3 weeks for you wardaddy, 17 years for me to crash my STREET bike(dirt bikes are another whole storybook), and like Smokin' Joe says, it was a car driver. And to make this stick even better, it was a woman in an SUV that changed her mind at an intersection and made a turn from the wrong and illegal lane. Down goes the Blue Collar Christian, breaks his right hand and wrist that are very important to his repairing motorcycles, and totaled is his plush ride.
My full face helmet had not even a scratch on it. My leather jacket, on the other hand, shows deep cuts in the sleeve where I hit the rain gutter and hefty scraping where my arms and belly slid along the pavement. My golves were ruined, but except for the broken bones, there was no abrasion damage to my hands. My jeans were ripped open to allow my knees access to the pavement, but those knees have seen a lot of pavement from bicycle incidents as a kid.
People need to learn that when you miss your turn, you miss your turn. Go up another block, off-ramp or light and find your way back to where YOU MISSED YOUR TURN!
Cars simply don't see motorcycles like they do cars.
My first crash was on my H2 and a lady looked right at me and pulled out....I hit her fenderwell and went over her hood and somersaulted and landed on my Shoei....just scrapped up mostly.
I did have self induced wrecks.....imitating Kenny Roberts....and usuallly sliding out in curves or panicking out and high siding...a much worse event. I always preferred cold asphalt for skin skiing.
You are right...good shoes, gloves and all that helps...no doubt.
I see women on the back with bikini tops on and Daisey Dukes and tennis shoes and I say a pray for them. I saw a young girl ripped in half in Jamaica once like that after her boyfriend's bike hit a fuel truck...awful.
When I rode. I rode rockets...hard. I would guess cruising is inherently safer is it not?
I told my wife yesterday I should buy a Ducati or a BMW just for tooling....she looked at me like I was eating a booger and it dawned on me that my reflexes are shot.
Sometimes a great notion...lol....that idea had a rather short shelf life.