I was involved in a collision yesterday on the R100.
I was overtaking a slow line of traffic - filtering actually, when one of the cars to my left started to turn into my path as I was over taking her and clipped the rear of my bike. It was a roundabout - and this young lady was in the left hand lane that was supposed to be exiting the roundabout and I too was intending to exit at this point (2 lane exit) - but she decided not to, and swung across that exit to go to the next exit - which she did - without indicating or looking behind her.
A glancing blow, that had me in a wobble, but I managed to stay upright. Once stopped I realised that she had done a runner - or at least continued with the flow of traffic down the other exit. So I did a U turn and set off in pursuit. I caught up with her pretty quickly and beeped my horn and indicated that she should turn in to discuss what had just happened.
Initially she seemed to think it was my fault and that she was in the right lane for the exit she wanted (and I cut her up!!!) - which she definately was not. Anyway it turned out that she had a long scrape on the top of her wing from my indicator and had lost some paint on her lower front bumper where my left hand exhaust had scraped by.
I had her paint all down my exhaust, but my indicator was okay - and so was I.
We had a firm but polite talk about what had happened and then parted company without contacting the police or insurance. She was a young driver with limited experiance and she did accept - when I explained to her the error of her ways, that much of the blame lay at her door. Although I did not labour point of the leaving the scene - business. A big no, no!
When I got home I was able polish off the paint on my exhaust, but there is just a discernable flattening at the end of the muffler where I scrapped by - but only when you look closely.
I hope the young lady really does appreciate the gravity of the situation and that she has much to be thankful of - the police do not take kindly of anyone leaving the scene - and it could easily have been a lot worse. If I had gone down, I could easily have been run over, by herself even.
However, I must also accept that my making progress put me in a possition where I did not have enough options when someone else did something that was not expected. Filtering is fine - but you need to keep the speed down and be vigilant at all times. Roundabouts and heavy traffic - are especially dangerous.
Had I been on my Cafe Racer, I have no doubt she would have heard me coming and looked to the rear - unless she had here stereo up loud!
Just sharing my experience.
Steve H
