About 3 weeks ago I totaled a motorcycle. At low speeds, thank goodness, my husband locked up his brakes, so without time to respond I side swiped him, hit a telephone pole, then went down. Naturally it totaled the bike and I luckily escaped with only severly sprained knuckles and bruises. I just bought another bike today, and I‘m not scared of the bike itself per se, I‘m just really nervous. My husband says it‘s normal; that he was nervous after his first accident, how does everyone else feel?
At 58 years of age, 15 years of riding and 45,000 miles without one incident, I was in my first motorcycle accident 2 weeks ago and spent a week in the hospital with a chest tube recovering from several broken ribs, a collapsed lung and numerous abrasions. My wife and I were fully geared and a vehicle, making an illegal left turn darted out in front of us and we went down hard after hitting the brakes.I took the brunt of the impact and thank the Lord, my wife didn t require hospitalization. I don t know if we ll ride again, the pain has been and still is so intense and drivers (cage) are increasingly distracted (cell phones primarily). If I do, it may just be around my neighborhood at 20 mph where I can see every driveway and every intersection long before I get there. I never want to experience anything like this again! It is incredibly painful!
LOL! Funny. You're Skittles and you're skittish! 8^) First of all, I'm glad you weren't hurt worse. It doesn't take much to total a motorcycle, but it takes even less to total YOU. You must have done something right. A woman I know who rides with a Harley club had a spill and broke every bone along one side of her body. She was laid up for months, and her Harley club guys came over and cooked and cleaned for her! The bike hardly had a scratch on it! So you did it better than her! In a way an accident like this is good, because it shows you what can happen, and it will make you more careful. Plus hopefully you will learn from your mistake--stay 2 seconds back from the vehicle in front of you. I had one serious M/C accident in my life, in college. I broke a couple of teeth and a small bone in my foot. I let my parents talk me out of riding. But 7 or 8 years later I just had to get a bike. I started with a little 175 and within a couple of years I had a big BMW twin. That was maybe 30 years ago and I haven't had a serious accident since! The accident was caused by a lady who didn't see me and made a left-turn across my path. For months afterward I had dreams where I'd be moving down a road and suddenly there would be something in front of me, maybe a big truck, maybe a brick building, and I'd wake with a start. But it made me 'paranoid' about drivers in cars. It made me realize it's MY job to stay out of THEIR way. As we say, there are rights worth dying for but the right of way isn't one of them. 8^) Anyway, start out slow and careful, and your confidence will come back. We all know motorcycling is inherently dangerous, and we accept that danger whenever we throw our leg over a bike. And we do what we can to minimize that danger by developing safe habits. I think women are safer than men anyway.
It's perfectly normal and sensible to be nervous in your situation - riding a bike is a very dangerous thing to do, and your brain is telling you that you've been hurt once before, so you should be careful or refrain from doing this again. If you are keen to ride again, then I think the old addage of if you fall off your bike, get straight back on and ride it again really applies. I don't want to try to influence you either way, but the longer you leave it, you are telling these fears that you have kept safe by not riding, so they must be right, thus making it harder to get back to it. Do you feel obliged to ride for your husband's sake? If you are contemplating riding again for any other reason than your own desire to ride, it is not the right choice. Again, it's not for me to say what you should do, but I wish you well!
