I'm 44 now & have been riding "officially" since about 96. I have had two offs on the road; both pilot error & no injury. Probably also done about 40+ trackdays & had about 5 offs (theres a statistic in there somewhere); all pilot error & quite a few injurys. I don't think its inevitable, but if you are going to ride a bike you need to accept the possibility & then put it just far enough in the back of your mind to occasionally remind you of your limits. Here are a couple of silly ones (sorry about the crap quality). A very wet track & me wondering what we were having for tea! (really). A sunny track & me mucking about with the span adjuster on my brake lever (not the best place with hindsight).
Been riding for 9 years now, one off in year 2 in the wet with a new back tyre, partially my fault as I did not treat the throttle with the respect it deserved, but mostly the slippy as hell road surface. A few near misses as eluded to in other post, worst missing a tractor by inches a few weeks ago, old bugger stopped blocking the full road, I saw a gap behind him, then he decided to reverse back into that gap I went grass tracking but all is good but gave me a few sleepless nights on the future of the bike, until I realised I just could not live without it !
I personally don't think it's inevitable, like anything it's just the luck of the draw sometimes - there are so many variables, a lot of course that are out of our control. I've had 3 crashes on the track and one on the road which were all unforced errors on my part, but I've definitely learned from them so I don't repeat the same mistakes. Someone once said that in terms of track riding you HAVE to crash in order to know where the limit is - which I think is utter bollox. Why would you deliberately go out and try to crash?! My motto is "Ride sensibly on the road. Ride like a controlled nutter on the track."
