Was stood in our garden this morning talking to DP about what we were going to do today (and trying to remember the name of a plant), our neighbour drove past very slowly and waved. We live on a little private, unadopted lane on some bends on a NSL B orad, the main road has solid white lines and the exit from the lane is not well maintained but the lane belongs to a large nursing home who do very little to maintain the lane (there are four houses on the lane and we do our best to rake and keep exit to the lane safe).
As we stood chatting I could hear the low roar of a motorbike on the B road, not travelling at huge speed but probably close to the limit for the road. Our neighbour slowly pulled out and the motorbike (1 of 4 travelling together) ploughed into the side of him, the last thing I remember is the thud of the bike hitting the car and watching the rider cartwheel over the car. He landed about 30ft away, face down, just shy of an old oak with a substantial trunk. DP ran out to the biker and I ran indoors to grab the house phone (mobile signals are crap here and no-one ever knows what this bit of road is called). By this time there was chaos. one of the bikers wanted to beat the hell out of DP as they had mistakenly thought he was the driver, the injured biker was face down and non-responsive and cars were coming round the blind bends to be met by bikes, cars and a massive fuel spillage. We sent bikes in both directions to stop the traffic (yet some ignorant bint insisted one coming by in her car despite the road being blocked and a lifeless biker on the road). Suddenly the biker responded to his name and was able to tell me how old he was.
Soon after the air ambulance arrived followed by the police (x3), land ambulance and first response car and a host of other assistance, the time spent waiting for sirens were probably some of the longest of my life. We are 50 minutes by road from our nearest A&E and it takes ambulances a while to get to us.
We have been campaigning for something to be done about a) the speed limit and the road markings on the main road and b) for the condition of the lane to be addressed. The county council have said there has to be a fatality before they will act, the nursing home just don't seem to care about the state of their lane.
Thankfully it would appear that the biker was VERY lucky, he seems to have escaped with little more than a broken wrist but we are waiting to hear just how he is.
Things happen so scarily quickly. Many years ago I witnessed a 4 year old knocked down and killed and now this, life is precious and can change in the blink of an eye.