Well, I also survived. It was, we claimed, a lot safer than driving drunk, because we did tend to slow way down, hearing (we thought) all sorts of mechanical mayhem telling us that the motor was about to blow.
The “seven miles an hour” story actually happened to a motorcycle road-racing buddy I knew fairly well in the ‘60s. It was 12 miles an hour on Storrow Drive in Boston, and I thought it was a hoot, since on the racetrack he was a good deal faster than I was.
I tended to think I had a flat tire.