Having ridden motorcycles for many years, and also being a motorcycle lawyer, I have had many fantastic and outright scary experiences while riding on the road. Riding a motorcycle is not like driving a car. You are completely exposed to the elements, cars, and other motor vehicles, except for your clothes and your helmet if you use one.

There is an old biker saying; “it’s not a matter of if you’re going to go down, it’s a matter of when.”

I have gone down on a couple of occasions and it was not fun. As a matter of fact, it was downright painful. Luckily, I was not seriously injured.

Since I ride thousands of miles on my motorcycle each year, I have experienced many different type of scenarios on the open road, and on city streets. I have had many close calls which could have turned out to be disasters.

On one occasion when I went down, I was riding with a group of other motorcyclists in Palm Springs California. One of the other riders for unexplained reasons pulled ahead of me and proceeded to literally turn left right in front of me. I had no time to stop. I had two choices; I could have either T-boned the other rider which would have caused major injuries to both of us, or laid the bike down. I chose to lay the bike down. I thank God that I was not seriously injured and that there was only minor damage to the bike. You should’ve seen the look on the other riders face. I believe that the other rider had been drinking alcohol before the accident. By laying my bike down, I saved him and myself.

Nowadays, I absolutely refuse to ride alongside other motorcyclists who have been drinking. It’s not only illegal, but it’s downright dangerous. You never know what they’re going to do.

As I have said, I have had more than a few close calls. On one occasion while riding on Interstate 40 near Kingman Arizona, I pulled off the highway to get gas. I had my fiancé on the back of my motorcycle riding shotgun. If you have ever ridden through the Arizona desert at night, you’ll know that it’s pitch dark aside from the headlights on your motorcycle. To make a long story short, as I was turning left off the road to go to the gas station, I hit gravel in the road. Gravel, sand, and oil are a motorcycle rider’s worst nightmare, because a motorcycle only has two wheels, and those wheels lose traction on gravel, sand, oil, water, and other slippery surfaces. Suffices to say, I was able to keep the motorcycle up while sliding through the gravel, and it was a very close call. We were lucky that we do not go down.

I had another very close call at a major biker rally in Las Vegas a couple of years back. First off, Las Vegas is probably not the best place in the world to have a biker rally. As everyone knows, Las Vegas is a 24-hour gambling and drinking city. There are drunks on the road 24 hours a day in Las Vegas. To make a long story short, I was riding on a side street off of the strip with four other bikes, and I had my fiancé as usual on the back of my motorcycle riding shotgun. I was leading the pack in the number one lane. (The number one lane is the lane closest to the center divider.) Literally out of nowhere, a drunk pulled out of a casino parking lot and turned left directly into my lane, right in front of me. There was nothing I could do but to lock up the back tire, and countersteer to the right in preparation to lay the bike down to avoid hitting the car. In what seemed like an act of God, the car accelerated very fast right in front of me, and I was able by the grace of God, to pull the bike back up before I laid it down. I was riding a very heavy motorcycle with a backseat passenger. The riders behind me told me that they could not believe that I was able to keep the bike up. Let me tell you, I am not even close to being the best motorcycle rider in the world, I consider myself to be just above average as a motorcycle rider. God was with us that night.

I will give one more example of a very close call that I was involved in; I was leading a pack of approximately 20 motorcycles on a run to Santa Barbara on the 101 freeway last year. We were riding in a side-by-side formation (also known as coffin formation) in the number one lane. The 101 freeway has basically no median to speak of in the area in which we were riding. We were rolling at approximately 70 mph. Out of nowhere, a mattress appeared directly in front of us. There was nowhere to go, and we had milliseconds to react. Luckily the guys I was riding with were all experienced motorcycle riders. Instinctively I immediately swerved to the left to avoid the mattress, while the rider next to me swerved to the right to avoid the mattress. Had there been a car next to the rider on the right, it would have been all over. The guys riding behind us observed our movements, and were able to avoid hitting the mattress. We were all lucky that day, and it sure got the adrenaline pumping.

There are many other examples I could give you of close calls that I’ve experienced or witnessed. You will notice in the above examples, that accidents and close calls were usually either the result of other motorcycle riders, cagers, bad road conditions, or obstacles in the road.

As a motorcycle lawyer I have seen the worst case scenarios where catastrophic injuries resulted to motorcycle riders in accidents. Keep both wheels on the road and check out some of my safety tips in this section.
California Biker Lawyer Norman Gregory Fernandez, Esq.
Copyright 2006