Crashing a moped

It’ll come eventually…

I was always told, when I bought my first moped this year, that I’d eventually fall off. “It’ll happen”. I brushed this off. I've always thought of myself as a careful driver.

If it’s your first moped and you’re thinking to yourself, “No, I won’t ever fall off.” Think again. You will fall off and you’re better to accept it than to fight it and be cocky. Much like death, death comes eventually and so does falling off a moped/motorcycle. Not to say those two have strong correlation, although often they do…

I've finally had the experience of falling off my Vespa. The first thought that appeared from the frosty mist of my banged head (I do wear a helmet) was “Sh*t, how’s the bike?” The aching and pain comes later. It’s funny how for me the most important thing was how badly hurt the bike was rather than myself, whereas for friends and family it was obviously the other way round. You develop a friendship with your first vehicle, be it a car, or a moped. Especially my beloved Vespa, we were, and still are, best buddies.

I'm not going to be sexist and say all women drivers should have their licenses taken away but some people need to ‘get a grip’. Rather it was me who needed to get some grip as my bike skidded under me. Cruising to college can seem a mandatory, boring, and compulsory task. But at the other end of the scale it can be highly enjoyable and rewarding to know that you've been in full control of a vehicle on a REAL road and managed to get yourself to your destination safely.

Back to the story, approaching a roundabout, I begin to slow, I see there are no cars joining the roundabout and proceed to begin the gentle lean into the circle. A silver car, driven by a woman (this is not just to show incapability of few women drivers but to compare them to men) decided to speed into the roundabout, obviously in some sort of emergency panic rush to be the first into the otherwise boring circle. I have to slam the brakes on to avoid being splattered on the bonnet of her car. In doing so I skid uncontrollably and the back end slides to my right.Next thing I know, I'm led in the middle of the road on my side with a rather heavy moped on top of me.

I hadn't actually joined the roundabout at this point but she seemed to treat it as a race to be the first person to be on it. She pulls over onto the side of the road, hops out of her car (lovely and warm I presume, I was freezing my t*t’s off) asks if I'm ‘alright’ to which I reply in a sassy tone “Oh yeah I'm fine.” Hearing this she gets back in her car and drives off, leaving me to lift the moped off my body and right myself.

The moral of the story is; don’t trust women drivers in silver cars, always give a sassy tone, and accept that you will fall off your moped/motorcycle or even crash your car.