4 decent offs in nearly twenty odd years of road riding, all can be attributed to my own rider error..
1. KDX200, day time ran wide on a bend and lowsided into a box kerb, pride the main casualty but a few bruises to show
2. ZX-10 (the original one), night time fresh road works that had a half arsed tidy up performed by the council "workers", lowsided on the loose stuff throwing my pillion and I off and across the road, thankfully no oncoming traffic and the bike was rideable
3. ZX-10 wet weather, day time, I was followng too close and was unaware of the car in front of the car in front of me which was sitting in the middle of the road, the car in front of me braked heavily and to this day I still swear he had no brake lights because I had no time to react before realising the car in front of me was at a standstill. locked the rear up, rear end came around and I highsided over bike into a tree while bike struck the box kerb and cartwheeled into same tree. the worst aspect of this was I was briefly unconscious and when I came to someone was trying to remove my helmet. bike was pretty buggered but I felt ok until I woke up after a sleep then I felt pain everywhere.. was only 100m from home so wheeled her home and shipped her off to bike shop for expensive repairs.
4. Bandit 400, night time, speeding up Ngaio Gorge and failed to brake early enough for a right hander, went straight over kerb and into bushes much to the amusement of the drivers I had just passed. no damage to bike aside from busted clutch lever and bent gear selector.
My accidents can be attributed to rider inattention and the two on my trusty ZX-10, which I did over 50,000 Km on were also a result of being impaired by a natural substance grown extensively here in NZ.. the first on the KDX can be attributed to inexperience and the fourth one to sheer stupidity. but they were all my fault. as an aside all of my crashes except the one on the Bandit occurred prior to undertaking any formal training and I now attend as many training courses as I can because I feel they do improve my skills and keep me aware of what to do when things come up.
I am a far more attentive rider since the second crash on my ZX-10 and I am also a rider who believes in trusting no one not car drivers, bike riders, pedestrians or truckies.
I have also lost several mates to bike crashes one of them hit a cow at an estimated 200Kph and killed the cow, totally destroyed his ZX-7R and left very little of himself whilst another, one of my closest friends, was killed when some drunk walked out in front of him and stopped in the middle of the road to make him swerve, with no distance to react he was unable to swerve, struck the drunk and was thrown into a pole and died instantly while the pedestrian is a paraplegic. his GSX-R750WT was virtually unmarked aside from minor gravel rash..
"oh I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?"
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