Ongoing serious injury case

by stuandelaine

05 Jul 2009

Hi. Just thought I'd share an incident that happened to my partner back in August 2006.

It was the Bank Holiday Weekend, Saturday. We had just been down to Glastonbury (the town, not the festival!) on our motorbikes for a night away, and we were returning in the afternoon. My partner is a very experienced rider, having ridden for over 35 years. A lovely sunny day, with excellent visibility and good dry roads. On the route back, we passed through the beautiful village of Avebury on the A361 (we live in Swindon). In this village there is a sharp, 90 degree left hand turn, my partner was in front, with me following closely behind.

We were only travelling at approx. 10 mph, both due to the tight bend (we ride cruisers, not sports bikes) and the heavy traffic. My partner was particularly close to the left hand kerb, because of a huge 10 tonne hay wagon on the other side of this very narrow road.

Because of the height of the kerb, and the angle of the road, my partner could not see the 2"+ deep pothole, and was only aware of a thud from her rear wheel, and the bike 'uprighting' (becoming vertical rather than leant). Basically, her rear wheel slipped into the pothole, which in turn uprighted the bike. For those of you who do not ride bikes, if one is upright, it does not go around corners regardless of steering.

The effect of this was to cause her bike to cross the road in front of said hay wagon, which collided into her side.

Without going into too much more detail and boring you rigid, here is a list of injuries sustained at the time: Shattered left humerus (upper arm bone), which had to have a steel rod inserted; left ankle broken; right ankle fractured; severe bruising (and I seriously mean SEVERE) all across her torso and legs - she essentially looked like a giant blueberry for several weeks.

Since then there have been huge complications, like the steel rod needing to be removed as it started poking through her skin and coming out of it's own accord, going in for an operation to free up movement in her left shoulder and being infected with MSSA (a variant of MRSA) which nearly killed her itself.

All of this on top of tinittus (constant ringing in the ears), constant pain 24/7, and virtually no movement in the left shoulder. Oh yes, her ankles still hurt her a lot too, but that is the least of the worries.

I'm not even going to go into the psychological effects, but trust me, they are not good.

She is pursuing it as a case through her insurance company's solicitors, and it is still ongoing. The council first of all tried to claim that the road was examined 2 days prior to the incident, and found no pothole. They even produced documentation to support this. However the photos I took of the pothole show that the yellow-line painting truck bounced in the hole itself, and they had been painted months before. Was this incompitence on the part of the inspector? Or the council trying to pull a fast one? We shall never know... It is interesting to note that that inspection paperwork did not say how the road was inspected (through binoculars at 20 miles distance? Driving along and seeing if the car bumps?) and even if one was found, there was nowhere to record any details. It was simply a list of dates, roads, names, and a tick box to say the road is ok. Not very professional in my humble view.

So that's the story so far - still ongoing but hoping to get to court sometime next year.

Oh yes - the bike was written off.

Any comments, questions, or advice would be gratefully recieved.

Thanks for listening, Stu.