My friend had a very bad motorcycle crash in Laos a couple of years back. A drunken local on a scooter couldn´t steer on a bend properly, so the scooter went straight, and they basically had a head-on collision. Luckily my friend who got hit, is a real expert rider, as he´s raced bikes on and off road before I was even born, so he was able to make some sort of really quick maneuver, and the scooter only hit his left leg and hand.

But it still damn near killed him. He found himself on a ditch, with his left motocross boot on his armpit (and with the leg still inside that boot!)... the big artery, that delivers blood to the thigh and leg, was miraculously not cut, because in that case he would not have had a chance, but there was a lot of bleeding, and pain, and falling unconscious at times. He was taken to the capital Vientiane on the back of a pick-up (a painful ride of about 6 hours) and then on an ambulance plane to Bangkok, where he was operated several times. After a month or so, he was transported to Finland, again on a special flight because he needed to be stretchered, couldn´t even use a wheelchair.

He´s still not 100% recovered, but he´s alive. I don´t know what that mess of intensive care units, operations, chartered flights (and then later on, also all treatment back home) has cost, but I´m certain 100.000 dollars would not really get you far in his case, the grand total is probably closer to 500.000, if not more.

And you know what? It is ALL being payed for by his travel insurance, that he said had cost him less than 100 euros. If he didn´t have it, he could have in fact ended up dead in Laos. The level of treatment there was simply nowhere near to what he received once he got transported to a private hospital in Bangkok. Such places want in advance the certainty, that their patients are able to pay for the treatment, either themselves, or by their insurance companies. So it´s important to have proof of your travel insurance with you as you travel, for situations like this. You may not personally be able to tell anybody anything after the accident.

He´s been travelling & riding all over the planet for many many years, and never really needed the travel insurance. Until this happened.

Maybe this expressed my ´general feeling´ about the subject.