and there is no physical damage to the motorcyclist?
I’m still dealing with my permanently disabled status here in New Hampshire, granted in July 2013, and how that wiped out the last of my plans and dreams. At 57 I’m too young to be sitting around and waiting to die but I’m also too broken up physically for any meaningful labor. I’ve know since I was 28 years of age that my mind was probably going to “age” faster than normal because of the concussion I received when my neck broke and that I’d have increasing pain from the healed bones but I thought that I could deal with all of that stuff. Or re-stating what happened, I broke my neck by landing on my head after a motorcycle get-off and I tried to live a normal life. But here I am. Living in a motorhome, relying on public services and painkillers.
Back in August 2013 I was on my way home from Allenstown, New Hampshire after a day of working on motorcycles and good conversation. Heading up route 3 from Allenstown to Concord, the plan was to cross on Airport road and pick up something for dinner at the Fort Eddy road Market Basket. Now I’ve been taken out twice in my 40 years of riding, once by a rear-ender hit and run driver and the second time by a young man who was concentrating more on his girlfriend and where he wanted to be than driving. The first time I broke my neck at C-2, what’s called a Hangman’s fracture, you can figure out why it’s called that, and the second collision I broke my right arm at the humeral head and once again my pelvis. Plus enough organ damage that I had to wait a couple of days to see if I was going to live through the week. I’ve been around the block.
After we passed the intersection of route 106 and route 3 we rode down the hill, crossed the river and took the right turn lane heading up the hill toward Airport road. The next thing I know is I’ve got a Mitsubishi Eclipse being driven by an aggressive driver, someone who wants to be at the head of the line and as I learned in court, late for a party, to my left in the through lane. Traffic is moving along at v+ or briskly and I don’t want to do any faster but the Mitsu driver does want to go faster and she’s in my lane! I’m next to her passenger side window and she’s pushed me over to the guard rail. I worked for years to regain the usability of my right arm after the hemiarthroplasty in 2010 and now I’m faced with the possibility of losing my arm completely, if I survive the tumble over the guard rail at 50+ MPH. So I kicked at her door and sounded the bike’s horn to get her attention and she pulled back into her lane. So far so good.
The problem started when both of us were waiting at the stop line for the traffic light to change. I sat there collecting my thought and when I look to my left and saw her sitting there all that went through my mind was that she had nearly killed me for a perceived advantage in traffic to be gained by racing up the turn land and then back over to the through lane. I secured my bike and walked over to talk to her and she refused to acknowledge my present and it was then that my temper got the best of me. I broke off her driver’s side windshield wiper arm and used it to break her window. I drove down airport road and waited for the police to arrive.
I thought that the act of running me off the road trumped a broken windshield. Well, I’ve been to court and while the other charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence I now own a broken windshield and I need to figure out some way to pay for it and I’ve learned a lesson. If you’re driving an automobile you can do anything you want while you’re behind the wheel when it comes to people riding a motorcycle or bicycle as long as you utter the magic words “I didn’t see the guy on the bike.”
