 3 days...it was out like that for 7 years before a chiropractor fixed it...which meant for decades after, it would find several positions and none of them right.
OK...no biggie.
then for my 50th birthday (June), I rewarded myself with a brand new 2002 BMW RT...I'd been riding since I was 10 or so and thought I deserved a treat. That Sept 10 was a 70 degree night and I was out in light jogging pants, a long sleeve T shirt material, tennis shoes, and a 1/2 helmet with no padding...comfortable as all get out...about 20 minutes after dark...9:20-ish, back country road, 35mph behaving myself... my brain cognized a deer face profile in the L periferal extreme of the headlight and my reactions stomped those BMW space age power assist servo ABS brakes before the thought was even formed...the result of many many years of dirt bike reflexes, so I was extremely confident in my abilities and spent decades in that zone of invincibility.
I felt the BMF brakes come on strong as time went into slow motion...I have just a couple of freeze frames of deer forward motion as my headlight hit the deer's neck right behind it's cheek, then everything went disoriented like I was a shaken martini being prepared for Mr. Bond....the deer dropped and the full fairing lower bounced off the body like a tennis racket and I was down on the L. I felt my body do an unholy CCW wrench as the L shoulder contacted the road, the helmet hit , visor popped off, head spun, and just as my face was about to be rasped off, the momentum ended and I bumped my nose on the yellow line in the middle of the road...no blood, not a scratch on me...however, instinct was to stand up...when I got there, the entire universe told me I better sit back down cause we're not in Kansas anymore Toto...the CCW wrench was rude.
why that didn't snap my neck was just a fluke...it well could have...when those things transpire, you are merely a witness to events...you have no command of the situation.
a local took possession of the bike, they scraped me off the road, and hit every bump they could find while I was strapped down to that board begging the ambulance attendants to unstrap me so I could find some position more comfortable than charlie horse cramping ...the hospital was worthless...I told them it was my lower back, they're looking at the rainbow mural that was evolving on my side and insisted my spleen was ruptured...a couple days of that and I broke out of there...to start analyzing what happened and what I could have done differently...I went back to the scene of the crime to reclaim my bike with a trailer with a tape measure...the rear tire was an arc and I saw the L head impact point...about 25 feet of sideways skid to impact at 35 mph is 1/3 second.
This one crippled me. 6 years later, I'm still suffering from that one, although there is a bright spot...after all the experts and specialists milking my insurance with 1/2 dozen sets of X-rays at hospital waiting rooms and long walks up and down those endless hallways on a cane, and professing expertise with no positive results as well as 2 chiropractors that were afraid to touch me,
Goldwing Dave broke down at the foot of my driveway with his obese new trailer lit like a christmas tree hooked to that Goldwing pig...I ran some tests to find his alternator was not charging, then abused myself in good deeds moving stuff around, throwing a quick charge on it to get him home, and dragging that rediculous trailer to his house with the Jeep, I came home to collapse in tears on the floor for the next 3 days cause I ran out of pain pills and the pig headed doctors were of the opinion I was an opportunist just wanting their signatures on prescription drugs for recreational purposes...bastards...no relief, no help, no hope...mz. modre was giving me a rub, I was trying to relax the muscles to back off of pinching the big nerve connected to the base of the brain, when the lower back moved sounding like two cement blocks slamming together...I don't mean normal snap, crackle pops...I mean big heavy cement blocks banging together, and the hatchett was out of my back...a genuine Jesus miracle.
I went to a new (good) chiropractor to do some follow up musculature work, he got the best X-Ray yet that showed 5-6 cracked vertibrea, a cracked pelvis, and a lobe wing broke off one vertabrae and turned at a 45 degree angle sideways that the medical professionals couldn't see because their pictures were crap and they were'nt committed to finding what I had been complaining about for 6 years...I fired the bunch.
and now I finally have some relief, tho 6 years of healing wrong lingers...it's still better than it was...my mz. modre put a friggin' miracle whammy on me.
the moral of the story is either
1. be careful...if it can happen to me of all people, it can get you too
or else
2. stay away from 35 mph, because both mishaps happened at that speed.
the first one was 18yo stupidity on my part
the deer at 50 yo was quite another story...nothing could have prevented that ...loud pipes maybe to make the deer hesitate, but in the end deer are in rut in sept. and that's always been the case, so I can't fault the deer for being an animal...these days I take much more into consideration and ride accordingly...I never ever ever want to feel that kind of pain and inconvenience a crippling injury brings with it. I don't rely on gear, I rely on maturity and experience gained over a 45+ year riding career. it ALL has to do with taking responsibility if you throw a leg over a motorcycle.
gear is neither good nor bad...people who choose not to are neither good nor bad...it just has to do with seeing the elephant.