Ten Seconds

It’s early on a chilly December day and I’m riding my motorbike to work. I’m easing off the speed, getting into the filter lane for the turn off the A10 to my office. After twenty-nine years of riding motorbikes, I know I can’t rely on other drivers being aware and respectful of my space on the road. I’m watching the driver behind me and the driver alongside me, making sure they see my indicator and know what I intend to do.

The next ten seconds pass at a surreal pace.

I see the white Mondeo in my peripheral vision. Suddenly, the driver’s changed his mind about racing north in the outside lane. Instead, he swerves across both lanes without any warning, suddenly determined to take the same exit as I’m taking, aiming at the patch of tarmac my bike’s on. Time slows. Adrenaline is firing through me, speeding up my thoughts. I see the Mondeo approach on a fast diagonal with a sense that this isn’t happening, this is a vivid dream. This car, heading straight for my bike so slowly that I can avoid him, if I… if I…

Thought speeds up, but the body reacts slowly. I know I should lean the bike away, ride up the pavement and dodge through the gap in the wall alongside me to avoid the Mondeo - wherever that gap leads to. The hands don’t respond in time. I see the Mondeo crash into the front of my bike. Hear the graunch and crack of car hitting solid metal engine and the fireworks of light as his headlamp glass shatters and disperses. Feel the lurch as I’m flicked out of the saddle and thrown sideways in a surreal flight through the air.

I hit the ground hard. The armour in my riding suit absorbs the force of the impact, but falling five feet onto tarmac at twenty miles an hour hurts, the rap of body on road and the yank as the forward motion continues. Knocks the breath out of me. The worst is that I twist to one side during the fall and can no longer see whether the bike is sliding away from me or about to catch on the road and flip up into the air and down onto me, hammering me into a pulp. Crushing my helmet and fracturing my skull. Cracking my spine. The last injury any biker wants. Break your back or neck, and that’s no more biking any more. Not just that… say goodbye to walking. Standing. Choosing your time to empty your bladder and bowels. If the break is high enough, there’s no chance of moving your hands and arms again. It takes surprisingly little force to snap the spine, and there’s enough force in even a low-speed motorbike accident to shatter a brick wall or dent a metal barrier.

I slide for a few seconds, hearing my bike screech across the road nearby and feeling my suit and crash helmet scratch and rattle on the rough tarmac. My main thought is that I should have twitched the steering away in time, incredulous at my slow reaction.

I’m sliding through the gap in the wall and into the yard beyond, and by the laws of Sod this day is not my lucky one. Someone is reversing a Land-rover out of a parking space in the yard, directly towards me. Sliding in his direction with no chance of steering myself out of his way, I have a worm’s eye view of the underside of the Land-rover. The tyres are huge, the exhaust is rusting and there’s mud plastered to the rear diff housing. The daft things you notice in the final seconds of your life.

The bike bumps hard against my hip, shoving me onto my back and off to the left as I slide, speed decreasing. I see red lights flare just as I skid under the rear of the approaching Land-rover. Brake lights. Hallelujah, a driver looking at what’s behind as he’s reversing.

I’m sliding slower now, almost stopped. My crash helmet catches on the underside of the Land-rover and I experience a shock in my head and neck that is both sound and a flash of electricity. Like thunder and lightning exploding simultaneously. I remember a friend telling me about the jolt of energy he felt as his spine snapped just below the shoulders, leaving him paralysed from the chest down.

All is still. I lie there, scared to move and fail that test of “spine - whole or broken?”. You can break the bones of your spine and heal; it’s the spinal cord running through the pierced beads of the vertebrae that lets you move as a human, upright and normal. That precious silver thread can snap if some careless Samaritan yanks the crash helmet off your head in an attempt to make you more comfortable, or if you move yourself awkwardly after the bones of the spine have broken. “The pain never stops,” my paralysed friend had told me. “My feet still itch, my back hurts like fire, but there’s just nothing I can do about it.”

I don’t want to move my head much in case I break my own spinal cord, leaving me with nobody to be angry at for my paralysis but myself. But as I try, I find that I can’t move my head at all. That’s the point when I remember that this is my thirteenth motorbike accident. That’s the point where I hope that thirteen is just another number.

And then the driver gets out of the Land-rover. I hear his feet hitting the gravel of the yard, and the vehicle lifts up on its suspension just enough to release the grip of the exhaust pipe on my crash helmet. My head rolls sideways. I feel fear like freezing water pouring along every nerve, then I realise that I have just clutched a handful of gravel.

It means that I can move my hands. I wiggle my toes, just to be certain, and yes, they work. I’m not paralysed.

The driver bends down and peers at me.

“Are you all right?” he asks. Very British. My bike’s lying wrecked on his yard, I’m under his vehicle looking like I’ve been attacked by a giant cheese-grater and he asks if I’m all right.

“I’m fine,” I reply.

I waggle my hands and feet again. Yep, I’m fine.