Ran into a guy that was going home from it at a gas station. He'd had to lay his bike down to avoid a deer on the way home, got separated from the bike and did a nice slide down the highway for a bit. Bike and him survived with only bruises, thank God he'd been bright enough to wear his leathers.
When somebody says they had to lay the bike down, what they are really saying is that they did not have enough practice or ability to use their brakes correctly when they were suddenly needed; they therefore instead locked the brakes up and caused the bike to fall over. You can always stop a motorcycle faster when it's upright on its rubber tires than when the metal is skidding along the road. Saying "I had to lay it down" is just a way of trying to gloss over the real cause of the crash.
