Originally Posted by
jasonu
I notice you dont mention the person that clipped you. What happened to them? Did they come and say sorry or anything else? Do they even know how serious and long term your injuries are? Or do you prefer to forget about them and move on.
He didn't clip me. He saw me, and slammed on his brakes, leaving me nowhere to go. To the left, a culvert. To the right, traffic.
I slammed straight into the side of the ute, dead square on the passenger right hand side. Flew into the air, cartwheeled a couple of times, and landed on my head.
Apparently.
I don't remember a damn thing about that, just the seconds leading to the crash, where I was shouting at myself to brake, and remembering the emergency braking I'd done on the RiderForever course a few weeks previously. Shameless plug - do a RFE folks!
As for the other party, we had a restorative conference. He's a nice guy. Local Scout leader. Father of two. It was his 11 year old's birthday. Normally at that time of night he takes his 13 year old to footy practice, and the 11 year old goes with him to Scouts. That night, his parents had stopped by to celebrate the 11 year old's birthday. So he'd left the 11 year old to have a bit more time with his grandparents, and took the 13 year old to footy.
He admitted to me that he was distracted due to the change of circumstances and the rush to get one kid to footy so he could get back for the other one. There was vegetation growing obscuring the view of the road I was coming from. The sun was low in the sky, causing sight issues too.
He thought the way was clear. Saw me, instinctively slammed on his brakes.
If he'd gapped it it would have just been a close call.
But here's the thing. Normally, the 11 year old sits in the passenger seat just behind his dad. Had he have been sitting there that night, he would have been killed in the accident.
He was charged with careless driving causing injury. It was a fairly big deal. He drives for a living, and a conviction would have resulted in him losing his job.
He made attempts at reparation - paid for a bunch of DIY work at home that I wasn't able to finish to be done as I was too injured, and stocked up my shed with firewood.
He was found not guilty due to the mitigating circumstances - the vegetation overgrowth, the sunstrike... I was a bit pissed, but with the benefit of time I've grown to accept that this was probably the right thing to happen.
I mean him no ill. It was simply a sequence of events that led up to a nasty day. But it could have been a whole lot worse. For both of us. We're all moving on.
And I to my motorcycle parked like the soul of the junkyard. Restored, a bicycle fleshed with power, and tore off. Up Highway 106 continually drunk on the wind in my mouth. Wringing the handlebar for speed, wild to be wreckage forever.
- James Dickey, Cherrylog Road.
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