i was thinking the other day about the two times ive come close on a bike,when only fortune saved me from the grave...

first one...
i was going along an "a" road,doing about 70mph in the depth of winter the road went slightly uphill.
there was two cars coming towards me over the brow of a hill, at first it looked like one was behind the other on a slight bend. right at the last moment i realised that the second car was in fact alongside the first car overtaking. i swerved over to my left and my throttle hand hit the wing mirror of the car,i wobbled to a halt and fell off. the pain was immense.
the car didn't bother stopping.
i was ok but my little finger swelled up like a balloon for a few days.

the other near miss was a couple of years later...
i was coming home from work,it was mid winter and dark
i indicated right and started to make my turn, there was chevrons on the road and a proper right turn lane,as i made my turn my whole bike lit up in someone's headlight beam. i hit the brakes and a car shot past me on my right side at at least 100mph,maybe more, a bl**dy car was overtaking me in the turn right lane!
it missed me by inches.
it just goes to show you that even if you do everything right it can all go wrong.
hs anyone else got any near miss stories?

On a bend with liquid mud/farm slurry; already going slow (30 in NSL) cos the road was so muddy. Got to a bend and the back end started sliding out, so no acceleration or braking, just going with the slide until it regained grip but the oncoming volvo estate had run it wide with the mud and just missed me (close enough to feel the change in air/wind pressure). It was one of those slowmo heart stopping moments and I wanted to stop but also wanted to complete the test. I asked the examiner (blue riband) for his thoughts and it was 'what else could you have done?'
It was the second time powersliding and rear wheel steer had helped me out on the road (first time was diesel on an empty road, thankfully).
I'm sure I had more in my teens but my mind has chosen to blot them out

My first slow mo, life before my eyes moment was last year, before i lived in clacton and before i lived with eb I was visiting my friend in clacton, and on the main road that goes past bently, there is a petrol station, out of which a car pulls out, not looking seeing me ( i was about 20 feet away, he laughs and goes in the opposite direction. i swerved stayed on, and didnt stop up the road because I know I would have found it difficult to get back on.

I can't remember any more, but if I do I'll be back

Last week I was on the snake pass, and turned a bend into a huge pile of grit all over the road that very very nearly had me off, I was doing about 50/60 so don't know how sharp I would have been afterwards!

It p*ssed me off cause once the really stoney bit of road started there was a lot of black and white '10 mph max spedd' signs with pics of grit and all sorts, but there was no warning prior to it so I had no idea I was there. You'd think a major biking road would be looked after a bit better. Maybe not


I often get w*nkers in hatchbacks pulling out on me and nearly killing me too. Find that riding next to them and kicking a dint in the side of their car vents the frustration!

a pile of git you say?

Yeah! loads of gits, all over the road!!

Oh feck, my palms have gone all clammy just thinking about my near misses....

When I was having all the bother with my SV I had a few lucky escapes. Once I was making a turn across a dual carriageway onto a smaller road. I had loads of time to make the turn before the next wave of traffic (cars, double decker bus, lorry) arrived........ assuming the damn thing didn't splutter and die across the two lanes.... I don't know where I got the strength to shove the bloody thing in the time I had. New trousers for Bluewolf please.

On the way back from Donington last year I was making a turn off a busy roundabout and onto the motorway. A tipper decided I must have forgotten to turn my indicator off and didn't REALLY want to turn left off the roundabout.... and pulled out in front of me as I was making my exit turn. The truck actually clipped my front wheel on his way past, giving me such a fright that I stalled the bike in the middle of the chaos. If I'd been a second later I'd have been right under his wheels. Still makes me mad as hell when I think about that one.

The most recent one would be the bloke at traffic lights on the bisecting road to mine, who braked for the red light and, just as our lights turned to green, decided no-one would mind if he changed his mind, jumped the red and carried on his way. I was halfway through the junction when I heard him wheelspin to try and beat the traffic, missing my back end by a layer of paint. At the next set of lights I saw the woman beside me shaking her head in disbelief. Thinking I had an ally in her I shrugged and said "hey, what can you do?" to which she replied "you're an idiot, he could have killed you, what were you thinking?" .....and this would be MY fault how exactly......?

And a million others!!

coming back from Whitby many years ago on my KH250 we where traveling down the orrible bit of dual carriageway just before guisborough (loads of right hand turn offs)
belting down the fast lane a Chrysler alpine cuts into the fast lane so i had to brake and probably was a bit closer to him than i wanted to be, so now we are both doing 70-ish past a landrover towing a caravan, next thing i know the landrover pulls to the right, the alpine locks up his brakes and starts spinning in front of me
I'm braking like feck, the alpine is going sideways and the landrover just manages to get over to the left a bit, the Alpine stopped and I'm still moving and just to say got through a gap between the front of the car and the landrover
i pulled up in the layby a few yards away and i don't think I've been so scared in my life, my mate who was on the back of the bike thought it was feckin amazing!
what was amazing no one got hurt and no damage to either the car or landrover
over the years i've fell off and been hit but it happens so fast you don't get time to sh!t bricks but that one seemed to last for ever and at the time made me think if it was such a good idea riding bikes... 26 yrs on I'm still here!
last year on the FZR600 coming towards Blackwell roundabout, the brakes felt a bit weird.. i thought "thats weird, they feel a bit spongy!", i LOVE this round about! its in the NSL and a fantastic fast uphill exit anyway theres a car goin up the hill so i was probably 10mph slower than i normally go, flicks it into the exit and the bike massively over steers, so i had to sit it up quick and ended up almost on the wrong side of the road
turned out the front wheel bearing collapsed, hence the iffy brakes and the right, left from coming of the roundabout was slightly exaggerated by the 1/4 movement of the wheel! I'd check the bearings days before and it seemed ok, and up until the braking for the roundabout junction it seemed ok

Aside from the highside; the almost, almost lowside; James Donachie hitting me in his dad's Escort whilst trying to change tapes (my first insurance claim, which is probably why I remember his name), and the going into corners so hard I had both wheels sliding (I've calmed down a lot, and that was a bad night...), here's my crazy close shave...

I was heading West on the Western Approach Road in the centre of Edinburgh. It's a fairly open road, 40mph limit. Fairly grey day at the start of December. If you know the road, you'll know the bit that goes along the back of the old brewery, and then turns right under the bridge, and then left along the embankment. I was going into the left-hand bend at around 30mph when the bike started to slide. I came off the throttle and tried to turn in more, and it slid more. Turned in a little more, and it still slid. Didn't leave me with many options.

I looked across the road, saw a gap, flipped the bike up, ducked through the gap between the cars, tried to straighten up at the other side, slid again, and whacked my finger off the side of the stone bridge there as I came to a halt...

Needless to say, that surprised the chap I cut across the front of. And the folks in the car behind who were plain-clothes police... Still, at least they were on the scene fast to direct traffic! There were plenty of cars sliding on that bend too, and the police had seen that I wasn't speeding.

Finger swelled up like a sausage for the next few days - I swear I broke it because it was bloody sore to type for a few weeks.

Already covered in detail on another thread, but I was pulled out on while doing CBT.

Riding in a column of three, a black BMW, guy obviously kicking out of work during the rush hour, pulled out on us. He narrowly missed my instructor's back wheel and my own front wheel.

My instructor's words over the headset were "Jesus Christ!!!! ...... You okay back there, Woody? Good emergency stop, Fella!!".

Plenty of moron's pulling out on me but nothig memorable cos it's such an everyday occurance round here.

But the worst ones are always on mini-roundabouts!