How long before your first off?

[skahigh]

Sort of related to the 'riding without gear' thread and the outcomes of crashes got me thinking, how have other ph'ers faired since beginning their biking career.

How long were you riding before your first crash? How bad was it? Have you had many since? Have you never crashed?

I'm coming up to four years and probably around 20k miles at age 34 and thankfully not had any sort of accident yet, not even dropped the bike in the garage, long may it continue!

[skahigh]

2ndclasscitizen said:

Couple of weeks for the first fk up. Turning right into a carpark, misjudged a gap in the traffic and grabbed the front brake with a bit of lean on my GPX250 and down she went. Car pulled up fine but I must have dropped out of sight because the poor woman in passenger seat freaked out because she thought they'd run me over. No injuries other than to my pride. Bike got nicked a couple of days later.

First proper crash was about 9 months later on my Bandit 250V . Late May (Autumn here in Oz), heading west about 4pm. Came round a left which was followed by a right straight away. Copped the full sunset straight to the retinas. Instinctively shut my eyes and yanked on the front brake. Closed eyes meant I didn't see the corner strewn was in gravel. Straight on to the deck and slid in to a ditch. Had the adrenaline going and dragged the bike out of the ditch by the bars on its side with one arm which aggravated the fked rotator cuff I'd been nursing. Worst part about that one was I was heading from watching a few mates at a trackday, which was supposed to be my first trackday but I canned it because I was concerned about my shoulder strength and didn't want to crash because of it or re-injure it. Greeeeeeat. Bike was written off by insurance. Nothing was particularly damaged, but basically everything up one side managed to get scraped or dinged in someway, including the paint on the frame.

This reminds me I did actually fall off on my first CBT doing something similar. Turning left into a side road about 100 yards from the riding school at the end of the day, a van was halfway across the road I was turning in to so, I suddenly wasn't going to make the turn without a collision. I panicked, grabbed the front brake and went down.

It didn't hurt at all but, I failed the CBT because of it (and consequently put off getting my license for a further 6 years) and had to pay £175 to fix the bike.

I suppose I don't count that because I hadn't really started yet.

[skahigh]

Pothole said:

Before or after starting to ride legally?

Whatever you want to tell us about.

The stories are interesting.

What's interesting to me is that hardly anyone has said 'I've never crashed' so it really does seem to be a case of when not if, even if that happens to be a car driving in to you while you're stationary.