I went for a ride from Fife up to Braemar taking in the infamous A93 - a superb road on which you need to focus because you can't corner when both your tyres are off the ground. The road gets interesting after Blairgowrie. It's worth a visit if you're in the area. Anyway, I was on my way back and going through Blairgowrie when the traffic stopped. I was sitting there in 1st gear with the clutch in wondering what the hold up was when the Argos lorry about 8 feet in front of me started to reverse. I thought, "he'll not back up 8 feet, blind", but he thought different. He backed his lorry into my bike and I had to leap off of it to avoid getting crushed. There's a square bar on the back of the lorry that caught the front tyre, I was still on the bike at this point, and it was like the bike got sucked under the lorry. I jumped off and started thumping on the lorry and it stopped. The mutley was sort of suspended at a 45 degree but the lorry moved forward and the bike hit the deck. The whole incident took about just a couple of seconds but to me it felt longer. If you've seen the steam roller scene in The Naked Gun then I was the screaming guy. There was a car right behind me who's driver saw the whole thing but who decided to piss off. To him I say, "Gee, thanks, for your support. I hope you suffer the same fate you small minded prick." Luckily, there was a girl in the adjacent butcher shop that saw the whole thing an has agreed to act as witness. The lorry driver looked more shaken up than I was. Get this. There were two of them in the cab and none of them got out to make sure it was safe to reverse. Anyway, because I was stationary my insurance company are classing this as "a blameless accident", from my standpoint at least, with all fault attributed to the lorry driver. At least that sounds hopeful. The bike's been recovered and is in my garage. The damage is mostly bits of plastic but the Ohlins have been scraped and that's got to be expensive. Worryingly the gear lever is bent and gear selection has stopped working. The neutral light still works in the power on check but it is not on after the check, the gear position indicator says it's in 5th, but the bike is not in gear. I'm totally pissed off about about the whole thing and I really hope it's not a write off because that's just going to make it expensive, maybe too expensive, to get another mutley.
Bumma! You shouldn't be left out of pocket. If you are not happy with any settlement offered, take legal advice.
Ohlins are £1800 a side I was told. Harris replaced my lowers, think they do all ohlins rebuilds in the UK
Holly Sh1t. Glad you were ok... Why wait for the repair...? For sale....see my bike advert. 2010 Multistrada Mts1200s /abs/cjs Ohlins Suspension £6999 | Ducati Forum
Lucky you were able to jump off and, at the end of the day, the bike will fix. Hopefully you'll be back on the road soon.
You can't put a price on the biking that you will miss before things are put right, but I agree with an earlier comment, you can take this further in the court if you receive an unreasonable settlement from the insurance. I can say quite confidently, that the courts will find that the driver did not take all reasonable steps, to avoid any sort of impact, especially as he had a co driver to assist, your witness in the shop will verify this to be fact. A "slam dunk" for you. Hope you are back on the road soon.
You did the right thing of leaving a cars width for this very reason, idiots reversing without checking its clear. Now install a fog-horn on you're next bike
Hi AirCon, Thanks for selflessly offering to sell me your bike at this troubled time. I'm touched. A true Samaritan.
My mate had his RD80 reversed over by a coach in exactly the same scenario back in the day. He got a full payout.
Part of me knows that it could have been much worse. I mean I'm completely unscathed. But another part of me goes @&^%$ing what the %£*&^% goddam @$£hole &^%@£ing trucker should get a public, bare bum, spanking at the very least. I know I should not be out of pocket on this one but whenever I had dealings with insurance companies in the past, I ended up feeling rodgered. But, hey - that was a long time ago. I'm sure they are no longer run by Dick Turpin and friends.
