Category: Awareness

Posted on

53. The five most important things I learned as a courier

I might argue that this article has aged better than a few formal training courses from the same era because it is grounded in exposure to risk rather than theory. These lessons were learned in the days before traction control, cornering ABS and driver-assist systems became commonplace, but the fundamentals have not changed. Modern technology may reduce the consequences of mistakes, yet it does nothing to improve anticipation, judgement or decision-making under pressure. I still see my time as a courier as spent in an informal lab testing theory against real-world hazard management. The common thread running through all five points is not speed, but control of space, attention and stress — the same factors that still separate riders who consistently get home safely from those who rely on luck.

The five most important things I learned as a courier

Some years back, I was challenged to put some tips together based on what I’d learned back in my despatching days. It didn’t take much head-scratching to come up with the following short list:

1) Learn to use the brakes hard, then stay in practice… the last emergency stop that most riders make before they find themselves in the middle of a crisis is the one in front of the examiner. That might be ten years ago, and a very bad time to discover we’ve forgotten how is in the middle of an emergency. Practice practice practice. Practice wet and dry. If you change bike, see how it responds on hard braking. If you change tyres, find out how much grip they have. If you change pads, bed them in, test them out and discover whether they respond the same way as the last lot. There can be surprising variation between batchers.

2) Learn when not to use the brakes… we’ll all experience an “OhmigodImgoingtodie” moment. Instinct is screaming at you “STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP”. But hitting the brakes hard stands the bike upright which may take us straight into the very situation we were trying to avoid.Very often our best route out of trouble is not stopping but changing direction – bikes are pretty small, can change direction quickly and fit thru small gaps, and lean much further than most riders can cope with. But to change direction, we need to understand HOW to steer (counter-steering is the answer), then to practice adding more and more steering input to generate a quicker and quicker change of direction. Practice is the only way we’ll learn this technique and just how much we can trust that front tyre (more than you might expect)

3) Learn to search… most road safety literature – the USA’s MSF course excepted – talks about ‘observation’. The problem is observation is passive. It implies we simply swing our gaze around till something interesting catches our attention. A few moments watching most riders and you’ll see they don’t actually look for anything in particular. They’re hoping their attention is drawn to hazards – the danger is that if they don’t see them until they are a real threat, they’ll suffer SURPRISE! and then survival reactions kick in – see the target fixation tip for more on this. So what we need to do is turn passive observation into a focused and active search. We need to know WHERE to look and WHY we’re looking for it. It’s no good knowing that side turnings are a place that must bike collisions happen but hoping we spot them, we have to search for them – we need to actively seek out road signs, gaps between parked cars, breaks in the lines of house roofs, white paint at the side of the road, dropped kerbs and so on. Searching to either side of our path helps us being taken by SURPRISE!

4) Hang back to make better progress… as a courier, I always wanted to get where I was going with the minimum of delay conversant with keeping the risks down. Most riders follow far too close, and then they don’t look any further ahead than the vehicle in front – next time you’re following another rider look to see when his or her brake lights come on – if it’s a moment after the car ahead, they’re watching that vehicle. Opening up a gap not only gives us a safer following distance and opens up a better view of the road ahead, it also frees our attention to start searching beyond the car ahead. And this is how a good courier will make progress. Rather than simply looking to overtake it, the courier’s planned where they’re going next too. When filtering, the courier will know when to hang back as the impatient riders overtake into a dead end or get stuck outside traffic turning right. Hanging back gets you further ahead mentally and physically.

5) Discover that slow is fast… too many riders think that being on a bike means they should be at the head of the queue. Ever heard anyone say “if I sat in the queue I might as well be in a car”? I have, regularly. But it’s not the right approach. Because they’re in a hurry, they’re stressed and prone to mistakes. And mistakes lead to spills. That’s no good to a courier because a bent bike means no earnings. And no earnings meant no food or rent money. There’s nothing wrong with using gaps where it’s sensible to use them but I would also slip back into the queue when it got too tricky or too risky to overtake or filter. My aim as a courier was always to flow unobtrusively through traffic, neither wedging myself into impossible gaps nor forcing drivers to slow down to let me through. It might have cost me a few seconds, even minutes, but being restrained and patient minimised stress and anxiety and helped me to stay relaxed. Being relaxed meant I could ride for long hours. And that meant the tortoise nearly always overtook the hare in the end.

Summing up: None of these lessons require you to ride for a living, or to ride fast. What courier work teaches is not aggression or risk-taking, but economy: economy of effort, economy of stress, and economy of mistakes. The aim is to arrive unruffled, unhurried and upright, time after time. Riders who chase gaps, sit on bumpers and ride with a constant sense of urgency often believe they are making progress, but in reality they are burning attention and increasing risk. The courier mindset is the opposite. Control your speed, create space, stay relaxed and plan ahead, and you will usually find that you arrive sooner — and far more consistently — than riders who mistake haste for skill.

Posted on

52. The Lurker, the Drifter and the Trimmer

These three road users have not disappeared, even in an era of driver-assist technology. Modern cars may have cameras, sensors and warning systems, but they do not change human behaviour, and in some cases they encourage complacency. The key lesson remains the same: it is not the vehicle that creates risk, but predictable patterns of human behaviour. If there was a major omission, it was that I failed to acknowledge that these behaviours are not confined to car drivers. Motorcyclists can lurk in blind spots, drift between lanes without clear signals, or trim corners and roundabouts just as readily. Recognising these traits in ourselves is as important as spotting them in others, because the habits we tolerate in our own riding are often the ones that place us at greatest risk.

The Lurker, the Drifter and the Trimmer

Every now and again someone sets me a challenge. On this occasion it was to find three types of driver that riders need to keep their eyes open for. Of course, the article actually focuses on three drivers OR riders to on the be alert for. Yes, bikers are just as guilty of these thoughtless bits of riding as car drivers!

The Lurker finds places to hide, concealed spots from which he can leap out and surprise us. If there’s a truck coming the other way is there a lurker behind it? He’ll be right up the tailgate where we can’t see him, and he’ll pop out like a Jack-in-the-box. Our response? Move left, gain some buffer space and a better view. What about that side turning? The Lurker will sit too far back where we can’t see him and he can’t see us, and he’ll lunge forward. Move away, to the right, to gain clearance and a better view. If there are bends ahead with blind areas, then the Lurker will hug the hedge and appear just when we think the road is clear.

The Drifter is a different animal. He expects us to devine his intentions by telepathy. On a multiple lane road, he’ll change lanes by sliding slowly from one to the other, oblivious of traffic, no looks, no signals. Avoid the Drifter by sitting staggered in the adjacent lane, rather than alongside the other vehicle. Keep an eye open for movement, and we mustn’t for a moment assume that the Drifter knows we’re there. The Drifter is a hazard at side roads. He’ll turn across our path oh so slowly. And if he’s going our way, then having blocked our path, he slowly accumulate pace rather than accelerate to match the speed of the traffic flow. Back off and be prepared to match to his. Watch out for the Drifter behind. Keep an eye on the mirrors if he’s following. When we ride into a lower limit and decelerate, the Drifter won’t change his speed, not until he’s trying to ride pillion. Use the brakes to slow so there’s a warning light, and use them very lightly too – that way we’ll only slow down gradually.

The Trimmer thinks that using a bit of our side of the road is perfectly fine because it makes life a bit easier for him, it cuts down the effort needed to steer accurately around bends, roundabouts and into and out of junctions. Watch for the Trimmer coming the other way on left-handers. He’ll cut across the central line so we have to be prepared to tighten our own line by moving to the nearside. Faced with a left-turn into a side road, the Trimmer will swing wide to the right to make the manoeuvre easy, even though we’re coming the other way. If we’re in the side turning, the Trimmer will take a lazy line turning in on our side of the road by cutting across the centre line. The Trimmer will straight-line roundabouts. Even when traffic is busy, he’ll take the straight-line short cut when going straight ahead. Our defence is not to try to overtake across the island.

If you want to learn more about understanding how to manage the risks of riding on the road, why not check out the website and find out about Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses?

Posted on

50. A time to live…

Not long ago, I heard a rider raving about his new bike. His LED lights enabled him to ride faster at night, his high-tech semi-active suspension allowed him to corner faster, and his cornering ABS would sort out the problems… at least, that’s what he believed. The problem he hadn’t spotted is that no-one had upgraded the ‘wetware’ behind the bars. Despite these undoubted advances, a major cause of serious motorcycle crashes remains late perception — by the rider, by other road users, or both. This article’s central thesis is that time is a fundamental survival currency, and the more of it we have, the better-off we are. It’s just is as valid today as it ever was. Nothing here has yet been invalidated by technology.

A time to live…

Have you ever been floored by an unexpected question? I have. I’m not a quick thinker on my feet. It’s why I’m not great at interviews – I like to have someone give me a question and then have time to think about the answer. The same applies out on the road. Putting ourselves in a position where we need to come up with a quick response to an unexpected question, a riding problem that requires a rapid solution causes many of us difficulties. Not surprisingly, what happens unexpectedly is a prime cause of crashes.

So let’s take some time to think about a question for you. What do:

  1. “See and be seen”

  2. “Only a fool breaks the two second rule”

  3. “Position wide for view in a bend”

…all have in common?

The first is straight from basic training, the second is from a road safety campaign, and the third is a general axiom any advanced rider will recognise.

Answer – they all give us time on the road.

What is so important about time? It’s a window of opportunity to see potential danger, and offers time to think what to do. The earlier we spot danger and the more time we have, the more likely we are to make the right decision.

Given enough time, we’d never over-cook it in bends, never be surprised when someone pulls out in front of us, never be caught out by a poor surface.

So gaining space and time is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.

But it doesn’t just work for the rider. We have to be in the right place to seen by other road users so that they too have time to understand what they are seeing, and how they can respond to our presence.

And that’s where ‘See and Be Seen’ must be applied. It’s something we try to hammer into new riders on basic training courses, but so often experienced riders – even those with post-test credentials – seem to have forgotten the basic lessons, and ride as if they are unaware of the risks posed by blind areas and ‘Surprise Horizons’ which may conceal a vehicle. Unless we put ourselves in a place where we CAN be seen, then there’s little chance that driver will consider the possibility that there might be a motorcycle approaching. And when we appear and SURPRISE! other drivers and they are unlikely to react predictably!

An awful lot of “Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you” SMIDSY collisions happen when the biker is hidden in traffic or behind road furniture, or behind the car’s own bodywork. Some studies have estimated it’s around one in five of all ‘Looked But Failed To See’ collisions.

Our lack of width on two wheel is both a disadvantage (it makes us harder to spot) and an advantage (it allows us to change position).

Use the one to compensate for the other. See and be seen. Find some time and use it to live.

Posted on

42. Living with Lifesavers

 

Even with modern mirrors, rear-view cameras, and blind-spot warning systems, the lifesaver over-the-shoulder check remains essential and with increasing use of cycles and e-cycles and ‘micro-mobility’ solutions like e-scooters, even a motorcycle is vulnerable when turning left or right. Technology can alert us to vehicles we might otherwise miss, but it does not remove the responsibility to confirm our blind spots in real time. Combining mirror checks with a brief chin-to-shoulder glance fills the gaps in situational awareness, especially in multi-lane traffic or when vehicles accelerate unexpectedly. Practising these lifesaver checks until they become automatic ensures that riders are less likely to be caught by surprise — No Surprise? No Accident!

Living with Lifesavers

For a lot of riders, the last time they make a lifesaver over-the-shoulder check is the moment they turn back into the test centre in front of the examiner. The reason for making the over-the-shoulder observation is explained early on in CBT – it’s to see into the two problem areas to either side. This area is behind our peripheral vision, yet not far enough back to show up in the mirrors. The blind area is quite big enough to hide another motorcycle and even a car can go missing alongside us. The chin-to-shoulder check ‘clears’ this area with a direct observation. So after all the effort that basic trainers go to, from CBT right up to the moment of the test, why do riders start dropping techniques that are intended to increase their riding safety?

In my article about rear observation, I mentioned that in some cases riders have been told to “forget all that stuff you learned – it’s only for passing the test”. Here’s the really disappointing thing. I’ve heard it from people training advanced riders.

I mentioned that when taking post-test training, the trainee is often introduced to the concept sometimes known as ‘mirror history’. The idea is that if we look in our mirrors frequently enough, we’ll know exactly what’s around us and have complete situational awareness without needing the over-the-shoulder check on basic training.

So the big question is: “can we rely on mirror history?”

Let’s think about what a mirror check achieves. We take a snapshot of the situation that exists at the exact moment we look in the mirror. Two mirror checks are thus two snapshots. Just like comparing two ‘before and after’ photos, we don’t know what happened in the gap between the two. And that means any decision we make on the basis of a sequence of snapshots is, simply put, an informed guess.

How good is our informed guess? The answer is that it’s only as good as our checks.

Hopefully, you can now see that there are three problems with relying too heavily on mirror history:

  1. the first is the frequency of our checks. If we leave long gaps in our rear observation, then pretty much anything can be happening behind us and we simply won’t know about it.

  2. the second is that we can forget what we saw, particularly when traffic is moving in queues. A vehicle can slide forward into the blind spot and if it sits there long enough, we can forget that it was visible some seconds ago and now isn’t where we can see it – I’ve made that mistake myself.

  3. the third is that mirror checks can fail to show a rapidly-changing situation that is about to put us at risk.

It might seem that to solve the first problem we simply need to ‘up’ the rate of mirror checks. Easy to say, not nearly so easy to achieve. The moment that a situation developing in front of us begins to cause us concern, what’s the first thing that goes out of the window? Yes, it’s mirror checks. It’s all very well to say that a skilled rider wouldn’t forget but even experts make mistakes under stress. The answer is not to rely on memory but make a real-time sideways check.

On motorways, riders sit alongside vehicles in their blind spot then wonder why the driver starts to move into their lane. The reason may not be that the driver “didn’t look” as we’re so keen to assume, but in fact “looked, saw and forgot”. So it shouldn’t be a big surprise when we find vehicles in our blind spots that we forgot were there.

And sometimes we’re just looking in the wrong mirror when a situation develops. Some years ago I was following another biker in my Nissan Serena people carrier. We were both in the middle lane of the motorway, and he was looking for a gap in the outside lane to overtake a slower vehicle we were catching. So he was making regular mirror checks to see what was coming up in the outside lane. Meanwhile, we’d just passed an on-ramp and I noticed a car accelerating very rapidly indeed down onto the main carriageway. The Mercedes shot straight through the inside lane, and at the moment the rider made his final mirror check before moving out into a gap to his right, the Mercedes was aiming for the same gap, and crossing through the middle lane behind me.

Naturally, because it was behind me, the rider couldn’t see it in his mirror. He started to move into the outside lane but the car was already in the gap and accelerating. The driver hit the horn, the rider was taken completely by surprise and barely swerved back out of the way.

Now, we can point the finger at the Merc driver but the biker needed to confirm his mirror history – he absolutely NEEDED to turn his head chin-to-shoulder to clear his blind spot. This is the role of the lifesaver. It’s to give real-time information that updates our situational awareness.

Is it dangerous to look over the shoulder at speed? An objection often raised against blind spot checks before committing to an overtake is that it’s dangerous to take our eyes off the car ahead in case it brakes suddenly. I don’t think it should take anyone long to work out that if we’re worried about looking away from the vehicle ahead, we’ll almost certainly struggle to make decent mirror checks too, and it’s unlikely our forward checks will be much better. There’s a simple solution – don’t follow so close and don’t try to force overtakes in restricted spaces. In any case, the quickest and most reliable way to make this final shoulder check is to combine it with a mirror check – follow the glance in the mirror with a chin-to-shoulder check.

We fill in the missing information by combining the two checks, and it only takes a moment longer than looking in the mirror alone.

In the example above, following into the shoulder check AFTER the final mirror check would have taken the rider a fraction of a second but it would have given him that vital update and filled in the gap in his mirror history. His informed guess nearly killed him.

Posted on

41. Getting our retaliation in first – pro-active versus reactive riding

Pro-active riding remains central to modern motorcycle safety. While updates such as advanced rider aids and digital alerts can support our awareness, nothing replaces the skill of anticipating hazards before they develop. By assessing potential conflict points, adjusting lane position, controlling speed, and signalling or alerting other road users early, riders can actively manage risk rather than waiting to react. The earlier we plan and act, the less likely we are to be taken by surprise: No surprise? No accident!

Getting our retaliation in first – pro-active versus reactive riding

Since I launched my Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses back in 1997, the thinking underpinning my approach to riding hasn’t changed at all. I’ve always thought – based on my experience as a motorcycle courier – that whilst we need to plan for things to go wrong, we don’t actually need to wait until people make mistakes around us. We can anticipate problems, then respond in such as way as to cancel out the problem before it develips. Nevertheless, there have been changes in other places, particularly around the motorcycle test itself. The theory test aims to ensure that riders already have a degree of ability to see into the future before they take the practical test, but the first time I saw the hazard perception videos I thought it was a lost opportunity. Despite the latest innovation – the clips are now based on CGI – I still think they are poorly-conceived. Read on and find out why.

One of concepts underpinning ‘advanced’ riding is the idea that we should apply observation, anticipation and concentration to the riding task. The idea is that by avoiding distraction and focusing on the task in hand – riding the bike – we’ll be more able to identify hazards and work out how they might affect us. But there’s another necessary stop – we have to have a plan to deal with those hazard IF things get tricky. It’s no good seeing a car at the side of the road, and knowing it COULD pull out if we don’t have a plan in mind to deal with the situation if it does emerge into our path. That’s the true essence of a riding plan – we know what’s coming next and we know what we’re going to do to deal with it.

But we can go a step further – we may be able to see how a situation could develop and take a course of action which actively minimises or even cancels out the risk.

Back in 1999, I got hold of a copy of the brand-new BikeSafe 2000 video produced by the Thames Valley police. Although it’s now two decades old, it covers some excellent ground. In particular, I noticed the use of the terms reactive and pro-active – two terms I’ve talked about in my training since 1997. At the time, these terms were not in regular use.

Even now, the distinction between them is not so well-known, perhaps because of the way that the DVSA set up their hazard perception videos. The DVSA recognise three levels of hazard, where a hazard is defined as something that poses a threat with a consequent risk of personal harm:

a potential hazard is something that may or may not become a threat

a developing hazard is something that will require an intervention by the rider in the immediate future

an actual hazard needs to be dealt with NOW!

When the DSA (as was) brought their roadshow around the country to show of the new hazard perception videos, one of the clips I was shown revealed a kiddie on a bicycle cycling down a footpath across a playing field to the nearside of the car. The footpath was angled to intersect with the road some distance ahead, and it appeared that the cyclist would arrive at the end of the footpath at about the same time as the camera vehicle.

As you’d probably expect – it’s a hazard perception video after all – I decided that the cyclist was a hazard almost as soon as he appeared, and clicked on him. He carried on down the path, and bunny-hopped off the pavement and into the road just in front of the camera car. Job done, I thought…

…except that I had scored zero for video.

Why? The presenter explained. “You clicked too early”.

Eh? How can you spot a hazard ‘too early’?

The answer is that at the point where I clicked, the situation was still fluid and the outcome could have changed – the cyclist could have veered off the path onto the grass, slowed down or even stopped. He was only a ‘potential’ hazard. So identifying the cyclist as a hazard at this point was too early.

Being slightly bemused by this, the presenter further explained that if I’d left my ‘click’ until he bunny-hopped off the pavement into the road, that would also have scored zero because I would then have identified the hazard too late – in the car, I would have needed to take sudden evasive action to avoid what was now an ‘actual’ hazard.

The ‘sweet spot’ which would score maximum points was a narrow zone where the cyclist had been in sight for several seconds but was still heading for the road and just a couple of seconds from bunny-hopping his bike out into the road. This was where the hazard was ‘developing’ and would leave me time to steer or brake smoothly to avoid the bike rider.

What should be pretty obvious is that if wait until the cyclist puts us into a position where we will have to change speed or direction, then we’re not being pro-active. We’re being reactive. We’re waiting until we don’t have a choice. It may not be an emergency reaction but it’s too late.

Personally, I’m still puzzled as to why the DVSA’s hazard perception clips require such a last-moment response. I’d argue that the earlier we see a hazard, the sooner we can plan our strategy and get into a position where we are able to ‘get our retaliation in first’. Maybe as soon as the cyclist appeared, I could take up a much wider position away from the kerb. Maybe I could accelerate a little to clear the potential zone of conflict before the cyclist gets there. Maybe I could even sound the horn to get him to look round. All these are pro-active responses.

Being pro-active in this way is the next step after anticipation. If working out that the cyclist is on a potential collision course is risk assessment, then being pro-active is risk MANAGEMENT. And the really big plus is that if we’re already taking steps, we’re not going to be taken by SURPRISE! No Surprise? No Accident.

Posted on

40. Overtaking – don’t get caught up with a vehicle turning right

The fundamental error — overtaking without accounting for a right turn — is still one of the most common and most avoidable causes of serious and fatal motorcycle collisions. Increasing numbers of damaged, hidden or missing signs, near-universal use of sat-nav, many more delivery vehicles turning unpredictably, ever-more erratic use of signals; no rider-aid system can detect a driver’s intention to turn across our path. The principle here is therefore unchanged: if there is anywhere a vehicle could turn right, it should be assumed that sooner or later it will. There’s no point blaming the driver after the event. It’s all about anticipating what vehicles are likely to do. Then staying out of trouble.

Overtaking – don’t get caught up with a vehicle turning right

As I’ve mentioned before, overtaking is never ‘safe’ and in fact, a quick look at the accident statistics reveals just how often motorcyclists get overtaking wrong. Passing another vehicle throws up a whole range of potential errors from misjudging speed and distance (and thus time to collision) to observation failures. Not least, we’re always relying on the driver we’re passing to do what we expect. Essentially we’re always taking a calculated risk, so we should be making the pass in such a way as to minimise the chance of something going wrong. But some riders make one of the mistakes that also one of the easiest to avoid; don’t overtake where there is a chance the vehicle we’re planning on passing might turn right!

There’s a slower vehicle we want to pass. But before we commit to the overtake, it’s essential to engage our brain before we engage warp drive.

Let’s start with the ‘look and feel’ of the situation. The vehicle ahead is moving rather slower than we’d expect. Does that mean it’s an easy target for an overtake? Or should it set our Spidy Senses tingling that something’s not quite right. Why might a vehicle be slower than us? It could simply be that the driver’s not in so much of a rush. Or it could mean that the vehicle’s about to make a manoeuvre.

Some years ago, we had a long debate on a forum after an experienced rider tailed a Landrover into a right-hand bend, with the Landie driver on the brakes all the way round. The rider knew the road, and that there was a straight after the bend, so he set up his position ready to overtake as soon as his view of the road ahead opened up. As it did, he cut to the other lane and started to accelerate…

…just as the Landrover continued to steer right, into a farm track he’d never noticed before.

The rider just avoided a collision.

There followed the usual debate about the failure of the Landrover driver to use mirrors or signals. But ultimately, it’s our own responsibility to ask the question “What if…?” and to come up with the right answer. If there IS a place a vehicle CAN turn right, then sooner or later it WILL turn right.

And of course, what was forgotten in all the righteous indignation about the driver’s failings was that “what goes in, must come out”. The rider could have set up the same overtake behind another car, and pulled straight into the path of the Landrover turning right OUT of that farm track.

So it’s not just the road ahead we need to ensure is clear, we need to scan for places a vehicle could turn in.

We need to look for side roads, access roads to car parks or delivery bays, driveways, farm tracks… and more besides. These entrances are often tough to spot. A side turning can be hidden by anything from a hedgerow to a parked van. It was a parked furniture removals lorry that caught me out years ago. It was parked on the grass, so given the long straight ahead, an overtake past a slower car seemed perfectly reasonable. Only at the last moment did I spot the car pulling out from the side turning – the driver hadn’t seen either of us approaching thanks to the same van. Cominig back down the road the other way an hour or so later, I noticed the clue that would have warned me – the finger post pointing into that side road.

There are plenty of side turnings on rural roads, but also plenty of cottages, and each cottage has a driveway. They’re often totally blind, concealed behind a neatly-trimmed hedge. The driver can’t see out, and we can’t see his car either. But there are usually plenty of other clues; the hedge is neatly-trimmed, perhaps with a sliver of mown grass. We might see flowers, a wheelie bin, and even the mirror on the opposite side of the road which the driver uses to compensate for his lack of view. As the No Surprise? No Accident Rhyming Reminder has it, “GAPS=TRAPS”.

In town or country, it’s tempting to overtake slow-moving delivery vans. But pause for a moment. What do delivery vans do? They deliver. If the driver is constantly slowing down then speeding up again, what’s happening? Do you think it might be that he’s trying to spot his delivery address? Is it a good idea to overtake as he slows down? Or should we be thinking about hanging back and waiting for him or her to find the building they’re searching for? What if the van is simply driving slowly? Could the driver be in a strange town and checking the GPS or route signs to find his way? Is it a good place to nip past? If it’s a hire van, and it’s come from a different part of the country, that’s more than likely. Even if we’re looking at a car and thinking that there’s no obvious reason for hesitant driving, it could simply be an inexperienced driver at the wheel. Or maybe it’s a foreign visitor in a hire car, and not used to driving on our side of the road.

If we do decide we’re going to overtake, try to give the driver chance to see us in the mirror. Once committed, pass decisively but slowly enough to be able to take avoiding action. And DON’T BE AFRAID TO SOUND THE HORN – it’s what its there for. If the driver hasn’t seen us coming, the horn will hopefully make him think twice before swinging across the road and into our path.

But don’t give in to impatience. It’s easy to do that, and then we get taken out by a driver turning right into an entrance we didn’t see. We have to be pretty darn certain there’s no way the driver could turn right before passing. There’s a Rhyming Reminder rule for that too – “if you don’t KNOW, you don’t GO”.

Overtake cautiously out there!

Posted on

37. Mirror and blind spot checks – when and when not to!

Some newer motorcycles are now fitted with rear-view cameras and blind-spot warning systems, often using flashing lights or screen icons to indicate nearby vehicles. These can be helpful additions, particularly in poor visibility, but they do not change the fundamentals of rear observation. Cameras flatten perspective (as I’ve discovered with car interior mirrors) and can still leave lateral blind areas unobserved. Blind-spot warning systems are advisory only: they may not detect motorcycles, cyclists, or fast-closing vehicles, and they cannot judge intent or timing. Riders should treat these systems as prompts, not permissions. They may reinforce what the mirrors are already telling us, but they are no substitute for correct mirror use combined with a properly timed shoulder check. Good situational awareness remains a rider skill, not a software feature. Don’t delay or omit a shoulder check because “the light didn’t flash”. In short: these systems supplement situational awareness; they do not create it.

Mirror and blind spot checks – when and when not to!

Around three years after I started riding I demolished my beautiful Honda 400-Four in London. How? I was looking back over my right shoulder when the driver on my left cut across the one-way system in front of me. I was still looking the wrong way as I hit the rear of the car. Not surprisingly, I have been a bit cautious about timing shoulder checks and even mirror checks ever since. But what makes for good rear observation? There’s a lot of confusion out there. Why? Several reasons. What learners are taught changed dramatically as recently as 1997, and advanced groups tend to take a different approach anyway. And of course riders of all flavours forget what they learned. And then there’s the faulty thinking that what’s taught on test is “just for learners”. Throw in some dubious magazine articles, the wonders of YouTube and the internet generally, and the result is almost as many ideas about rear observation and what’s ‘right’ as there are riders. So I’m going to apply a slightly different approach – I’ll review the reasons riders get confused, then rather than say “this is what to do”, we’ll look at just WHY we need to know what’s around us to come up with some better answers.

WHERE DID THE CONFUSION COME FROM – At the time I started as a motorcycle trainer, the old DSA motorcycle test actually required that test candidates had to make a full ‘look-behind’ rear observation. Using mirrors wasn’t good enough – that’s why test candidates used to take the mirrors off for the test, to force themselves to look behind. Before slowing or braking, before indicating and before turning, test candidates as late as the mid-90’s were required to look right back over their shoulder.

Even more unbelievably, the test candidate had to look over the RIGHT shoulder before turning LEFT. I will categorically state looking right before turning left is almost completely worthless. More than anything else, it was probably being trained to make this rearward check that convinced a lot of riders that what was learned for the test was a complete waste of time!

In fact, I agree this check was pointless AND dangerous. Even if we manage to avoid dragging the bars around with us, causing a wobble, looking right back over the shoulder takes time. A couple of seconds. Even at urban speeds, that means we’re covering a considerable distance – twenty to thirty metres – looking the wrong way. It was exactly this kind of look that led to my own crash.

It sounds pretty unbelievable now because even a half-decent set of mirrors will gather much the same information as this old-fashioned full turn of the head, in a fraction of the time. But it was only with the introduction of Direct Access in 1997 that the DSA finally realised motorcycles had been fitted with mirrors for decades and allowed test candidates to use a combination of mirror use combined with more judicious blind spot checks. I still remember being informally ‘tipped-off’ to this change by the examiner. Mind you, even the IAM weren’t consistent on this – I have a older (but not THAT old) version of the IAM book that shows a rider doing the full-on look-behind check captioned as ‘the lifesaver’. That’s not what would have been taught on basic training since 1997.

GET THE BEST FROM THE MIRRORS – Mirrors are there for a reason – to find out what’s behind us. Whilst some mirrors still give a good view of our elbows, most can be set up to give reasonable rearward view. Set them up to give the best coverage – I tend to have the offside mirror up to give a more ‘wide angle’ view, whilst the left is angled behind – after all, I rarely need a view of the pavement. But I can change that on motorways or when in London to deal with multiple lanes going the same way. Mirror extenders that bolt-on between the mirror and mount can improve the view on some bike. Don’t forget, mirrors are convex. That offers a wider angle view but distort distances, making vehicles appear further away than they really are. Be cautious on a new machine until you have got used to judging distance and speed. Mirrors should be checked often enough that we’re not taken by SURPRISE! One tip – I avoid aftermarket mirrors if I’ve broken one because original mirrors are generally optically superior and balanced even if they do cost. Cheap mirrors often distort view and vibrate. I think it’s worth spending the extra.

SHOULDER, HEAD or BLINDSPOT CHECKS – Even the best mirrors have blind spots – so do the fancy rear view cameras as it happens, even if they eliminate the one between the shoulder blades. A police car once tried to hide when I was on my GSX-R750, and it’ll certainly hide another motorcycle, which should make you wonder why other riders persist in following in another bike’s wheel tracks. We can usually ‘clear’ this blind spot by tucking in an elbow (it’s how I let the police driver know I’d spotted him) or rocking our head from side to side.

The others are over the shoulders to the the left and right. Vehicles can lurk in this blindspot so we have to be careful when turning into side roads, manoeuvering round roundabouts or changing lane on one-way streets or dual carriageways. There is only one solution to blindspots (hence the term blindspot check) and that’s a physical turn of the head (hence the term head check) to see what’s alongside us and in the mirror’s blind area. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of confusion about just how, when and where:

riders who get confused about the difference between the full-on look-behind observation and a chin-to-shoulder blindspot check and may – usually during an advanced course when memories of the bike test resurface – try to look too far round

riders who say that ANY head check is dangerous

in the middle is conventional advanced practice, where newly-qualified riders can be actively discouraged from making a blind spot check – the argument is that if mirror checks are frequent enough, nothing can sneak up so relying on ‘mirror history’ (that is, remembering what we saw in the mirrors a moment ago) will be good enough but having been surprised often enough by vehicles – usually motorcycles – that had slipped into my blind spot unnoticed, I’m not convinced

Remember, it’s not a full-on look behind, simply a turn of the head sufficient – chin to shoulder – to see into the blind area (hence the term shoulder check). Anything further back should be visible in the mirrors. So head, shoulder and blindspot checks are more or less interchangeable.

A further advantage to a physical head movement is that it might alert another driver that you are about to do something.

MIRROR BLIND SPOT CHECKS – So how do we make them? Let’s start by asking some key questions:

what am I looking for – the presence (or absence, come to that) of other road users

why am I looking for it – the reason we are looking is to decide if there might be a conflict between what we want to do and what the other driver might do

where am I looking for it – the clue is in the name, we’re filling in the gap between peripheral vision and what we can see in the mirrors, very roughly backward from the line of our shoulders, hence the ‘shoulder check’ name

when am I looking for it – simple enough, before we move away, signal, change speed or change direction

Gathering this information is called taking ‘Rear Observation’ in the language of basic and post-test training. So to sum up we combine:

a rearwards look right behind ONLY when moving off

regular and sensible use of the mirrors

'shoulder checks' (sometimes called 'head checks') which are looks into the blind areas to either side

By doing so, we develop what’s called ‘Situational Awareness’.

WHICH WAY TO LOOK – Since the old DSA system of looking right when turning left completely confused many riders, I tell trainees just use common sense:

look in the direction you are about to move - right before moving or turning right, left before moving or turning to the left

look into any space that's big enough for another vehicle to squeeze into (and don't forget that could be a cycle or a scooter!)

THE REAL LIFESAVER – Probably the most important shoulder check, and one that fully deserves to be called a Lifesaver, is a final blindspot check that confirms it’s safe to take up a different position. It’s usually over the right shoulder before turning right into a side road, but it could be to the left too – for example, before exiting a roundabout after a right turn, and I’d check before turning left too. Many trainers say it’s unnecessary but I remember where I might have overtaken you when I was a courier, and there are cyclists to consider too. It’s also important to check before changing lanes on one-way streets and multilane roads, or where lanes merge back together. The lifesaver CONFIRMS our other observations. The key point is timing. We must make this check BEFORE we start the manoeuvre. If we’re already halfway into a manoeuvre and then look, it could be too late. So, the term ‘lifesaver’ really explains WHY we carry out a shoulder check!

COMBINING MIRRORS and SHOULDER CHECKS – Understand that a shoulder check is NOT a substitute for a mirror check, nor vice versa (whatever you might hear about mirror history). Whilst we often only need the mirrors to discover what’s behind us, it’s important to check the blind spot when we need to know what’s alongside. To save time, don’t make two separate observations, but combine the two – look in the mirror and then turn the head a little further to make the blind spot check. It takes just a fraction longer.

MOVING OFF FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD – There is one exception to the ‘only turn the head enough to see into the blind spot’ idea, and that’s when moving off from the side of the road. On CBT and on the Module One and Two parts of the DVSA bike test, the test candidate IS expected to ‘take rear observation’ before moving off, and this is the full-on, right behind look. It’s safe enough at a standstill. (And as a reminder, if you’re reading this before taking the bike test, you MUST look behind you ANY time you ride the bike in the off-road areas! You’re even supposed to look behind before pushing the bike out of the imaginary garage. On Mod One, if in doubt, look behind.) Nevertheless, on the road I would still combine this check with mirrors – check the mirrors first, THEN make the final check behind. But which mirror? If the road behind is straight, then looking in the right mirror before making the final rearwards check makes sense. But if the road curves to the LEFT behind, the right mirror won’t show anything useful and there’s a risk that we won’t see anything looking over the right shoulder either. When I was a basic instructor, one of the examiners had a habit of getting the trainees to pull up on a left hand bend (probably because it was the only place where there was room to stop for the ‘move off again’ exercise rather than any malicious intent) and it wasn’t unknown for a trainee to look over the right shoulder and not see anything. The curve in the road meant the car coming up behind was behind their left shoulder. A check in the LEFT mirror was therefore a very good idea.

PRACTICE – Work on rear observation so that it becomes automatic. Constantly ask yourself what is behind you – if you don’t know at all times, you need to improve your rear observation! But be aware that just looking isn’t enough. We need to understand what we’re seeing and be ready to act on that information – situational awareness. And there’s one final caution to add. Be certain it’s safe to look away from the road ahead, even if all that’s needed is a glance in the mirrors. This is often forgotten by new riders – like myself all those years ago – and not emphasised enough by trainers. We must time rear observation carefully, and any time there’s something more interesting going on in front…

…then keep your eyes ahead. If I’d known that, my 400-F might have finished the journey in one piece.

 

 

Mirror and blind spot checks – when and when not to!

Around three years after I started riding I demolished my beautiful Honda 400-Four in London. How? I was looking back over my right shoulder when the driver on my left cut across the one-way system in front of me. I was still looking the wrong way as I hit the rear of the car. Not surprisingly, I have been a bit cautious about timing shoulder checks and even mirror checks ever since. But what makes for good rear observation? There’s a lot of confusion out there. Why? Several reasons. What learners are taught changed dramatically as recently as 1997, and advanced groups tend to take a different approach anyway. And of course riders of all flavours forget what they learned. And then there’s the faulty thinking that what’s taught on test is “just for learners”. Throw in some dubious magazine articles, the wonders of YouTube and the internet generally, and the result is almost as many ideas about rear observation and what’s ‘right’ as there are riders. So I’m going to apply a slightly different approach – I’ll review the reasons riders get confused, then rather than say “this is what to do”, we’ll look at just WHY we need to know what’s around us to come up with some better answers.

WHERE DID THE CONFUSION COME FROM – At the time I started as a motorcycle trainer, the old DSA motorcycle test actually required that test candidates had to make a full ‘look-behind’ rear observation. Using mirrors wasn’t good enough – that’s why test candidates used to take the mirrors off for the test, to force themselves to look behind. Before slowing or braking, before indicating and before turning, test candidates as late as the mid-90’s were required to look right back over their shoulder.

Even more unbelievably, the test candidate had to look over the RIGHT shoulder before turning LEFT. I will categorically state looking right before turning left is almost completely worthless. More than anything else, it was probably being trained to make this rearward check that convinced a lot of riders that what was learned for the test was a complete waste of time!

In fact, I agree this check was pointless AND dangerous. Even if we manage to avoid dragging the bars around with us, causing a wobble, looking right back over the shoulder takes time. A couple of seconds. Even at urban speeds, that means we’re covering a considerable distance – twenty to thirty metres – looking the wrong way. It was exactly this kind of look that led to my own crash.

It sounds pretty unbelievable now because even a half-decent set of mirrors will gather much the same information as this old-fashioned full turn of the head, in a fraction of the time. But it was only with the introduction of Direct Access in 1997 that the DSA finally realised motorcycles had been fitted with mirrors for decades and allowed test candidates to use a combination of mirror use combined with more judicious blind spot checks. I still remember being informally ‘tipped-off’ to this change by the examiner. Mind you, even the IAM weren’t consistent on this – I have a older (but not THAT old) version of the IAM book that shows a rider doing the full-on look-behind check captioned as ‘the lifesaver’. That’s not what would have been taught on basic training since 1997.

GET THE BEST FROM THE MIRRORS – Mirrors are there for a reason – to find out what’s behind us. Whilst some mirrors still give a good view of our elbows, most can be set up to give reasonable rearward view. Set them up to give the best coverage – I tend to have the offside mirror up to give a more ‘wide angle’ view, whilst the left is angled behind – after all, I rarely need a view of the pavement. But I can change that on motorways or when in London to deal with multiple lanes going the same way. Mirror extenders that bolt-on between the mirror and mount can improve the view on some bike. Don’t forget, mirrors are convex. That offers a wider angle view but distort distances, making vehicles appear further away than they really are. Be cautious on a new machine until you have got used to judging distance and speed. Mirrors should be checked often enough that we’re not taken by SURPRISE! One tip – I avoid aftermarket mirrors if I’ve broken one because original mirrors are generally optically superior and balanced even if they do cost. Cheap mirrors often distort view and vibrate. I think it’s worth spending the extra.

SHOULDER, HEAD or BLINDSPOT CHECKS – Even the best mirrors have blind spots – so do the fancy rear view cameras as it happens, even if they eliminate the one between the shoulder blades. A police car once tried to hide when I was on my GSX-R750, and it’ll certainly hide another motorcycle, which should make you wonder why other riders persist in following in another bike’s wheel tracks. We can usually ‘clear’ this blind spot by tucking in an elbow (it’s how I let the police driver know I’d spotted him) or rocking our head from side to side.

The others are over the shoulders to the the left and right. Vehicles can lurk in this blindspot so we have to be careful when turning into side roads, manoeuvering round roundabouts or changing lane on one-way streets or dual carriageways. There is only one solution to blindspots (hence the term blindspot check) and that’s a physical turn of the head (hence the term head check) to see what’s alongside us and in the mirror’s blind area. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of confusion about just how, when and where:

riders who get confused about the difference between the full-on look-behind observation and a chin-to-shoulder blindspot check and may – usually during an advanced course when memories of the bike test resurface – try to look too far round

riders who say that ANY head check is dangerous

in the middle is conventional advanced practice, where newly-qualified riders can be actively discouraged from making a blind spot check – the argument is that if mirror checks are frequent enough, nothing can sneak up so relying on ‘mirror history’ (that is, remembering what we saw in the mirrors a moment ago) will be good enough but having been surprised often enough by vehicles – usually motorcycles – that had slipped into my blind spot unnoticed, I’m not convinced

Remember, it’s not a full-on look behind, simply a turn of the head sufficient – chin to shoulder – to see into the blind area (hence the term shoulder check). Anything further back should be visible in the mirrors. So head, shoulder and blindspot checks are more or less interchangeable.

A further advantage to a physical head movement is that it might alert another driver that you are about to do something.

MIRROR BLIND SPOT CHECKS – So how do we make them? Let’s start by asking some key questions:

what am I looking for – the presence (or absence, come to that) of other road users

why am I looking for it – the reason we are looking is to decide if there might be a conflict between what we want to do and what the other driver might do

where am I looking for it – the clue is in the name, we’re filling in the gap between peripheral vision and what we can see in the mirrors, very roughly backward from the line of our shoulders, hence the ‘shoulder check’ name

when am I looking for it – simple enough, before we move away, signal, change speed or change direction

Gathering this information is called taking ‘Rear Observation’ in the language of basic and post-test training. So to sum up we combine:

a rearwards look right behind ONLY when moving off

regular and sensible use of the mirrors

'shoulder checks' (sometimes called 'head checks') which are looks into the blind areas to either side

By doing so, we develop what’s called ‘Situational Awareness’.

WHICH WAY TO LOOK – Since the old DSA system of looking right when turning left completely confused many riders, I tell trainees just use common sense:

look in the direction you are about to move - right before moving or turning right, left before moving or turning to the left

look into any space that's big enough for another vehicle to squeeze into (and don't forget that could be a cycle or a scooter!)

THE REAL LIFESAVER – Probably the most important shoulder check, and one that fully deserves to be called a Lifesaver, is a final blindspot check that confirms it’s safe to take up a different position. It’s usually over the right shoulder before turning right into a side road, but it could be to the left too – for example, before exiting a roundabout after a right turn, and I’d check before turning left too. Many trainers say it’s unnecessary but I remember where I might have overtaken you when I was a courier, and there are cyclists to consider too. It’s also important to check before changing lanes on one-way streets and multilane roads, or where lanes merge back together. The lifesaver CONFIRMS our other observations. The key point is timing. We must make this check BEFORE we start the manoeuvre. If we’re already halfway into a manoeuvre and then look, it could be too late. So, the term ‘lifesaver’ really explains WHY we carry out a shoulder check!

COMBINING MIRRORS and SHOULDER CHECKS – Understand that a shoulder check is NOT a substitute for a mirror check, nor vice versa (whatever you might hear about mirror history). Whilst we often only need the mirrors to discover what’s behind us, it’s important to check the blind spot when we need to know what’s alongside. To save time, don’t make two separate observations, but combine the two – look in the mirror and then turn the head a little further to make the blind spot check. It takes just a fraction longer.

MOVING OFF FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD – There is one exception to the ‘only turn the head enough to see into the blind spot’ idea, and that’s when moving off from the side of the road. On CBT and on the Module One and Two parts of the DVSA bike test, the test candidate IS expected to ‘take rear observation’ before moving off, and this is the full-on, right behind look. It’s safe enough at a standstill. (And as a reminder, if you’re reading this before taking the bike test, you MUST look behind you ANY time you ride the bike in the off-road areas! You’re even supposed to look behind before pushing the bike out of the imaginary garage. On Mod One, if in doubt, look behind.) Nevertheless, on the road I would still combine this check with mirrors – check the mirrors first, THEN make the final check behind. But which mirror? If the road behind is straight, then looking in the right mirror before making the final rearwards check makes sense. But if the road curves to the LEFT behind, the right mirror won’t show anything useful and there’s a risk that we won’t see anything looking over the right shoulder either. When I was a basic instructor, one of the examiners had a habit of getting the trainees to pull up on a left hand bend (probably because it was the only place where there was room to stop for the ‘move off again’ exercise rather than any malicious intent) and it wasn’t unknown for a trainee to look over the right shoulder and not see anything. The curve in the road meant the car coming up behind was behind their left shoulder. A check in the LEFT mirror was therefore a very good idea.

PRACTICE – Work on rear observation so that it becomes automatic. Constantly ask yourself what is behind you – if you don’t know at all times, you need to improve your rear observation! But be aware that just looking isn’t enough. We need to understand what we’re seeing and be ready to act on that information – situational awareness. And there’s one final caution to add. Be certain it’s safe to look away from the road ahead, even if all that’s needed is a glance in the mirrors. This is often forgotten by new riders – like myself all those years ago – and not emphasised enough by trainers. We must time rear observation carefully, and any time there’s something more interesting going on in front…

…then keep your eyes ahead. If I’d known that, my 400-F might have finished the journey in one piece.

Posted on

28. “Don’t search for safety, identify risky — then avoid it”

I’ve actually retitled this particular article since it reinforces the central idea — that riders should stop chasing an abstract notion of “safety” and instead understand “risk in context” — because It reinforces personal responsibility and judgement, aligns with how riders actually make decisions — moment by moment, under imperfect information, and most importantly it avoids the false promise implied by “safety”. Safety is defined as absence of risk and there’s no such thing on the road. Understanding risk, rather than searching for an ill-defined notion of “safety”, remains the key to surviving real-world riding.

“Don’t search for safety, identify risky — then avoid it”

When delivering my Survival Skills advanced motorcycle riding courses, one of the concepts I ensure that is covered in depth is risk, and its relationship to safety. Why focus on risk when it’s so much more usual to hear motorcycle training and road safety experts talk about ‘safety’? There’s a good reason for this. It’s because safety is defined as the ‘absence of risk’. So given that it is impossible to ride without risk, it’s only by understanding risk that we can begin to appreciate whether particular manoeuvres are actually relatively low or relatively high risk. Once we know that, then it’s possible to begin to manage risk and thus attempt to make our riding as safe as possible.

So let’s start by define what we mean by ‘risk’ a bit more clearly? We can say something like:

‘Risk = the chance something might happen X the impact on us when it happens’

It may be a simple explanation but it makes it easier to understand how a hazard might affect us. For example, you’d probably agree that most metal access covers are potentially slippery. But does that mean they ALWAYS pose a risk?

Follow some riders and you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d been treated with teflon as they weave left and right to avoid them in the dry, but if the metal surface is relatively small and flush with the surface, and we are neither cornering, braking or accelerating, then what’s the problem? We can ride over them with no fear of a loss of grip, and we can focus on other issues, such as taking a line that avoids getting close to oncoming vehicles. Even when wet, a small access cover is unlikely to result in anything more serious than a slight twitch even when leaned over. Running over it might be a better decision than shaving past an HGV coming the other way. But what if the metal plate is big? What if it’s just where we’re planning to hit the brakes, to avoid an emerging car? What if we’re carrying serious lean through a corner? And it’s wet too? Now we have a more serious problem.

What I’m getting at is we need to anticipate whether the hazard poses a threat in the context in which we are about to meet it.

One useful place to develop an understanding of risk is to examine the ‘killed and seriously injured’ statistics. If you do that, you’ll discover there are three common crashes:

  • at junctions

  • on corners

  • during overtakes

Then we can drill down further to find out more about the risks of each location.

For example, if we look at crashes at or near junctions involving motorcycles, we find that in an URBAN environment most collisions happen when another vehicle pulls out from a side road, and turns across the motorcycle’s path. Although these incidents are very common (so the risk of a COLLISION is high), the fatality rate is low UNLESS the rider is exceeding the speed limit – then the fatality rate sky-rockets.

But there’s a second collision to consider – when an oncoming vehicle turns right turns across the rider’s path. The risk OF the collision is low (there aren’t very many) but the risk FROM the crash is high (it’s a much bigger impact and far more likely to be fatal).

But once out of town, where speeds are higher, both types of collision are likely to have serious consequences, simply because the speeds are higher.

And in the same way we can find other high-risk activities. If we crash on a corner, we’re more likely to survive if we fall off on a right-hander (in the UK), but on a left-hander we cross the centre line and the resulting collision is often fatal. Overtaking is almost certainly the most dangerous of all biking activities, because there is so much that can go wrong. Not too many years ago, a highly qualified motorcycle instructor told me that “done right, overtaking is perfectly safe”. Hopefully, you read that and asked yourself “is that really true?”. The answer, of course, is that however well-planned and executed, NO overtake can ever be ‘perfectly safe’. We can try to manage the risks as best we can, but there is one element in an overtake over which we have no control whatsoever…

…and that’s the other humans in the mix. We can be trying to do everything ‘right’ and the unpredictable actions of another human can still put us at risk.

So to sum up… to ASSESS risk, we must recognise the potential for any particular activity to go wrong. To MANAGE risk, we have to know our options, and whether we have alternatives open to us. In the case of an overtake, I could simply not attempt it – that would manage the risk pretty effectively. And when deciding whether or not I need to ride over that manhole cover mid-corner, there’s another solution – I could SLOW DOWN! It’s easier to recover from a slide when we’re more upright.

It’s amazing how long it takes riders to actually remember that slowing down is nearly always an effective risk management option.

Posted on

24. Trusting to Luck, Awareness of Hazards, and Risk Assessment and Risk Management

This was a very early post, written before I’d fully investigated concepts like the ladder of learning and later work on the concept of insight training, and risk homeostasis allows us to sharpen it and correct a few early assumptions. My central argument — that riders mistake statistical survival for skill-based safety — is entirely consistent with modern safety psychology. In fact, it aligns very closely with the phenomena known as:

:: Normalisation of deviance
:: Outcome bias
:: Risk compensation / risk homeostasis

The fact that familiarity dulls risk perception is now well established in behavioural science. Repeated exposure without consequence reduces perceived risk even when objective risk is unchanged. My observation that “they stop planning ahead and trust to luck again” is arguably the most important line in the article, and modern thinking has reinforced it rather than undermined it. The ‘six levels’ I mapped out fit well with models I discovered later:

Levels 1–3 → unconscious incompetence / conscious incompetence
Level 4 → rule-based competence
Levels 5–6 → insight-based, anticipatory control

Since this was first written, our understanding of why riders fail to manage risk effectively has moved on. It is now clearer that the problem is not simply a loss of skill, but a shift in thinking. Riders do not consciously decide to take more risk; instead, familiarity quietly reshapes their expectations. When nothing goes wrong, we unconsciously downgrade hazards from “threat” to “routine”, and begin to interpret safe outcomes as evidence of our own competence rather than statistical good fortune. This is closely related to what psychologists call risk compensation: improvements in skill or experience are often “spent” on riding faster, overtaking more often, or accepting smaller margins, leaving overall risk unchanged. The critical difference between riders who continue to progress and those who stagnate is not technical ability, but whether they maintain a habit of questioning their assumptions — actively challenging the belief that because something has always worked before, it will continue to do so next time.

Trusting to Luck, Awareness of Hazards, and Risk Assessment and Risk Management

Risk is a funny concept. It’s always there in our lives, whatever we do, to a greater or lesser extent. The odd thing is that whilst we are sometimes very aware of risk, at other times we tend to forget all about it. Witness the number of people who step backwards off cliffs taking selfies. We also have a skewed perception of what is actually dangerous and what isn’t. Take flying as an example. Compared with driving, which is far more likely to kill us, flying is statistically safer. But most people don’t fly very often, so never really get used to it and we’re also in someone else’s hands and the situation is almost totally out of our control. So how does risk play a part in our riding decisions? What skews our concept of risk?

More than anything else, what interferes with accurate risk assessment is familiarity. The more often we encounter a risk, yet nothing goes wrong, the less we see it AS a risk. If we drive or ride on a regular basis, in situations we are familiar with, we generate such a level of familiarity and a sensation of ‘ordinariness’, we begin to lose awareness of the risks. Worse, we begin to believe we are in control of the risks.

But is that actually the fact? We should be aware of another factor that could be keeping us safe.

And that’s statistics. Crashing badly is rare event.

What do I mean? You’ll probably have heard that the risk of being killed on a motorcycle or scooter is around 30 to 40 times higher than if we’re in a car. And you probably know there are (very approximately) around 350 fatal motorcycle crashes in the UK each year, and that serious injuries (equally approximately) total around 3500.

But those numbers need context.

There are somewhere between 1 and 2 million active motorcyclists who ride several billion miles each year.

So for you and me, when we look at motorcycling on an individual basis, the chance of having a fatal accident in any one year is tiny. The UK is one of the safest places on earth to ride a motorcycle.

I originally wrote this article under the misapprehension – like most people in the advanced riding community, and in road safety generally – that it is good skills that keep us safe. I wrote about how I thought road users including motorcyclists go through a sequence of developmental stages of hazard perception, risk awareness and risk management:

Level 1) we aren’t even aware danger exists
Level 2) we see a hazard but don’t understand how it poses a risk
Level 3) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk but don’t know how to deal with it
Level 4) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk, and react by taking appropriate avoiding action
Level 5) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk, and respond by proactively reducing the risk
Level 6) we anticipate a hazard, and act to eliminate the risk before it can develop

I described those levels in terms of how a rider might respond in the most common collision scenario – the SMIDSY crash involving a driver emerging from a junction on the left.

1) we aren’t even aware danger exists
How would a rider at this level of development rider respond if a car started to emerge from the side turning? Simple answer – having failed to recognise the scenario as a hazard, the rider will be caught completely by SURPRISE! by the emerging car. There will be no planned response to the hazard. The outcome is entirely in the lap of the gods.

2) we see a hazard but don’t understand how it poses a risk
How would this rider respond to an emerging car? The rider may have realised that cars emerge from side turnings, but assumes that as the bike has right of way, the car driver will see the bike and wait. The rider will still be caught completely by SURPRISE! by the emerging car, there will be no planned response and the outcome is still with the gods.

3) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk but don’t know how to deal with it
Perhaps the rider has learned from some previous incidents but what missing now is any form of planned response. Maybe the rider develops excessive caution (perhaps avoiding ‘dangerous’ roads), slows down excessively ‘just in case’, or maybe crashes taking evastic action. The rider is no longer taken by SURPRISE! but there’s no planned strategy to get out of trouble.

4) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk, and react by taking appropriate avoiding action
Now the rider is capable of basic defensive riding and collision avoidance. This is essentially the level aimed at by basic training. The rider will detect the emerging car, and go into a routine to deal with the problem – perhaps slowing down and sounding the horn, whilst being ready to make an effective emergency stop or swerve.

5) we see a hazard, recognise it poses a risk, and respond by proactively reducing the risk
This is essentially the level aimed at by advanced training. Having spotted the junction ahead, the rider will respond PRO-ACTIVELY by slowing to reduce stopping distance, changing position to open up lines-of-sight and introduce a ‘safety space’ before the driver even begins to create a threat by starting to emerge. The essential step is to move from being a reactive rider (who responds AFTER the threat develops) to a pro-active rider (who takes preemptive steps to reduce risk) by constantly asking the “what if…?” question and having a “then this…!” answer ready. This stage is often marked by an attitudinal change. Rather than relying on the other driver to see and respond to the bike (“I have right-of-way”, “the driver should look harder for bikes”) the rider now begins to understand that “it takes two to tangle” – if the driver’s error sets up the POTENTIAL for a collision, the biker still has to ride into it to COMPLETE the collision. After a scary experience, this rider will probably ask “what else could I have done to avoid the situation?”

6) we anticipate a hazard, and act to eliminate the risk before it can develop
This is the next level where the rider has developed ‘insight’, and is the level Survival Skills advanced rider training courses aim to reach. We don’t have to wait until we see a junction. We can anticipate that ANY BLIND AREA – or ‘Surprise Horizon’ – could be concealing a vehicle about to emerge into our path, and we anticipate we haven’t been seen, and take appropriate steps – change of speed, change of line, ‘setting-up’ the brakes – before we even see a vehicle. Or pehaps we see a car still APPROACHING a junction and we consider strategies such as a slight increase in speed to get clear of the junction before the car gets there. And should emergency action still be needed, we are not just ready to brake hard or swerve but have already identified possible escape routes.

With my old CBT instructor hat on, novice riders on CBT are usually in Level 1, particularly if they have car experience because the lessons learned on four wheels do not apply to two.

So where does motorcycle training take us? In theory, a rider with a CBT certificate should be up at Level 4, but in reality, they’re far more likely to hover between 2 (blind faith) and 3 (luck) because there’s too much to cover on CBT to develop anything like proper defensive riding.

Donning my old Direct Access hat, riders at Level 2 would accumulate ‘serious’ faults on the bike test, and riders at Level 3 would pick up minor ‘driving’ faults. So my aim was to get riders to at least Level 4 where they could react reliably to most hazards and get a clean sheet. But if I had time and the trainee was receptive enough, I’d begin to introduce Level 5 thinking where they started to understand how to ‘get their retaliation in first’ by being pro-active in attempting to distance themselves from harm.

And with my post-test headgear in place, I’d definitely want to see Level 5 and preferably Level 6 thinking going on.

What if we don’t take post-test training? Given time and some ‘learning-by-experience’ forced on the rider by a couple of crashes in the ‘School of Hard Knocks’, it is possible to climb to Level 5. There are some very competent motorcyclists out there who have never taken post-test training. We just have to be self-critical and willing to advance.

But even if we do take higher training, there’s no guarantee it will stick. When I wrote the original version of this article, I noted that “unfortunately having passed beyond the sight of the trainer and examiner, many riders slip back to Level 3.” I was thinking in terms of basic training, but I’ve seen it can apply to riders with advanced experience too.

You’ll remember that I said back at the beginning that I originally wrote this article under the misapprehension that it is good skills that keep us safe, so at the time I’d thought this was just the natural erosion of skills and learning that happens as the memories of our training slip further into the distance. That has an effect, of course, but I’d actually hit on the really significant problem when I concluded:

“They stop planning ahead and trust to luck again.”

Why do we do this? It’s that skewing of risk that results from familiarity. The more often we encounter a risk, yet nothing goes wrong, the less we see it. Go back to the KSI stats. Out of those 350 fatal crashes every year, something under 100 happen at junctions. Let’s just make that absolutely clear. With over one million riders covering several billion miles annually, and passing uncounted junctions every single day, in the course of a year just 100 fatalities happen at junctions. The vast majority of us pass junctions perfectly safely all year long. And because things so rarely go wrong it’s easy to begin to believe that it’s our own abilities keeping us safe when the fact is it’s statistics doing the job. Without being aware of it, we are ‘trusting to luck’. And the same issue arises with every other activity on a motorcycle including the two other big killers – cornering crashes and overtaking incidents.

A former police instructor once told me that

“Done right, overtaking is perfectly safe”.

Of course it’s not. There’s always risk. It’s only when we constantly ask ourselves “what if this goes wrong?” that we are in a position to manage risk effectively. The more vivid our imagination, the more likely we are to have a realistic perception of risk. The better our technique, the less risk SHOULD be involved…

…but what if we simply use our skills to take more overtakes? What if we use them to make technically tricky passes? Haven’t we just upped the risk whilst pretending that we’re managing that risk effectively?

We think it’s our skill preventing a crash when in fact, the dice just haven’t rolled the wrong way…

…yet.

Posted on

22. Springing into Summer – polishing off ‘rider rust’

The underlying addressed here — the seasonal degradation of perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills and the way that confidence tends to come back faster than competence — has not changed. If anything, modern riding conditions make the issue sharper rather than softer since modern riding aids can quietly smooth over clumsy motor skill inputs and mask warning signs of rustiness. And motorcycles are increasingly being fitted with the kind of rider-assistance systems that even cover up for lapses of concentration and pour judgement in following distance and awareness of the movements of other vehicles on multilane roads. The machine shouldn’t be covering up for our lapses, and that makes a deliberate, structured re-entry into riding not just sensible, but essential.

Springing into Summer – polishing off ‘rider rust’

Winter’s finally over, the roads are dry and salt free, and the sun is warm on your back. We’ve changed the oil, adjusted the chain, checked the tyre pressures, cleaned the visor and paid for the tax and insurance. It must be time to park the car at last and go for a blast over our favourite rural roads, right?

Wrong. It’s not just time to give the bike a once-over, it’s also time to take it easy, polish up our biking minds and bodies, and rebuild those riding skills!

It’s an easy mistake to think that we can take a ride out on the first nice day in the spring and ride it just like we did on the last fine day in autumn. It doesn’t matter whether we have parked the bike up for three months, or whether we’ve commuted through the winter months. We’re not in the same place physically or mentally as we were. Even if we’ve continued commuting during the bad weather, our brain’s operating on a different planet and looking for different problems. All the skills that became second nature during summer have gone rusty and we’ve forgotten half the problems we’re likely to encounter. One thing I see time and again in the spring, particularly after a trainee has parked the bike and swapped it for a car, is that positioning – both defensive ‘dominant’ positions in traffic and positioning for a better view of hazards has vanished. All these skills need practicing before they become automatic again.

We can all get rusty. Even when I was an all-year courier, I found that my rural road riding skills fell away during the winter months, and one year, due to a change of basic training job the bike remained almost entirely parked up for six months. So back on the bike and taking a nice spring ride out with my buddy Keith, as we headed back to Oxford after a sojourn in South Devon I found myself rather rusty. We’re normally evenly matched, but now I was struggling to keep Keith in sight, and the inevitable happened. Pushing on too hard, trying to up my pace, I made a hideous cock of a corner.

I completely failed to read the bend, thinking it went gently to the left when in fact it led into a sharp and tightening right-hander. Suddenly realising I was too fast and going the wrong way, I mentally warned myself “Don’t brake, Steer”. Then it was “oh bugger” as than I hit the brakes anyway. Of course the bike stood up and headed straight for a five metre drop into the River Exe. I was lucky that there was some run-off into a car parking space to admire the view and I glided to a halt alongside the wall protecting the drop.

So what can we do about this?

Two things. The first is to give our bodies a chance to get in tune. Don’t set off on a 300 mile ‘Winter’s Over’ ride-out, without having done some shorter rides. Remember all those aching muscles and stiff knees when you first started to ride? If you’ve been off the bike for any time, they’ll be right back if you overdo it.

And the second suggestion is to spend just a little time going back to basics. Think about the sort of exercises learned on basic training and maybe on an advanced course. Clutch control, slow starts and stops, Figure 8s, U-turns, emergency braking. We can practice all those in a quiet car park.

Take the bike out initially onto quiet roads and do it alone, not on a group ride. We just need to take our time, keep speeds down a tad, ensure we’re not following close behind other vehicles. Now we can spend some time deliberately hazard-spotting, working on machine control inputs – braking, throttle control, counter-steering – and chosing lines and positions. This way we can ease back into the groove.

Talking to ourselves can help but I wouldn’t suggest a full-Monty police-style commentary on everythign. It require so much mental processing – it’s not a usual activity for the average rider – that the very act of thinking how to vocalise the words to describe one hazard actually distracts us from spotting the next. Keep it short and simple; “lefthand bend, push left, go left”… “tight bend, brake”… “car on the left, move right”. So long as we keep it simple, talking our way through hazards will get us refocused on riding the bike quicker than anything else.

And of course, the same basic principle applies in spades if we’re commuting by car or train. Our biking Spidy Sense is going to be lagging way behind. Slow down, to take time and space to get back in to the rhythm.

And if anything does get a bit scary, slow down! Minor mistakes will cause us to tense up, and then things will only get worse. Drop the speed, take the pressure off, and talk yourself into relaxing. After my near-dip, I slowed down maybe 10% – just 5 or 6 mph on thes fast rural roads. As a result, Keith soon disappeared round the bends ahead but that means I could ride my own ride. No longer chasing, I relaxed and began to enjoy the next ten miles or so. As I relaxed, the speed came back and he wasn’t too far ahead when I reached our next turn-off point.

And of course, why not think about a refresher course? You can book one of these with Survival Skills Rider Training, and we’ll head off to give your riding a service. Even if you have post-test training qualifications, why not get a different perspective by training with another organisation? You’ll not only practice what’s rusty in company with someone to point it out, but you’ll undoubtedly learn a few new wrinkles too.