Motorcyclist lucky to survive on the day his life changed

Glen Rogers says it's thanks to his headgear that he lived. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Glen Rogers escaped with his life when an unlicensed driver roared through a red light and smashed into his motorbike. But things will never be the same again.

Mr Rogers, now 35, a panelbeater and father of two, was riding to work in the morning rush hour along Great North Rd through Avondale.

At the Rosebank Rd intersection, the lights turned green. He took off slowly in line with a bus that was heading in the same citywards direction in the lane to his right.

Halfway across the intersection, the bus driver slammed on the brakes. Mr Rogers, unable to see what was happening on his right, kept going. A car, careering down the hill out of Rosebank Rd, smashed straight into the side of his bike.

"I was thrown on his bonnet," Mr Rogers says.

"My head went right through his windscreen. He was slamming on his brakes by this time, and went right up over the kerb on an angle on the opposite side of the road.

"I flew back off the car and landed on the ground in front of him. I only remember parts of it."

Four years later, he tells the story with a sense of humour. But he was lucky to survive, thanks to a helmet which he has kept as a souvenir.

"My leg was a bit of a mess," he says. "I was on crutches for 11 months but I still have my leg." He also still has "a bit of a crook neck".

He was rushed to hospital, but had more bad luck. "There was a cock-up with the doctors in Auckland Hospital. They didn't do the job 100 per cent. There were some complications."

It was five months before he could go back to work part-time. He got accident compensation, but it paid only 80 per cent of his wages. His wife, now estranged, had to get a second job on Sundays to feed the family.

"It was a bit of a drama," he says.

Mr Rogers had only a learner licence which restricted him to a 250cc bike which he normally rode to work. But on the day of the accident, that bike had broken down and he was riding a bigger bike, valued at $10,000, for which he had no licence.

He got no insurance.

The car driver was a Pakistani on a temporary visa who did not have a driver's licence at all. He was ordered to pay $7500 in reparation, but he got about halfway and the payments stopped. "He had left the country."

Mr Rogers is now back at work at Chandler Paint and Panel Repairs in Ponsonby, but he now drives a car instead of a bike.

"I want to buy a bike, but my boss said it wasn't worth the risk."

Just possibly, a camera catching people running red lights might have kept Mr Rogers' life on track.

"Being on a bike or in a car, it still would have happened," he says. "But he [the other driver] might have thought twice about going through it because it was well and truly red."