At least that’s what it would probably have sounded like in a comic strip… as some of you may already know, I just had my 4th motorbike accident in Thailand.
click on image to view it in large...
The first one was in 2000, when I lost control of a 400cc dirt bike and fell down a mountain. The accident cost me almost all my back teeth and I only got myself to blame for that one. However, I was wearing complete protection gear like the Pro’s do in the Super Cross on TV, unfortunately a rock sticking out from the side of the mountain caught me right under the helmet on the chin and made me bite my teeth together, so hard that they crumbled to pieces.
My 2nd accident was also the only one that knocked my out. I was on my way home at night with my girlfriend on the back when I hit a huge pile of sand that was illegally put on the outside lane of the road. A friend of mine went to the crash site at night to see what happened to me and went back the next morning to take some evidence photos, as the police never even made it there. The people responsible for putting the sand pile there saw it as their responsibility to remove all traces of it before the next morning, so officially there was no reason for me to crash and it was deemed as my fault.
My 3rd accident was directly in front of the day market in Hua Hin around 9am with about 20 people witnessing the event. I got cut off and flipped the bike, landing quite hard on the street. After a few minutes the police was there and asked me to follow them to the police station, while blood was running down my right hand from a nasty cut, luckily that was the only injury I had. So, I refused to go to the police station and demanded to go to the hospital instead. Still in shock and a bit of a daze I picked up my bike got on it and started cruising towards the hospital about 3km down the road, thinking I would be followed by the police. After going there half way I realized I am all by myself, so I stopped by my house and picked up my wife, and later no one ever heard of the accident… no witnesses, no license plate number of the asshole who cut me off, so no case…
Well, now my latest and most likely last motorbike accident. It was 3:15pm and I needed to be in town by 3:30 to make it to the bank. I was going accordingly fast on a wide open straight road with no traffic but one pickup truck coming towards me. I floored the bike and hit the magical 155km/h – top speed of my beloved Honda CBR 150 Repsol Edition. The driver of the pickup truck must have realized he’d gone too for or something like that, so at a distance of about 50 meters to me he initiated a 3 point turning maneuver, putting his truck sideways on the road blocking my entire lane plus my emergency/motorbike lane. I hit the brakes for about a second, realizing I would slam into the truck going at least 70 km/h or so, and decided to try and go around behind him on his side of the road. The same moment I had leaned the bike to the side to turn and was on my way to the other side of the road, the pickup truck initiated phase 2 of his 3 point turning maneuver – reversing – right into my way. I tried to avoid hitting him, but still clipped his tail light with my hand/handle which made my bike tilt even more to the side. I tried to catch it and make a left turn to stay on the road, but then I saw a motorbike with a side wagon coming towards me on the emergency lane. At this point I was still going about 90km/h and I would have never made it without colliding with the other bike, so I left the bike in the tilted position and just went off the road. For a moment I thought I may actually make it then I saw a tree and knew I could not avoid hitting it, so I jerked the bike and myself as hard as I could to the same side it was leaning anyways. The bike went into the tree, but because it was tilted so much, I flew passed the tree and hit the ground about 20 meter away from the tree. The impact with the ground was literally breathtaking, it hurt so much I got tunnel vision and thought I would pass out. After a minute or so of laying on my chest I tried to get up. My back was hurting like crazy and I screamed out of the top of my lungs, which surprisingly hurt even more. so I just collapsed again in agony. I made it to lay down on my side so I could see the road, and started waiving with my arm at passing cars and bikes. I had eye contact with at least 3 people driving by, but no one stopped until about 10-15minutes later. The pickup truck ran away of course, and the guy on the motorbike with the side wagon didn’t come back until after others had stopped to assist me. He gave his name, phone number and license plate number of the apparently black Chevy pickup… a number which tuned out to belong to a white Volkswagen and not a pickup truck. Shortly after the first people stopped to help me, there were about 20 people around me. A brand new Toyota Vigo Police Car stopped on the side of the road and the officer talked to some people through the window of his car, then he drove off again! My guess is he was off duty, on his way to pickup a bribe, or going to see his geek – all all of those reasons. Later an emergency car arrived and after that 2 more ambulances, as no one dared to move me after seeing me and my back, something I wish I could have as well, as it really freaked me out.
So, what’s the outcome? I didn’t brake a single bone, had a few scratches of which only one was so bad that it deserved a regular band-aid. However, my back pain was really extreme and they “rushed” me into the x-ray room. 4.5 hours after I arrived at the emergency room they had finally completed to take 4 x-rays and the doc gave me the news. I compressed one of my bones in the spine by up to 50% and it is angled by 30 degrees where it should be “flat”. His “text books” (I’m serious, that’s what he said) say that I need an operation. The best guy in Thailand for a surgery gave it a 10% chance that I will end up paralyzed waist down – that’ 1 out of 10! I have no clue what I am going to do now. At the moment I am thinking to start exercising and just build up a lot of muscles to support my spine, the doc says there is a chance that it may do the trick – at least until I am 60+ at which point he says my muscles will get too weak. IF this is the way it’s gonna be, I just hope the odds have improved in 30 years. For now, I got to stay on my back for at least 5 more weeks to give the bone time to heal and harden again, 5 weeks in which I am going to research all I can about this and all the possible treatments etc.
Here is the x-ray of my spine, I took the liberty to highlight the healthy bones in green and the broken one in red, which should have the same size and shape as the green ones...
