2023 Re-cap. Where have I been this year? Last year late August a senior gentleman ran through a red light and struck me while I was making a left turn in front of him. I decided it was best not to share this information publicly until I settled everything with his insurance company. That has occurred and the white SP was well compensated for. So was I. I had a minor surgery on my elbow and wore a cast for a month. I bounced back quickly and suffer no ill effects from the accident. My riding time in 2023 was severely cut back not only due to the accident and dealing with all that but I made big renovations on my home and property, my attention in 2023 was elsewhere to say the least. I also bought an E-bike and discovered bike trails around my area and have been having a great time enjoying a different kind of riding.
More about the accident.
I started this thread to share information and photos on the new 3rd generation Grom for new owners and future Grom interested people amongst my experiences with it. Mission accomplished.
In the spirit of this thread and now that I have things settled I see no harm in sharing the following. I wrote down a stream of conscience blurb hours after the accident and decided I will share that unedited here. I don’t know if it can benefit anyone but all I have to do is copy and paste it. It is what it is.
Also, about the bike... I took it up to my local dealer after the accident and asked for an estimate for repairs. They left it in it’s broken state on the sales floor for a month before I was able to pick it up. I think they were using it to gain interest for their customers while they didn’t have Grom inventory to show off and sell. I didn’t mind because there was a 2 month period where I didn’t ride and it was very cold.
So the dealer wrote up an estimate along with a parts list that included labor. The frame of the bike was not damaged or bent. It was just a list of broken tidbits and replacement parts that were scratched etc… But the labor charge was rather embellished and wildly exorbitant in my opinion. Then the senior fellow’s insurance adjuster went to the dealer to make a decision and evaluate whether the bike was to be totaled. I made an argument that with the aftermarket bits I had on it it would be cheaper for them to fix rather than replacing the bike along with new aftermarket accessories. I didn’t want a salvage title on it. Surprisingly, to my benefit, he agreed and just signed off on the crazy dealer estimate rather than his own. I suspect he couldn’t refute what a dealer estimated.
All said and done he sent me a check for over $5000.00 on a bike with a $3499.00 MSRP. Needless to say I came out way ahead. I think it was under $800 I had to spend to get all the parts I needed to restore the bike to show room shape. When I went back to the dealer to pickup the bike they were shocked I wasn’t going to let them do the work. They were likely seeing potential for a huge profit – mostly labor. I thanked them for their service and reminded them I have 2 other 2022 Groms and an extra complete set of matching SP plastics from the Racer Boy build and most of everything else I needed in my spare part reserves. So then they said they would need to charge me for the time they spent doing the estimate, I smiled and chuckled to myself then asked if they want that in cash or check form.
Anyway, here’s the stream of conscience notes I wrote immediately after the accident: (Warning: it's not easy to read because I wrote it quickly because I thought it might be important to have in the future and jumps around between present and past tenses)
The bike suffered damages not only from the car impact on one side but after it flipped and impacted the ground on both sides. I was impacted by the vehicle on the left leg and propelled from the bike impacting and denting the front right side of the vehicle’s hood as I was thrown across it. I found myself inverted upside down in a vertical position with feet straight up in the sky while my head was towards the ground after I scraped across the hood and landed on the pavement on my back on the other side of the vehicle. An onlooker approached me and asked if my head felt ok as he saw my helmet hit the seat of the bike before the bike settled on the pavement but I didn’t answer. After I landed on the pavement I was in shock but immediately looked at the driver through the windshield of the his car as I struggled to sit up. I recognized that he was a senior gentlemen as he peered at me with a horrified expression. I could see that the air bag had not deployed and he seemed unharmed. I then turned my head and looked at the green light I was moving through and back to him twice to ensure he understood the situation. He had just drove through the red light facing him with out stopping or slowing down into the intersection and later as we talked with each other, commented he didn’t see me. I had no on coming traffic as I was making my left turn and I believe he probably saw this clearing too and proceeded forward through the red light facing him absentmindedly when he struck me. As I struggled to stand onlookers were approaching and I checked on the driver again as he opened his car door. Seeing that he was alright I proceeded to pick up the bike and get it out of the intersection. A lady came up to me and said she saw the incident and couldn’t believe I was standing. She kept asking if I was ok. She gave me her name and number and I entered it into my phone and thanked her for her concern. She told me to call her if I needed her as a witness and began to go back to her vehicle as I was overhearing two approaching gentleman discussing the accident and one proclaiming the motorcycle rider was at no fault as he was behind me and saw everything. The other was saying he just heard the impact sound and that drew his attention. There was no screeching tire sound from the vehicle that hit me. Two men driving a city pickup truck were on the scene immediately and one walked the senior fellow straight across the intersection into a store parking lot and stayed with him. Police cars began arriving and one went to the driver of the vehicle’s location and the other was looking after traffic. A fellow that witnessed the incident was picking up pieces of the drivers fog light shroud off the pavement and headed over to talk with the officer across the street. I felt relieved that people were involving themselves and that I was able to walk. I wasn’t physically feeling anything broken or any stabbing pains during this excitement, only the dread that I knew I just lost something that was very dear to me and I would be reconciling the grief of that later. After moving the bike on to a median out of traffic’s way, I left my helmet on the left handle bar noting it was pointing up at an awkward angle but didn’t fret over the bike as there was nothing I could do about it. The bike was on it’s side for several minutes before I stood it up. I was helped across the street by onlookers around the busy traffic and checked on the older gentlemen and he told me he was glad he didn’t kill me. It was a surreal moment for sure and we were both feeling that relief. I found him an amicable fellow dressed in casual business attire. He told me he was an 83 year old self employed wealth manager. I dropped any thoughts of feeling the need to be defensive at that point as I have an 85 year old father. He understood he made a mistake and told me “this is what insurance is for.” He was ticketed for failure to yield and I was handed a Driver Information Exchange form by one of the on scene officers when all was said and done. After the driver left I returned to the bike and was offered a ride home from the Police but as I was close to home I declined. There were no leaking fluids and the oil level was ok. I managed to ride the bike home a few blocks with no front brakes. I called my insurance provider and reported the accident and took to rest as the realization of of what happened became clearer. I took pictures of my skinned elbow and the abrasion on my bleeding knee along with this written account. These issues came secondary over my concern for the state of my treasured bike. Needless to say the adrenaline was wearing off I was mentally and physically exhausted. I think I’m still in some form of shock over the loss of my constant companion. This is horrible.
EDIT: Found out later, I was 1 single mile away from 10,000 miles at the time of the accident. The Odometer read 9999!