I was involved in a little RTA last night and am proud to say that I have no serious injuries after being knocked off of my bike by a speeding VW Santana! This is the fifth time that I’ve come off of my bike (unwillingly), the second time that I’ve come into contact with a car but the first that a car has hit me.

It was around 20:30 last night (Tuesday 29th March) and I was riding my 150cc cruiser back home from a dinner that I had with some friends. My wife had decided not to join me for dinner because she was tired and I’m bloody grateful that she made that decision after what happened:
I was stationary at a T-junction getting ready to turn left as soon as the green light switched from ‘Straight ahead’ to ‘Turn left’. My apartment is very close by so I have used this junction about 100 times before. I would usually use the far left hand lane (car lane) to turn left here but in this case the car lane was pretty packed and the bike lane was completely empty so I used the bike lane.

The light changed and I immediately pulled away. I’d made a few meters across the junction when I heard the screeching of tires followed by the illumination of my left hand side by this car’s headlights and then, finally, the collision. I felt the impact of the car and suddenly felt as though I was flying through the air sideways ( together with the bike) for a second or two before I hit the ground and scraped to a halt on the road.
*If anybody knows how I can get hold of some traffic camera footage then please tell me because I’d love to what it looked like.*
I’ve made a little diagram using Microsoft Paint[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/ADMINI%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.jpg[/IMG]. The green line is me on the bike and the route that I wanted to take but didn’t quite make. The red line is the Santana. I made a little chalk outline of my landing spot.Meeting point.JPG



I looked up and saw the bike on-top of my left leg. The hazard lights had somehow switched themselves on (which I thought was very fitting for that particular time) and petrol was drizzling out of the tank all over my leg. I cursed a little after I’d realized what had happened and tried to push the bike off my leg which I could feel was in a bit of pain. This all happened right next to a small police station where a couple of traffic police officers had seen the whole thing. They helped me get the bike off of my leg, get me up, move my bike to the side of the road and traffic was moving again before I had a chance to get my camera phone out to take some pictures. The guys in the car that hit me parked and helped me up too. There was discussion between them and the traffic police about whether or not I wanted to take legal action against them. When they realised that I could speak a little Chinese they asked me what I wanted to do. I could see how guilty the driver looked and I felt like I was in a power position from that moment on. I immediately called my wife and asked her to come right away. The apartment was only a 4 minute walk away (I was almost home) and she was there pretty quickly.

Another long part of the story short:
The driver and his mate took me and my wife to hospital, paid about 450 for some x-rays and gave me another 500 for repairs to my bike. I doubt I’ll spend more than 100 on repairs my coat and jeans (about 350 together) also got ripped and scraped a bit too so it was nice of him to have covered them too. I’ve been left with a sore left calf muscle, a sore left arse cheek and some x-ray photos.
The guy and I exchanged numbers and he severely apologized for everything. He gave me a call this evening around 18:30 to check up on me and told me that we should go out for dinner together sometime. I don’t know if I want to but he’s a really nice guy I think.