12:00a.m. 19th May 2008

| By Amy Remeikis

It was a familiar scene for those who regularly travel through Maleny and Montville or Kenilworth of a weekend.

A crowd of people stood on the side of the road, many with their hands to their faces, watching while emergency service workers did their best to make an injured motorcyclist more comfortable.

Not too far from the stricken rider is his bike, its parts littered across the road usually resting against a vehicle with its front end badly crumpled by the impact of the rider.

Yesterday, a 46-year-old motorcyclist was the injured party after the maiden voyage on his Kawasaki ZX-14 almost ended in tragedy on Maleny-Montville Road, just after 10am.

The Gympie man had waited more than three months for his bike to arrive and together with two friends, the experienced riders went on a pleasure ride from their home through to Kenilworth.

They were on the return leg when a woman driver is believed not to have noticed two cars stopped waiting to turn into Palmwoods-Montville Road.

The injured man’s friend said the woman swerved to miss the cars and she and the 46-year-old motorcyclist collided.

“I felt her mirror brush my elbow as she went past and then she hit Pete,” the friend, who wished to remain unnamed, said.

“We’re just all lucky it wasn’t worse than it is.”

Pete was taken to Nambour General Hospital with a suspected broken ankle, cuts and back pain.

He was in a stable condition yesterday afternoon.

The woman was treated for shock at the scene.

Police are investigating the circumstances leading to the crash.

The Montville crash happened at almost exactly the same time as emergency services were called to a similar crash between a car and a motorcycle on the David Low Way in front of Erbacher’s Fruit and Veg.

No one was injured in that accident.

Ironically, yesterday’s crashes came as the state government announced it would launch a major advertising campaign urging motorcyclists to be more careful and drivers to be more aware.

With motorcycles accounting for just 5% of the state’s vehicle registrations but 20% of fatal road accidents, the Sunshine Coast’s hinterland was identified as one of the state’s worst blackspots for motorcycle crashes.

Radio advertisements began yesterday as part of the campaign and billboards and petrol pump advertising will be in place by next month.

However as he watched his friend be loaded in to an ambulance yesterday, one motorcyclist said the issue was more than just those in control of the bike being more careful.

“It’s car drivers,” he said.

“They just don’t see us.”