Its the weekend. Friday, to be precise. Well not quite the weekend, but its such a great day, the weathers good, and you are just itching to get in the saddle and ride your Harley (or Honda, or Kwak, whatever) You decide to take a trip out to see and old friend, you haven’t seen him for a while, it should be a blast. A phone call is made, the arrangements are set, so you grab a few things and sling them in your saddle bag and set off.

You decide to take a route you haven’t ridden before, a. rural two-lane, 55 mph highway and 35 mph in the towns. Why not, there’s no rush and you just enjoy riding.

Heading out of suburbia cruising at 60 mph in open country with bright, sunny weather, you look to the left and see a late model pickup approaching the highway on a side road coming into the main route you are on, with a stop sign. The driver is slowing down approaching the stop sign so, as it is clearly open country, with no obstructions to the pick up drivers view, you think, “He can see me, I’ll keep on going.” Big mistake. He does a rolling stop to save him the trouble of the stop sign. After all he hasn’t seen anyone around least of all a dude on a motorcycle, why should he stop?

He keeps going.

You are already going, its your right of way.

You know what is about to happen. No time to stop, limited escape routes with ditches on the roadside, so your options are very limited.

There’s no time to think, so you instinctively rev the throttle up and try to go wide at the intersection.

As you start to get past, you know its not going to be enough. He clips you mid bike, right where your left leg is resting on the peg. Just before he hits you, he sees you and turns his wheel to the left, making it more of a glancing blow.

Your left leg is certain to be crushed, except for the crash bars you fitted a month ago, which luckily take the main force of the blow from the pick up.

What happens next is a little like a blurry slow motion. You feel a contact in your leg area, at the same time you lose control of the bike. The next thing you register is the motorcycle sliding along the floor with you holding on to one bar, then you let go and roll what seems like twenty times but in in fact only four times before you come to rest in the ditch.

Your motorcycle helmet and jacket do their job. The gloves you are wearing will be trashed, but they have saved your hands from serious damage. And your boots and trousers save your lower body from anything more serious than bad bruising to your lower left leg and a badly sprained ankle.

When you look back on the crash, after cursing the incompetence of the driver and your “bad luck”, you will come to realise that you broke the cardinal rule of safe motorcycle riding. That rule is to never, ever assume anything when on the road. Because of the angle of the side road, your were actually in the blind spot behind the door pillar so the driver couldn’t see you. You didn’t anticipate there could be a issue, you didn’t slow down nor hit your horn to warn him.

Lesson learned. Never assume anything. You will never put yourself in that situation ever again.

But hey, that could never happen to you, right?