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Tuesday 9 October 2018

An accident

I cycled down to Amersham Hospital to have my routine blood test. On the way back, there's a few roundabouts. At one of them, I checked on my right, nothing coming, so I got onto the roundabout to go straight ahead.

A woman on the road to my left, didn't see me, and drove straight in front of me. And then I'm guessing she did see me, because she abruptly stopped. Right in front of me.

I have good brakes on the bike, and I applied them as hard as I could, and managed to stop before I would have crashed into the side of her car. But when you brake that hard, it's easy to lose balance, and that's what happened to me. I didn't hit her car, but I toppled off onto the tarmac.

I fell onto my right side, and lay there, in quite a lot of pain, and hoping that no-one would drive over me. The car drove away, but stopped a few yards further on and the woman came back. If she hadn't, she ould have been in serious trouble, because there were several witnesses, and someone took her number.

Meanwhile, another woman, who had first aid experience, checked me for broken bones, then helped me to the middle of the roundabout. Someone else called an ambulance, which arrived a few minutes later.

The crew checked me out, and decided that I wasn't so seriously hurt as to need hospital, so they took me, and the bike, home.

But by golly it hurts. The act of standing up hurts, sitting down hurts, moving my arms hurts, moving my legs hurts. I can barely manage a slow shuffle to get around. I'm on paracetamol.

Last time I fell off my bike it was on a bridleway, and it was entirely my fault.  Thus time it wasn't my fault, and the fall was onto hard tarmac. Last time it took months before I was fully recovered.

I gave her a piece of my mind, and she was very apologetic, it's never happened before. I explained to her about SMIDSY "Sorry mate I didn't see you". Hopefully she'll be more careful in future.

If you can't positively check that there's nothing coming towards you, then assume that there's a bike doing 10 to 15 mph, and that if you hit it, you'll kill or seriously injure the rider.


3 comments:

  1. Ah, so that's the incident. I hope Lady Solly is looking after you & best wishes for a speedy recovery.

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  2. An old fart like you shouldn't be on the roads

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  3. How's the recovery going Alan?

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