Got her rear ended by a pretty young girl in a Toyota today. Was behind a short line of cars on a rural road, everyone slowed for the first car to make a left turn, except the girl behind me. I heard squealing tires and looked in the mirror and saw an orange sedan closing fast. I let of the brakes and swerved right onto the shoulder to avoid the pickup truck in front of me but felt an impact and saw something fly past on my right into the ditch. That was my right saddle bag. I came to a stop and parked. The other vehicle and three witnesses also stopped. The Toyota had a lot of front end damage. Eveyone was amazed I did not go down, including me.
I had pinned my bags but the left pin had recently been lost and replaced with a zip tie. That broke, allowing the bag to fly off. Both of the orange latches were snapped off. The pin on the left bag was pretzeled but held, the bag pivoting on it and sticking straight up. The license plate is mildy crumpled and at first I thought the rear fender was mangled as it looked sideways and all crazy. Further inspection showed it was ok, just had a piece of Toyota inner fender wrapped around it! My sweet Area P CF slip on was broken in two
Had four different LEO jurisdictions on hand, very helpful. Two were riders themselves. One provided some very large zip ties (probably used as cuffs in other scenarios) to secure my bags as well as the Toyota's fender.
The biker leos hung around after the paperwork to make sure I could ride home ok. When I cranked her up they both said in unison: "sound great!" lol
