Well in the last 12 mths, I have riden two different motorcycles, the Kawasaki Versys 650cc and the Ducati Hyperstrada 821cc. These two bikes have seen me rack up nearly 30’000km all over Thailand and Laos. I have seen a lot, in terms of stupidity I have seen it all. Bad drivers exist, and as I have posted in my Bodybag Tourist stories, riding in Thailand on a scooter or big bike is bloody dangerous.
The Ducati is only new for me, I bought it a month ago as an upgrade on the Versys, and my time riding it hasn’t lasted long at all. Am I furious, just a little!!
During a recent outing to put some new shoes on the Ducati and also head to Bangkok, I was cut off on the highway while riding along doing 90kmh. Simply, it was worst case scenario, I was involved in a Motorcycle Crash in Thailand.
A Thai woman decided she wanted to cross 2 lanes of traffic doing 20kmh right in front of me at the last minute. Being a proactive rider, I saw her coming, but at the rate she was moving, I only had time to brake heavily and try to avoid a bad impact as much as possible.
What ended, was me sliding down the median strip, and the two Thai’s on the scooter thrown out into traffic. The pillion ended up with the scooter on top of her, which I rushed over to lift off once I stopped sliding.
Now I was fortunate enough to have a car stop, and the lady driving the car was only to happy to explain to the police that the accident was not the farang’s fault, which was great. One win for me. Thus far this seems like the only win.
The insurance company turned up, organised taking the bike to a Ducati dealer in Bangkok to have the damage assessed which I thought was great, mind you they did charge me 400thb to transport it.
From this point, I assumed, and we all know what happens when you assume, I assumed that I would get the bike fixed and with the minimal damage might be back on the road within a week or two.
This is where the plot thickens, it turns out that the insurance company believes my bike is worth 60’000thb less than what I purchased it for, which means if the bike is to be written off, I lose 60’000thb because of the incident. They are suggesting that the bike may be written off because they only repair a bike if the damage is less than 80% of their perceived value of the bike. So that said, if the damage comes in over 240’000thb, they will write it off!!
Not impressed one bit. The 1st class insurance was not cheap, it was the best insurance possible for the bike, at 34’000thb for one year. Now I am getting insulted and losing out for minding my own business and enjoying a day out on my new bike!
Happy am I? Not much!! Being mechanically minded, I decided to write my own parts list and price them up not on Ebay but with OEM Ducati parts which are pricey. All the parts I can see that need replacing come in at around 210’000thb which is close to the threshold. This isn’t taking into account anything I have missed, or adding the Ducati Mechanics time to repair at 800thb a hour.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that the predicted time to repair from the Ducati Dealership in Bangkok is 3 mths or more!!
Now I am trying to push to have the bike repaired, for the simple fact that the damage is minimal, and that if it is written off I lost a lot of money, but should they decide to write it off, I am planning to try and look at the option to buy the ‘wreck’ back off the insurance company and do the repairs myself with cheaper non-genuine parts which would see me break even.
End of the day this whole incident has left a very foul taste in my mouth, and aside from being lucky I didn’t walk away with more injuries than I have, there is not much of a silver lining.
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