Moments before a high speed collision with a car Tony Provan wondered: "How badly am I going to be injured, am I going to get away with it?"

Now, after losing two toes, suffering months of painful physiotherapy and skin grafts and losing thousands in earnings, he knows the answer.

But he also knows that countless others think they can get away with it every day on Bermuda's dangerous roads.

He would quite willingly give talks at schools about his experience if he thought it would change anything.

"But it would only change things for a couple of days. Unless it happens to you or someone very close people don't think - until they lose a bit of themselves."

He had his own warning signs before, popping a shoulder after skidding in dust.

"That slowed me down for a couple of weeks, then I was back to driving the same as the rest of them - at 60k."

And the irony of it is that now he has truly slowed down there is no escaping road danger.

"I used to drive like a nutter and had a bad accident, now I drive safely but I got hit by a car by someone cutting across Court Street the other day and was knocked off my bike. The cut on my knee was a millimetre from my skin graft."

That skin graft was the result of his nightmare collision late one Friday night on South Road near Ariel Sands.

"I was starting to overtake and saw the car coming towards me but I thought I had plenty of time but she was coming really, really fast.

"I realised she was going to hit me and she did. I remember thinking `How badly am I going to be injured, am I going to get away with it'."

Then he was struck.

"I was holding the bike with one hand and was up in the air, did a somersault and was lying in the road. I was hit on the left side and thrown from the bike."

The driver of the car he was overtaking stopped to help, the driver in the car that hit him didn't says a clearly angry Mr. Provan.

"It was then I noticed that half of my big toe on my right foot was gone and the vein was spurting like hell - six to eight inches in the air."

The 31-year-old computer specialist said a large chunk of his flesh on his sole was hanging free and had to be stitched back on.

He woke up screaming in pain the next day in hospital.

"They ran out of morphine cassettes and they missed my broken arm even though I kept telling them there was something wrong there.

"They never cat scanned it or did an X-ray."

When the oversight was spotted it was already on the mend but needed very painful physiotherapy.

"You would have thought the first hospital you went to would sort it out."

They also removed his second toe which had gone gangrenous and smelly.

Skin taken from a dead person was grafted on after the dead flesh on his foot was stripped of, a method used in case there is any more infection.

Then the cadaver flesh was removed and a large strip of his own skin was taken off his thigh, stretched and grafted on to his knee. He said the process of removing dead flesh was extremely painful.

He said: "They use a mangle to stretch it out and put holes in it.

"The first time I stood up after four and a half weeks of treatment I lasted ten seconds. The pain was paralysing."

Although his overseas treatment was fully covered by insurance he lost about $15,000 in commission from his job because of time off, although he praised his firm Sbi for adjusting his salary structure to help out.

Now he must wear sandals to let the skin graft heal and the injury has ended enjoyable sessions on the golf course and daily gym workouts while visits to the beach are impossible.

"The skin graft will sizzle in the sun," he explained.

He still gets physio three times a week but it could have been worse.

"There was a time I thought I was going to lose the foot, it seemed like there was no pulse there. It would take them ages to find it."

The mental scars will remain as long as the physical ones.

"I am very scared on the roads. I shiver when a car goes past me. It takes me back to in the impact. Everything is fresh in my mind."

He said Government is too lenient on traffic offences. "They want the revenue from the fines. They don't want people off the road."

He had just started to get his confidence back when he was knocked off his bike again.

"I am going to get rid of my bike, no matter how safe you ride, it is a lottery out there."