Near misses. If you’ve been riding motorcycles any amount of time, you’ve had them. If you’re lucky, they didn’t turn into anything worse and you rode on having learned something and considering, perhaps a bit somberly, what could have happened. Even more sobering to consider are the times when near disaster was not a random and unpreventable act of nature, but a self-owned act of stupidity.
Three examples from my own 40-plus years and hundreds of thousands of miles of riding:
The time I hit a deer but didn’t
From 2001 to 2021, I lived in central Ohio and most of my riding was in southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania: the 100-mile ride through the fun roads of southeastern Ohio to see my parents in West Virginia, numerous trips to the two colleges 50 miles away where my wife worked, several years of periodic trips across Pennsylvania to RevZilla HQ in Philadelphia for work. Considering that those three states have huge deer populations and are near the top of the list of states with the most deer strikes on the highways, it’s amazing I never hit one on any of my motorcycles.
There’s lots of good riding in Southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, but there are also huge deer populations in those areas.
Though technically I did.
I was riding my 2006 Triumph Daytona 675 on one of those curvy rural two-lanes in Southeastern Ohio, on my way to see my parents, when I came around a corner to see two young deer standing in the road, one blocking each lane.
Deer are notoriously unpredictable and I had no way of knowing which way these two would run. I was hard on the Daytona’s brakes and the deer’s hooves were scrabbling for traction on the asphalt like some cartoon animal running without actually moving. They eventually went opposite directions but not fast enough, and I felt the bump as the left side of my fairing hit one in the haunches.
The deer scampered off, apparently uninjured, while I pulled off the road, cursing my luck and preparing myself for the sight of expensive broken plastic. To my amazement, nothing was cracked or shattered. I walked all around the bike and closely examined the fairing multiple times because I couldn’t believe I escaped without damaging the fragile plastic. But it seems the deer and I both escaped unscathed.
Another two feet to the left would have been a different story.
The time I rode through an exploding wall… sort of
I’ve heard a few wild stories from the new model press launches that the manufacturers put on to introduce new motorcycles to the media. For some, the setting is on the road during the ride, and other times the setting is the hotel bar at the end of the day. But I only have one of those wild stories to tell myself, and it’s the most dramatic near miss I’ve ever experienced.
The shards of wood put the Suzuki GSX-S1000GT+ out of commission. It could have been a lot worse.
To introduce its GSX-S1000GT+ to the U.S. motorcycle media a few years ago, Suzuki put on a two-day ride in Southern California. Near the end of the second day, our group of seven was riding back into the Los Angeles area and had just gotten on I-210, moving at SoCal freeway speeds in the left lane. In the far right lane was a truck hauling a load of pressed wood panels that was obviously not secured properly. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as the wind caught one of those eight-foot sheets of pressed wood and it soared high in the air across three lanes of traffic, landing in the middle of our group. The board hit the asphalt on its edge just as the front tire of the motorcycle in front of me smashed into it, exploding the wood into thousands of splinters. It looked like some choreographed movie stunt.
Luckily, the rider stayed upright, his motorcycle’s tire wasn’t punctured, and those of us behind him rode through the debris field without incident. We all pulled over at the next exit. The radiator of the bike that hit the board had been pierced by half a dozen splinters and was leaking coolant. The day was done for that Suzuki. But I couldn’t help think about what would have happened if that board had come down half a second later, landing on top of the rider, probably causing him to crash, and maybe taking down some of us who were following. The day could have been over for several of us.
The time I proved I’m dangerous as a mechanic
Actually, I’ve proven many times that I’m not a great mechanic, but one time really sticks in my memory because I made a very simple mistake on the simplest of maintenance jobs and it could have messed me up really badly.
It’s fun to go exploring. It’s more fun if you make it home OK because you don’t sabotage yourself with a careless mechanical mistake.
When we moved to Massachusetts in 2021 to apartment life in a bigger city, one thing I gave up was a good place to do basic maintenance on my motorcycle. One weekend, I decided to go explore some parts of Massachusetts I’d never seen on my 2014 Honda VFR800 Interceptor Deluxe. The VFR was due for the final drive chain to be tightened, and I decided that rather than do it in the shared parking garage of the apartment building, I’d find a quiet parking lot in one of the parks I planned to stop at and do the simple job there. After all, it’s especially simple on the VFR. The single-sided swingarm means no concerns about alignment and the center stand means it’s no trouble to get the rear wheel off the ground. So I threw my torque wrench into the saddlebag along with the tools I regularly carried and set off on my ride.
Which was a good one. And at about the turnaround point, I found that quiet parking lot and tightened the chain to spec. Riding home, I was cruising on a four-lane highway. There were a couple of cars ahead of me in the right lane and I sped up a bit and pulled into the left lane to get past them. The suddenly jerkiness as I accelerated instantly told me something was wrong. And a few seconds later, it dawned on me what the problem was. I slowed carefully and pulled off the road at the first wide spot I could find.
A quick look confirmed my suspicions and the truth that I probably shouldn’t be trusted with tools. The chain was sloppy loose. You see, I’d packed that torque wrench but hadn’t used it. I’d snugged down the pinch bolt on the adjuster by hand and never went back to torque it to the right spec, so as I was cruising down the highway, my chain was getting looser and looser. A little more and it could have jumped off the sprocket. Worst-case scenario? Just as I was past those cars, the chain could have come off and locked up the rear wheel, throwing me down the road in front of the traffic.
There’s a balance to strive to achieve here. Dwelling too long on what might have been is just ruining the present by thinking about what didn’t happen in the past. But thinking about it just hard enough and long enough to ingrain the lesson and avoid it happening again is valuable learning. Hopefully, I learned my lesson and I’ll never make that mistake again.
I also recognize that I’ve been lucky to ride away unscathed from my near misses, close calls, and stupid mistakes.
