Category: Behaviour

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67. SURPRISE! The key to understanding – and avoiding – riding errors

Even if rider training still focuses on ‘perfect performance’ to avoid errors, it’s increasingly recognised in other fields where safety is paramount — such as in airline pilot training — that skill alone won’t prevent in-flight errors, and that the ‘startle effect’ — what I refer to as SURPRISE! — is the key trigger that overwhelms even highly experienced pilots. The same applies to riding. It’s rare we outride the motorcycle. Most crashes result when our instinctive ‘Survival Reactions’ take over. Key points like the rarity of crashes and the influence of optimism bias should become fundamental concepts in rider training. Even with advanced ABS, traction control, or stability aids, anticipating the unexpected and preparing a mental and physical response remains the most effective defence against SURPRISE!

SURPRISE! The key to understanding – and avoiding – riding errors

There are only two things we can do on a bike – change speed or change direction. To do that, we use the same inputs – accelerating, steering or braking – every moment we ride. Accident investigators around the world find the same things when they look at bike accidents. Nearly always, the bike wasn’t at its limits; if the rider had applied the correct inputs into the machine, they’d have got out of trouble. The traditional view has been that riders make errors because they either lack skills or they make the wrong decisions. It’s easy to say “don’t make errors”, and the conventional view of road safety has always been that ‘all’ we have to do is avoid errors, then everyone would be safe on the roads. So training has always proceeded along those lines – years ago, I was told that if I “observed, anticipated and concentrated” I wouldn’t crash. Guess what? I crashed. So the big questions are these: “if the machine inputs necessary are only an extension of what we do as a matter of course, and if the errors are recoverable, why do we continue to crash?” The implication is that crashing is rather more complex than we think, and it’s worth asking “how do we know how to avoid an error, if we don’t understand it in the first place?”. But does anyone teach us about crashing? Read on…

After a crash, it’s easy to ‘walk backwards’ along the sequence of events and to produce a timeline of events. Eventually we appear to come to the precipitating error:

  1. we left the road in a bend…

  2. because we were off-line…

  3. because we turned in too early…

  4. because we ran in too fast…

  5. because we braked too late…

  6. because we had no margin for error…

  7. because we misjudged the bend!.

Such a crash is likely to be explained as ‘too fast for the conditions’.

Is that really correct? Let’s go back to the beginning and start again, this time trying to understand WHY rather than WHAT went wrong. Are we saying the corner was too fast for the bike? Or too fast for the rider? In a serious crash investigation, it nearly always turns out that the bike could have got the rider out of trouble. So it’s not machine limitations, but ‘rider error’. If we stop there, the finger is usually pointed in the direction of the rider’s level of skill and judgement and the assumption is that if the rider had better skills, the crash wouldn’t happen.

Now, let’s take another step backwards beyond where the rider left the road, to consider something nearly always overlooked. How did the rider get to the corner where he or she crashed? They had to ride there. And that means the rider successfully negotiated every PREVIOUS corner, to reach the one that he or she crashed on.

So if the problem really was riding “too fast” or “lacking skill and judgement”, how did they get as far as they did? Wouldn’t they have crashed sooner? We know that statistically a crash is a relatively rare event, even for relative novices. So whilst it IS possible it was blind luck that the rider got this far, it’s far more likely that there were some unique circumstances about this particular corner that caused the crash HERE rather than somewhere else. In short, the corner somehow set a trap that the unsuspecting rider fell into.

Whilst we can point to a lack of skill or a poor attitude to riding as loading the dice towards crashing, it’s not just new or badly-behaved riders who crash. Those groups might be at higher risk, but crashes don’t happen exclusively to the high risk groups. The majority of crashes actually happen to ‘ordinary’ riders doing ‘ordinary’ things. Moreover, even expert riders crash, and they often have the same ‘standard’ crashes that the higher risk groups do – at junctions, when overtaking and on corners.

So if experience, skill and even a controlled approach to riding only reduces risk but doesn’t eliminate it, it should be pretty clear that something rather more complicated is going on. And here’s where we can turn to the work of US rider coach Keith Code. He realised that even good track riders crashed and noticed that in many of these crashes, the rider COULD have got out of trouble. But when things started going wrong, these riders didn’t respond as expected. Instead, Code identified a string of inappropriate reactions including ineffective and frozen steering, over- and under-braking errors, and target fixation. He concluded that it was these errors that caused most track crashes. He called them ‘Survival Reactions’.

You should be able to see the parallel with accident investigations on the road. The bike COULD have got the rider out of trouble, but like the track rider, the road rider also froze, over-reacted and target fixated into the crash.

Next backwards step. If it’s these ‘Survival Reactions’ that dump us on our backside, why DO we react inappropriately in some places and not others? What triggers the ‘Survival Reactions’? Code put it down to the threat of personal harm, because the moment we’re afraid of something we’re likely to revert to instinct. Instinct, being based on the most primitive part of the brain, rarely provides the right response when riding a bike and our trained responses, everything we’ve learned, goes straight out of the window.

So far, so good, but there’s another pace backwards we can take, by asking “what triggers that fear of personal harm?” Factors acting a ‘stressors’ – that is, making us tense and anxious – such as riding on a road that technically trickier than we’re used to or riding with buddies quicker than us – appear to make us more prone to making a mistake, but don’t seem to explictly trigger Code’s ‘Survival Reactions’.

The trigger appears to be SURPRISE! It’s SURPRISE! that overwhelms our learned behaviour and kicks in the in-built instinctual responses to a threat. The bend tightens. We’re suddenly aware we could run off the road. ‘Survival Reactions’ kick in. We freeze and run off the road. We grab a big handful of brake and lock the front wheel. We target-fixate on where we’ll crash rather than look to see where the road goes.

Let’s take one final backward step. What triggers SURPRISE? The answer is remarkably straightforward. By definition, it’s when something happened that we didn’t expect. It’s a straightforward anticipation failure.

Now, I can already hear people saying “but if you’d observed, ANTICIPATED and concentrated…”

But when was the last time you crashed on a corner? As I mentioned earlier, crashes are remarkably rare events.

As I mentioned, a lack of experience and a lack of skill means we’re at higher risk of a crash, but the longer we ride without a crash, the simple truth is it becomes more difficult for us to mentally view a bend as a high risk area. It would be a mistake to call this complacency – it’s a function of the way our brains see the world outside. We’re biased towards looking on the bright side – for more on this, have a read of a book called ‘The Optimism Bias’ by neuroscientist Tali Sharot. The more we do something, and EVEN THOUGH THE RISKS ARE UNCHANGED, the less aware of the risks we become. Ask any builder who’s fallen off a ladder.

If there IS a risk of complacency, paradoxically it’s likely to come after more training. Think about it. The language of riding, driving and road safety generally is about “getting better” and the better we get (in this case, the fewer scares we have mid-corner), the more likely we are to assume everything will go right. The combination of training (which tells us that skilled riders have fewer crashes) AND a crash-free history leads us to believe it’s our training keeping us safe, rather than the laws of chance. Just like tossing dice, each bend comes with a level of risk, and we just haven’t met that unique set of circumstances that could trip us up…

…yet.

Don’t believe me? Roadcraft talks about being prepared for what we can “reasonably expect to happen”. If we don’t get caught out in a corner, that becomes the ‘reasonable’ option. We may not realise it but that’s what our repeated experience is teaching us. But what it doesn’t take away is the risk that the very next corner could be the one that’s laid a trap just for us.

Once we understand this, ‘inexplicable’ crashes start to explain themselves.

Hopefully, now we are aware of how repeated experience and optimism can warp our assessment of risk, we’ll see how to defeat SURPRISE! Instead of planning for “what we can reasonably expect to happen” and thinking that “I’ve done everything I can to ensure the corner goes right”, we MUST reverse our thinking 180 degrees and prepare for UNREASONABLE events. We need to plan for the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ to see a bend might go wrong, rather than planning the ‘right way’ to ride around it. As I explain on my Survival Skills advanced rider training courses, predicting the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ isn’t difficult, but really is a very different mindset to the standard ‘right way’ approach to riding.

Achieving this pragmatic “I’ve taken all the precautions I can but anything could still go wrong ” mindset is known as developing ‘insight’ and has been used successfully in risk management training in other fields. What’s very interesting is that the latest research is suggesting that with just a modest level of machine control ability, developing the insight that engages a “what could go wrong” mindset has significant benefits. I suggest this is because if we’re expecting something to go wrong, when the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ turns up mid-corner, we’re far less likely to suffer SURPRISE! for the simple reason we had predicted it. That would seem to be the way to defeat Code’s inappropriate ‘Survival Reactions’.

So how can we plan for what might go wrong? It’s simple enough – we just need to look at where other riders got it wrong! That’s where we are most likely to caught out ourselves. The three ‘standard’ crashes are at junctions, on corners and during overtakes and they happen to novice and expert riders alike. Once we realise that, it’s easier to be on red alert.

There’s one final step. Even if we correctly anticipate an emergency and avoid freezing, over-reacting or target-fixating, we really need a pre-planned response to beat SURPRISE! If we have to figure out a solution on the fly is about as likely as pulling a rabbit out of our crash hat. We need to know whether we’re going to need to change speed, change position, sound the horn, swerve or hit the anchors BEFORE the emergency starts to develop, or those ‘Survival Reactions’ will still kick in. That’s why even highly trained and highly experienced riders still fall victim to age-old crashes.

So yes, by all means observe, anticipate and concentrate. But learn about crashing, understand ‘Survival Reactions’ and then use that knowledge to anticipate where things will go wrong, rather than how they might go right. That’s the best way to deal with SURPRISE!

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65. Seven reasons SMIDSYs happen

This is another early article which seeks to understand the ‘Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You’ SMIDSY collision between a motorcycle and a car, and to go beyond the simplistic “the driver didn’t look / didn’t look properly” ‘explanation’ relied on by road safety. SMIDSYs remain the leading cause of motorcycle crashes at junctions. The focus on human perception limits, positioning, and proactive riding is fully consistent with modern collision research and advanced rider training. A few years back I gave it a mild re-write to make it a little clearer, fixed some typos and added some extra comments based on my more recent investigations on motion camouflage, peripheral blindness, saccadic masking, size-arrival effect, and workload. The analysis remains accurate and supported by contemporary cognitive science and traffic psychology. As I explained in the earlier article, it’s important for us motorcyclists to realise that the SMIDSY is a ‘Two to Tangle’ collision. That is, if the driver SETS UP the conditions in which a crash CAN happen, the motorcyclist still has to RIDE INTO IT to complete it. That means most junction collisions are avoidable.

Seven reasons SMIDSYs happen

Another day, another ‘biker down’ forum thread. What happened? The rider is minding his own business on a main road, a car pulls out from left, the rider doesn’t manage to take evasive action and takes a trip to hospital in the back of an ambulance. It’s so common, it’s something that virtually all riders are aware of.

Unfortunately, along with the ‘get well soon’ messages, it also generated the usual non-thinking “drivers kill bikers” responses. So, let’s drag ourselves out of the blame culture the entire country seems to be slipping into, and see if we can work out why the “Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You” SMIDSY crash is still happening, one hundred years after the first intrepid riders powered off on two wheels.

One of the common factors revealed by accident analyses by expert collision investigators is that many of these crashes COULD be avoided IF the rider:

  • saw it coming

  • responded in time

But looking at crash stats we’re no better at avoiding them than motorcyclists back in the 1950s. Collisions at junctions remain the most common collision between a car and a bike. So here are SEVEN REASONS SMIDSYs HAPPEN.

There are some pretty well-documented problems.

1 – the ‘See and Be Seen’ issue – we have to be where the driver can physically see us for him to have a chance.

This is still one of the toughest concepts for riders to get their heads round, not least because so many safety campaigns are aimed at drivers and telling them to ‘look twice’ or ‘look harder’ for bikes. But it’s no good the driver looking harder if we’re in the wrong place. If the driver’s to have a chance of making the right decision, we have to open up a line of sight to the driver’s eyes. Before anything else, we need to do is to LOOK for places where vehicles pull out. If we do that, then we can work out what the driver can and can’t see, and POSITION our bikes where the driver has a chance of seeing it. It’s no good knowing the junction is there if we’re in the wrong place; unless Superman is driving we’re invisible.

[Recent stats suggest that around 1 in 5 junction collisions happen when the rider isn’t where the driver could see the bike. It’s not just roadside furniture but also the internal structures of the car too. We NEED that line of sight to the driver.]

2 – the ‘camouflage’ effects of lights and multi-coloured bike/clothing – riding lights, hi-vis and bright clothing don’t necessarily help you be seen.

Ever since the 1970s, it’s been assumed that if bikes are hard to see, then using day riding lights (DRLs) and hi-vis or light-colour clothing would drivers spot them. Early laboratory research appeared to support that theory. In fact, when we look at accident statistics, there’s little evidence for a significant change – we have just as many ‘looked but failed to see’ collisions at junctions as we ever did.

First of all, hi-vis clothing depends on making a contrast with the background. Ever looked at a yellow hi-vis vest against spring foliage? Almost the same colour. An orange bib will be invisible if you happen to be outlined against autumn leaves or an RAC van. Oddly enough, the colour that probably stands out best is pink – ask yourself how often do you see something pink as you ride? Nothing in nature and few buildings or vehicles!

Meanwhile, Multicolour clothing and paint schemes tend to break up the solid shape that the brain detects as ‘bike and rider’. It’s known as dazzle camouflage and has been used to hide targets by disguising their outline. The visual recognition system in the brain works by recognising shapes the brain has memorised and ‘flagging’ them for more attention (think vintage car owners waving at each other!). Break up the outline and there’s a risk that the a bike doesn’t leap out amongst other traffic and shout “BIKE”, and you can vanish from the driver’s perception. I well remember a tale told by a friend of jumping out of her skin when confronted with two ghosts in the local churchyard, one with no legs, the other headless. It was only when they greeted her that she realized it was two locals from the village. The woman’s shock of grey hair vanished against the grey stonework of the church and the man was wearing dark grey trousers that were invisible against the sloping path behind them. There’s also evidence that lights can actually hide the bike behind them, particularly if you are one of those riders who ride on main beam. The blur of light makes it difficult to pick out size (and thus distance) and speed.

3 – the difficulty of picking up an object headed directly towards us – a motorcycle approaching a driver at a junction isn’t moving across the background because it’s on a near-collision course until the last couple of seconds. ‘Motion camouflage’ – our difficulty in detecting something that is moving straight towards us – and the consequent ‘peripheral blindness’ were known about decades ago in the biological sciences and are behind the hunting patterns of many animals. But only recently has the issue been recognised as applying to humans attempting to detect other vehicles. The suggestion about a positive change of line came originally from an instructor buddy of mine. The eye IS sensitive to lateral movement in peripheral vision, and he develop the idea further into the Z Line, which I talk about in my Science Of Being Seen (SOBS) presentations, and also on the SOBS blog at http://scienceofbeingseen.wordpress.com

And that assumes we’re looking in the right place. The eye only has a very narrow cone of clear focus. The rest is blurry peripheral vision. When searching around a scene, we aim this focused vision at specific points which attract attention (see the comment on shapes above). By jumping from point to point, these ‘fixations’ create a picture of what’s around us. But not everything attracts attention. So our bike could be missed as we move our eyes and fall into a ‘saccade’. It’s known as saccadic masking.

4 – experienced drivers fail to scan the whole distance between where they are and the gap they are about to emerge into – it appears they subconsciously assess the kind of road they are emerging onto and look straight into the distance – a bike CLOSER than that gap will be out of the central focus and thus will be invisible until the movement across the background is noticed in peripheral vision which will only happen when the bike is right on top of the viewer (see 3)

This is a learned ‘energy-saving’ phenomenon. The brain consumes huge amounts of the body’s energy supplies so it employs techniques that reduce energy consumption, and one of those techniques is learning short-cuts that have the same effect. We’re taught to look for vehicles when we are waiting to emerge at junctions, but it’s not a very effective strategy on a busy road, because what we need to spot are the gaps! Research initially suggested this was a problem for experienced car drivers who learned by experience, but other studies have suggested ALL road users – motorcyclists included – learn very rapidly indeed that a strategy of ‘looking for other vehicles’ fails at busy junctions, so that we switch to searching for gaps. In nearly every case, it works (if it didn’t, every single junction would be littered with smashed cars) but occasionally it doesn’t. The risk now is that a vehicle close up to us goes missing because we’ve focused behind it on the gap. And we pull out, unaware there is a vehicle between us and the gap. It’s often a motorcycle but whilst some research suggests that whilst drivers make just as many SMIDSY errors in front of other cars (which we might expect), other research indicates that – adjusted for exposure – motorcyclists also pull out in front of other motorcyclists almost as often.

5 – the emerging driver has to look two ways at once… this automatically much more than halves the amount of time he has to see you (think about it – he has to turn his head then refocus in your direction!). Just because you’ve had the driver in clear sight for 10 seconds and thus have had plenty of time YOURSELF to identify and assess the risk, doesn’t mean the driver has had more than a couple of seconds to spot you – and if he looked in the wrong place….

This comment highlights the ‘Two to Tangle’ issue – the rider caught out by the SMIDSY crash can normally see it coming for several seconds before things start to go wrong, but doesn’t use this time effective to prepare. It also hinted at the driver’s problem of ‘saccadic masking’, which is an effect where our vision shuts down when we’re turning our heads quickly – it’s to help preserve balance and prevent the nausea caused by the background rushing past our eyes – think travel sickness. The very latest research – in September 2019 – also suggests that when traffic gets heavy, drivers don’t just lose track of motorcycles, they forgot they saw one. It’s another weakess of the brain – it has a limited ‘buffer’ in which these short-term visial memories can be held ready for processing.

6 – the effect of size – Even when we do spot a motorcycle approaching, it’s difficult to judge speed and distance correctly when it’s heading straightwards us. Viewers overestimate distance and underestimate speed of small objects. Drivers have trouble spotting bikes, and then even more trouble working out where they are and how much time the driver has to make the manoeuvre. Known as the size-arrival effect, which leads to drivers under-estimating speed and over-estimating distance of bikes compared with cars and vans.

7 – the emerging driver has a very complex set of tasks – they have to engage the right gear/slow/stop/steer on the final approach, check both ways, make sense of the information being gathered and plan their own manoeuvre.

By comparison, the approaching rider has a much more simple set of tasks – spot the vehicle at the junction, decide if they can be seen/have good clearance/are on a good bit of surface, decide if they need to slow. This led me to look more indepth at the concept known as ‘workload’, which I’ve talked about in another article. It’s significant – the driver looking to turn out of a junction has a LOT more to monitor than the rider approaching the junction.

FINALLY…

Whatever the reason for a SMIDSY, it makes sense to be proactive – to make preparations for things going wrong – check behind, cover the brakes (possibly even set them up by applying them lightly) and prepare to brake or swerve. Then we’re much less likely to be taken by SURPRISE! and require our own ambulance trip to hospital.

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62. Do you need to blip the throttle on a downshift?

Sometimes I am baffled as to why certain techniques get treated as ‘only for learners’ and this is one – easing the clutch out on down-changes versus the ‘advanced’ technique of “blipping the clutch”. There may be classic machines with gearboxes that reward a blip on downshifts, but modern motorcycles rarely need them. With the increasing focus on motorcycle noise, which has led to bans on some roads in Europe, unnecessary high-rev blips increase noise, so that’s another reason to favour easing the clutch.

Do you need to blip the throttle on a downshift?

In case you’re not familiar with what I mean by a ‘blip’, it’s a little tweak of the throttle, just as we pull in the clutch lever, to raise the revs momentarily. And there’s always an argument about whether or not we need to ‘blip’ the throttle on a down-shift, with many experienced riders telling novice and newly-qualified riders that it’s a skill they need to learn. Why?

The usual argument in favour is that it matches the engine speed with the road speed ready for the lower gear, and it thus kinder to the gearbox. I’ve seen it argued that blipping the throttle stops the dogs in the gearbox clashing as they engage, thus resulting in a quieter and mechanically more sympathetic change. Maybe that’s true, but I’ve never broken a gearbox and most of my bikes have reached high miles. A couple have gone over 100,000 miles and one despatching GS500, which must have done more gear changes per mile than most, lasted to over 140,000 miles. I’m not saying the reasoning is wrong but in terms of wear and tear on a modern bike, I doubt it’s anything the average rider needs to worry about.

A second argument is weighted towards ‘spirited’ riding, where riders are generating a lot of engine braking to slow the bike, so changing gear at relatively high revs. It’s true if we do that and dump the clutch again, it can momentarily lock-up the rear wheel as the lower gear ratio tries to spin the engine faster. It’s why some machines have slipper clutches. So a blip of the throttle helps avoid this lock-up. But to be honest, I’m rarely riding that rapidly on the road that I need to avoid this issue.

A third argument is that if we don’t blip, but let the clutch out slowly, we’re ‘reverse loading’ the clutch. Imagine slipping the clutch from a standstill. It’s doing the reverse, and that supposedly wears out the plates. Well, that GS500 was on its second clutch, but my 80,000+ Hornet is still on the original, despite lots of gear shifts.

At number four is my favourite explanation. “Blipping is a more skilful technique”. Says who? And why is making life more complicated automatically equated as greater skill? And it IS more complicated, and having spent many years training riders, it’s actually quite a tricky skill to master. Remember, the usual reason for selecting a lower gears is because we’re slowing down. We may be braking to slow, and now, if we want to blip, we have to make a wrist movement to open the throttle at the same time as we have our fingers pulling on the front brake lever. If we don’t this right, each tweak of the throttle also give the front brake an extra tug. And now the bike slows in a series of jerks rather than a smooth progression. Not so easy, after all. So many riders – including some with a lot of experience – dispense with braking entirely to rely on engine braking alone. Now, to lose a lot of speed, they end up forcing the bike down into unnecessarily low gears because it’s the only way to generate the deceleration that would have been achieved far more easily with the brakes.

So, let’s backtrack and see what we’re actually trying to achieve. The answer is a downshift, where the transition between gears is made smoothly.

Once we figure that out, it should be obvious that just HOW we accomplish the smooth shift is less important than making the shift smooth!

There’s a much simpler way, and we teach it to new riders; we pull the clutch lever in, shift the gear, then ease the clutch back out so that the clutch slips initially as it spins the engine up to the higher speed. Whilst the clutch smooths out the gearshift, we can focus on using the front brake effectively without the complication of trying to tweak the throttle. It’s much easy to brake smoothly.

Why this slipping technique is frowned on in certain circles I have no idea. After all, we have to slip the clutch to pull away. The clutch is there to smooth the transition between gears, and can equally well be used on down changes as well as up changes.

My own opinion is that for a road rider, the technique is a bit of a hangover from the clunky old gearboxes of yore. It was certainly useful to get a smooth shift on some 70s and 80s Moto Guzzis and BMWs I rode, but I genuinely can’t remember the last time I rode a Japanese bike that really NEEDED a blip of the throttle for a smooth downshift. It’s also useful on the track, where we are downshifting at high revs.

Now, that’s not to say that raising the revs momentarily is NOT useful in certain circumstances. Personally, I do twist the throttle slightly to lift the revs a little, but then I’m rarely trying to use the front brake at the same time – if for some reason I’m having to brake hard, I tend to leave the gears for later and focus on getting my speed off. But a little blip also helps to match revs when maintaining speed – perhaps when downshifting to a better gear prior to overtaking, or ready to climb a steep hill.

When I do blip, I don’t give the throttle a big twist sending the revs rocketing skyward. It’s a subtle movement with a subtle result. It’s always seemed to me that the big handful approach is not only obtrusive in terms of environmental sensitivity, it’s ham-fisted too. And it’s just as unlikely we’ll match the revs accurately as if we simply dumped the clutch on a closed throttle. If the back tyre is playing hopscotch, then it’s likely we’re shifting at too high revs and mis-matching our blip to the clutch movement.

If you do want to learn to blip on a down change, remember the object of the exercise is NOT to bounce off the rev-limiter on every blip, but a subtle adjustment of the revs upward to allow the smoother selection of the lower gear. Don’t shift when the revs are too high either – so long as the motor is spinning somewhere around the middle of the rev-range, that’s about right for the road – we have the ability to generate more engine braking as needed, or we can accelerate away again. The easiest way to develop the technique is to roll off the throttle earlier than usual (remember to keep an eye on the mirrors) so that the brakes aren’t needed, then it’s relatively easy to practice the blipping technique without getting the front brake in a a tangle.

To sum up, my conclusion is that like many techniques, there’s no clear cut ‘yes, we must’ or ‘no, it’s not necessary’ answer. It’s neither right or wrong, but one more technique to learn and use when appropriate.

So… blip if you want to… learn to blip if you can’t… but don’t feel there’s a problem if you don’t.

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60. Sit back, close your eyes, relax… and hope for the best

I still remember that drive, and how the roundabout incident was followed almost immediately by the petrol station event. The lesson is simple but crucial: never assume other road users will do what you expect. Right-of-way is a legal concept, not a guarantee of safety, and mistakes on both sides — the driver failing to see the bike, the rider failing to anticipate “what happens next” — continue to have serious consequences for the rider. Junction collisions and overtaking errors are still among the most common causes of motorcycle accidents, and rider behaviour that overestimates their own skill or underestimates risk continues to be a major factor.

Sit back, close your eyes, relax… and hope for the best

“We can learn a lot by watching other riders”. Someone told me that a few years back, whilst suggesting that we don’t really need rider coaches like me, nor programmes like my Survival Skills advanced training courses. All we have to do, he told me, is watch how other riders deal with situations and then copy them. Unfortunately, there’s a major assumption built into that particular plan; that the rider we’re watching is actually a role model from whom we should actually be learning.

It was a lovely warm evening in early April, so I took the (t)rusty old Nissan Serena people-carrier down to Eastbourne to watch the Eagles take on the Poole Pirates at speedway. There were plenty of riders out taking advantage of the warm evening sunshine too.

And plenty of examples of poor riding.

Poor positioning on right handers, hugging the white line through a curve so I had to keep moving left to avoid decapitating oncoming riders was a favourite, as were the obligatory duff overtakes.

I saw plenty of the latter, but one in particular was a cracker. Rider 1 begins to overtake and Rider 2 follows. But Rider 1 decides NOT to go for the two car pass that Rider 2 is clearly expecting and slides into a one bike-sized gap between the vehicles. Rider 2 is of course left hung out to dry. Fortunately, there was plenty of room for rider 2 to complete the overtake. Except Rider 2 didn’t, and decided to try to squeeze into the same gap.

But we should know that junction collisions are the most common crash of all, and it was two incidents at junctions that particularly stuck out.

Here’s the first. I’m in the Serena, waiting to turn right at a mini-roundabout, with a stream of traffic approaching from the left who would have to give way to me when I move forward. Unfortunately, the view to my right – the direction where I have to give way to traffic – is partially obscured.

Now, put your biking hat on, and imagine you’re approaching from that direction, where I’m searching for vehicles to my right. So my Serena is ahead and sitting on your left.

Here’s the problem. You’re approaching the junction around a bit of a kink which means your view only opens up quite late. And what you see is my Serena, and a big gap in that stream of traffic that’s been coming the other way.

Let’s hit PAUSE.

What could we anticipate? Firstly, as our machine’s appeared around that kink, does the driver of the Serena know what’s approaching from his right? If he didn’t spot us on his last check to the right, what’s likely to happen?

It’s not difficult, is it? With nothing apparently coming from his right, he can pull out, but now the Serena driver’s attention is almost certainly to his left, to make sure that vehicles approaching from THAT direction give way to him.

So back on the bike, what can we do?

Slowing down would be a good starting point. Covering the brakes would be a second. Watching the vehicle to see if it begins to move would be a third. Being prepared to sound the horn and hit the brakes hard would be a fourth and fifth.

Fortunately I DID spot the bike just as I was about to pull out, and I watched him as he approached and passed through the junction. He did none of these things. In fact, he approached (I guess) at around 10 mph over the 30 speed limit, and straight-lined the mini-roundabout riding straight over the paint blob. He didn’t slow, he didn’t look once in my direction, and I could see he wasn’t covering the brakes or the horn.

Not only would he have been in big trouble had I emerged, but had the last car in the opposing stream turned right across his path, he would have been hard-pressed to avoid a collision. This guy was oblivious to the very real danger posed by the road layout. Why? Lack of knowledge? Or an assumption that he had right-of-way and that other drivers should signal their turns? My guess is the latter.

Two lessons. Just because an oncoming vehicle isn’t signalling to turn right doesn’t mean it won’t turn right across your path. Just because you have right of way over a vehicle on the left, it doesn’t mean a driver won’t pull out across your path. Don’t assume!

Just a mile up the road, I had to fill up before heading to Eastbourne. The filling station is on the other side of the road, so it meant that I had to turn turning right to get back onto the road – that direction happens to be to the west, and we’ll see why that’s important in just a moment.

Once gain, there’s a slight kink just where the filling station is, so now I can’t see left OR right. So like most drivers, I wait for a nice big gap in the traffic stream coming from my right. And when I get one, I pull forward to the centre line, and wait till a gap or some kind soul lets me complete my turn. Predictably, after I’ve sat there for a couple of seconds, a car driver hangs back and flashes me out.

Fortunately for Larry Lackwit on the bike approaching from my right, I’ve already clocked him at a distance, and double-check back to my right to see where he is before acting on the headlight flash.

Because Larry decides that he can make a point about him having right-of-way by aiming his bike for the metre-wide gap in front of my Serena.

If I’d just started to move as I double-checked, I would have punted him straight into the front of the car that had stopped to let me out, and we’d have been calling the emergency services. If I’d already gone without looking, he’d would have buried himself in my driver’s door at 30 mph. He probably wouldn’t have needed an ambulance.

Doubly-fortunate for him, the reason I knew he was there was because I’d been double-checking back to the right even when sat blocking the lane. And I’d looked VERY CAREFULLY because the light of the setting sun was right behind him. Even with his headlight on, he wasn’t easy to spot.

Lesson? Another simple one about being impatient. Why put ourselves into dangerous situations simply to show off our right-of-way? It wouldn’t have saved more than ten seconds – he could have just rolled off the gas, waited for me to complete the manoeuvre, and been on his way with barely a moment lost.

And remember, if the sun is behind us, we have a lovely clear view ahead with everything picked out in the evening light. Check the angle of shadows of the bike. If we’re running over our own shadow, the driver ahead is looking straight into the sun.

Final point… neither of these incidents took place on the local roads where I know riders go hooning on summer evenings. The chances are both riders were locals, and almost certainly know that the mini-roundabout and the petrol station were there. My feeling was that both were making a very deliberate choice to enforce their own right-of-way, and would blame the other road user if things went wrong.

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58. Euphoria – when our riding is just too good to be true

Looking back, I think a good subtitle might have been — “when we are having too much fun!” It conveys the psychological angle to the reader and hints at the subtle danger: it’s not anger, panic, or incompetence, but a state of overconfidence. It signals that the article is about a mental state as much as a riding technique and touches on a psychological state that is increasingly recognised in traffic psychology: a subtle form of overconfidence or “flow-induced risk” rather than outright anger or recklessness. Skill and routine mask the creeping erosion of safety margins — a state that can be more dangerous than obvious adrenaline-fuelled risk-taking because the rider believes everything is under control. The danger is that we don’t notice the shrinking safety margin until something jolts us out of the flow. Awareness of this state, deliberate self-checks, and the willingness to slow down or take a break remain crucial safeguards — even for the most experienced riders.

Euphoria – when our riding is just too good to be true

I got thinking after I got an email from one of my regular correspondents:

“Riding home after work, I felt in the mood for ‘pushing on’ a bit. I was congratulating myself on the swift progress I was making through the traffic, some drivers seemed a bit more aggressive than usual, but, what the hell, that was all part of the fun. The prat who pushed in too close to me and got a stare in return was just that, a prat. The close-ish encounters with traffic islands were just good timing, as was the manoeuvre to avoid the cyclist I spotted a bit late as I filtered rather wide and swiftly along the road.

“However, when I went through the red light I realised maybe I wasn’t riding quite as well as I thought. Didn’t realise, in fact, that the light was against me until half way across the junction. Luckily it was clear, because if it hadn’t been I’m not at all sure I’d have realised.”

He went on to say that perhaps after a stressful day at work he was a bit wound up.

Anyone recognise the symptoms? I have to admit to having days like that when I was a courier, and occasionally on other rides too.

It used to hit me towards the end of a long day. Partly tiredness, partly boredom with doing what became as routine as any other job. I’d get into a groove. In town I’d find myself slicing through rush hour traffic, filtering at high speed, overtaking through small gaps, running amber lights. Out of town I’d be zooming through bends, using big lean angles and engaging in heavy braking. It wasn’t as if I was in a rush to get somewhere either, in fact I’d feel more relaxed than normal. As the risky manoeuvre came off, I’d try them again for fun. It felt all so easy.

All TOO easy.

This state of euphoria is a close cousin to, but not the same as, red mist. The problem is that what’s happening to us usually only becomes evident after something scary or an obvious mistake snaps us out of it. Whilst red mist is characterised by obviously irrational behaviour – usually massive risk taking – in this euphoric state, we really believe we’re doing our normal thing, but in reality we are eating much deeper into our safety margin – maybe even exceeding it.

The bad news is that it’s almost addictive. And there’s a massive temptation to push towards the limits and enjoy the buzz as nothing seems to go wrong whilst we ride quicker and quicker, closer and closer to the edge. But sooner or later we WILL push too hard and cross the line. So riding in this way and waiting for the big mistake to tell us that we were actually in over our heads isn’t such a great idea.

Personally, I got to recognise the symptoms on those despatch jobs, and have been able to rein myself in before things get too out of control. I’d make a conscious decision to slow down, take a break or even turn off the radio and go home early!

One of the questions I ask myself as I ride is: “did that look dangerous to other road users?” If I have to say to myself: “yes, it probably did” then it’s time to dial down the fun and head, rather more slowly, for home.

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56. Wide lines, tight lines, right lines – the law of Diminishing Returns

This article challenges the idea that “positioning for view” is ‘necessary’ to be seen as an advanced rider. Whilst it’s accepted that “positioning for safety” should always be first in the hierarchy of ‘safety — stability — view’, as an absolute rather than a trade-off. As I’ve said elsewhere, “safety” is an abstract goal, as in “more view must be safer”, but risk is a trade-off between exposure and benefit. Riders often accept a large increase in exposure (to oncoming traffic or hidden hazards) in exchange for a very small gain in information (measured in metres or fractions of a second), without consciously evaluating whether that trade is favourable. The extra metres of visibility only have real value we intend to act on them, and in practice that usually means carrying more speed through the bend, which magnifies the consequences of any mistake. That’s the paradox; more view doesn’t automatically make us safer if we simply use it to ride faster — and that’s where risk creeps back in. The safest line is not the widest or the tightest, but the one that leaves the greatest margin for error when something goes wrong — including our mistakes as well as the mistakes of others.

Wide lines, tight lines, right lines – the law of Diminishing Returns

Years ago, I went along to one of the very first BikeSafe courses run by the Met Police, and had a good day, picking up a couple of useful tips and generally being impressed with the comments. One of my few negative observations on the day was the way the police rider taking us out held a wide line, right out on the white line, around left-hand bends even when there was traffic coming the other way*. I felt the position was too extreme, and when writing up my day out, I made this comment on my regular bike forum. The ensuing discussion surprised me.

One forum member, a former bike cop himself, took me to task and insisted that if the rider gained an extra half-second view ahead, then the wide position was worth it.

I thought about the cornering crash stats, and just how many riders are killed on left-hand corners. It’s pretty obvious that seeing the spiky thing on the front of the tractor half a second sooner if it’s about to impale us doesn’t really help much. A second trainer :

“There are times when position for view is the last thing (but not ‘final’) to be considered. Narrow lanes, tight blind corners? Forget ‘progress’, hug the left verge.”

Then up popped a third instructor with:

“Seeing something half a second earlier CAN make a difference. What is important is that your speed is right such that you are able to deal with any situations as they occur.

“Very often people are simply carrying too much speed as opposed to being in the wrong position. The two combined are a lethal combination, 2 mph can be too much, just lose it and manage the problem.”

So which is it? Should we hold that wider line and get a slightly better view around a left-hander? Or should we tuck in a little closer to the nearside and sacrifice a bit of view for some extra clearance to oncoming vehicles?

The answer, to my mind, usually lies with the simpler option.

If we hold the wide line out alongside the centre line, and we DO see something we need to avoid, then we need to move – and pretty rapidly too – to the left to get out of the way.

If on the same corner we hold a slightly tighter line, we have slightly less view around the corner, but the chances of meeting a vehicle cutting the corner and requiring some evasive action are lessened. And we’ll probably not have to move so far for that evasive manoeuvre.

But there’s another consideration. The only real reason for holding a wide line around a corner is to carry more speed. Think about it – we need to be able to ‘stop in the distance we can see to be clear on our side of the road’ etc. That’s the instruction from ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’, the police manual. If we move left, we can still apply the rule, just at a slightly slower speed because we can see a little less far.

How much is our view restricted? Well, mid-corner it’s not nearly as much as is generally believed. The diagrams in Roadcraft are massively exaggerated in terms of width of the road, simply to make the point clear. But on real roads which are much narrower, the extra distances we can see by taking up wide positions is just a few metres. If you’re sceptical, you can easily see for yourself. Stop near a left-hand bend, and walk to the centre of the lane – look up the road and see where the limit point is. Now walk out to the centre line, and have a second look. You won’t be seeing much further around the corner. If you don’t fancy getting round down, you can achieve much the same result by using the satellite view on Googlemaps and zooming in on a bend. Lay a straight edge over the screen and move it around to simulate the different lines of sight. I think you’ll be surprised how little extra the view moves forward as you shift from a centre-of-the-lane position to the extreme right.

The real benefit of the wide-right position on a left-hander is not what we can see of the the road ahead, it’s actually an earlier view – and more separation from – the other big threat on any twisty road; blind driveways, entrances to fields, and side turnings on the inside of the corner…

…and if we DO find something pulling out from the left or turning into the entrance across our path, we better be able to stop in short order.

Suddenly, the benefits of carrying more speed around the bend don’t look quite so important as the ability to stop when we find the road blocked.

  • I repeated BikeSafe in 2018 and am happy to report that the police rider was taking up rather less extreme positions!

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55. Workload – the reason to Keep it Simple, Stupid

When this article was first written, the idea that rider and driver errors were often the result of cognitive overload rather than poor attitude or insufficient commitment was not widely accepted in motorcycling. Even now, there is still pushback in certain sectors framing errors as a simple deficiency in attitude or technique.

Since then, the same conclusions this article draws have been repeatedly confirmed in aviation, medicine and other safety-critical industries: human attention is finite, workload is cumulative, and once capacity is exceeded, performance degrades in predictable ways. This article reads, in hindsight, like a bridge between disciplines — translating human factors research into rider language well before that became fashionable. I could legitimately position it as an early application of systems safety thinking to motorcycling rather than simply an “advanced riding” piece.

Is it still relevant? Absolutely. Modern motorcycles may be more capable and modern riders more skilled, but the human brain — whether that’s the rider’s or the driver’s — has not changed. If anything, increased traffic density, in-helmet communications, information-rich dash panels and navigation systems, and ever-more complex riding environments make workload management more important than ever. The principles that follow were not speculative then — and they are even more relevant now.

Workload – the reason to Keep it Simple, Stupid

Over the years, one of my areas of fascination in researching the background for my Survival Skills advanced rider training courses has been the human brain and how it copes with riding. Our brains reached their current form with the appearance of Homo Sapiens around 200,000 years ago. But many components that make up our modern brain have their origins in the lower branches of the evolutionary tree. It’s always been a bit of a puzzle to me how something that evolved when man had a top speed of something over 20 mph should be able to function rapidly enough to deal with riding at speeds well above that. I initially wrote this article with half an eye on the claims that using a hands-free mobile phone was safer than using a hand-held device, and with the other half on claims that skilled riders can safely use more complicated skills and techniques. It’s been rewritten somewhat, but the essential thinking about our ability to process limited amounts of information remains unchanged, as is the conclusion that we should use the simplest technique that is effective. Eventually, all this reading around the topic produced my book ‘MIND over MOTORCYCLE’ which you can find on my publisher page at http://lulu.com/spotlight/SurvivalSkills. The book covers all this and more.

In the mid-80s a series of studies were carried out to evaluate a proposed one-man attack helicopter. The cockpit systems used a significant amount of automation. Neverthelss, it was determined that a single crew member could not adequately perform all the required tasks. As a result, the Comanche helicopter uses a two-person crew.

The term workload refers to the total demand placed on an individual as a task is performed. And even experienced and expert riders have a finite limit to the mental workload they can handle.

Now, if you want to, you can skip forward to how we cope on the road, but if you want more detail about the demands workload places on the brain, carry on reading.

The theory of competing resource channels

One explanation is that workload does not make demands on a single ‘central’ processing resource but instead uses several channels which compete for processing resources.

This theory was propopsed because we can easily walk and chew gum at the same time, but we cannot talk and listen at the same time – one explanation is that there must be multiple resources for information processing. These processing resources are usually described by four components; visual, auditory, cognitive and psychomotor, and any task can be broken down into the demands it places on each resource channel. The visual and auditory components refer to the external stimuli that are attended to, the cognitive component refers to the level of information processing required and the psychomotor component refers to the physical actions.

Rating scales have been developed for each component. The scales provide a relative rating of the degree to which each resource component is used. They were developed by providing surveys containing matched pairs of task descriptions to a range of human factors experts who were asked to indicate, for each pairing, which one required a higher level of effort. The higher the scale value the greater the degree of use of the resource component.

Scale – Value Description of Activity

  • Visual

0.0 – No Visual Activity

1.0 – Visually Register/Detect (detect occurrence of image)

3.7 – Visually Discriminate (detect visual differences)

4.0 – Visually Inspect/Check (discrete inspection/static condition)

5.0 – Visually Locate/Align (selective orientation)

5.4 – Visually Track/Follow (maintain orientation)

5.9 – Visually Read (symbol)

7.0 – Visually Scan/Search/Monitor (continuous/serial inspection, multiple conditions)

  • Auditory

0.0 – No Auditory Activity

1.0 – Detect/Register Sound (detect occurrence of sound)

2.0 – Orient to Sound (general orientation/attention)

4.2 – Orient to Sound (selective orientation/attention)

4.3 – Verify Auditory Feedback (detect occurrence of anticipated sound)

4.9 – Interpret Semantic Content (speech)

6.6 – Discriminate Sound Characteristics (detect auditory differences)

7.0 – Interpret Sound Patterns (pulse rates, etc.)

  • Cognitive

0.0 – No Cognitive Activity

1.0 – Automatic (simple association)

1.2 – Alternative Selection

3.7 – Sign/Signal Recognition

4.6 – Evaluation/Judgment (consider single aspect)

5.3 – Encoding/Decoding, Recall

6.8 – Evaluation/Judgment (consider several aspects)

7.0 – Estimation, Calculation, Conversion

  • Psychomotor

0.0 – No Psychomotor Activity

1.0 – Speech

2.2 – Discrete Actuation (button, toggle, trigger)

2.6 – Continuous Adjustive (flight control, sensor control)

4.6 – Manipulative

5.8 – Discrete Adjustive (rotary, vertical thumbwheel, lever position)

6.5 – Symbolic Production (writing)

7.0 – Serial Discrete Manipulation (keyboard entries)

Generally speaking, we have enough mental resources to carry out the most demanding tasks in any one of these categories or to carry out multiple but undemanding tasks that engage different channels.

But…

if we’re performing more than one task at the same time and those tasks make demands on similar components, the result is likely to be excess workload – we simply run out of brainpower to perform both tasks effectively. Any cumulative workload value of 8 or more was defined as an unacceptable workload level. Once we exceed the acceptable workload, the result is likely to be errors in our performance of those tasks. This includes a general slowing-down of the performance (it takes longer to process data and respond), task shedding (where we forget to do something completely), or rapid task switching (we hop back and forth ineffectually from one task to the other).

The component scale has been applied to model the tasks of driving whilst making a call on a mobile phone.

Task: Vis. Aud. Cog. Psy-M.

Driving: 6 1 3.7 2.6

Stopped at Light: 3 1 3.7 0

Start after stop: 6 1 4.6 2.6

Dial and Press Send: 5 4.3 5.3 7

Wait to connect: 0 4.3 3.7 2.6

Talk: 0 6 6.8 2.6

The model can therefore predict the individual component and total workload of the combined driving and cell phone tasks at any point during the execution of the combined tasks.

Workload Maximum Mean

Visual 11.00 6.26

Auditory 7.00 6.62

Cognitive 10.50 10.02

Psychomotor 9.60 5.43

From these figures it’s clear that the combined Cognitive tasks of driving whilst talking on the phone exceed the acceptable workload figures at all times. It’s not just when dialling to make a call when the task also makes demands of our visual and psychomotor resources which exceed the acceptable workload. And so drivers attempting to hold a conversation on a hands-free phone whilst behind the wheel are prone to make mistakes that a driver focused solely on driving would be highly unlikely to make.

What about on two wheels? The resources required to ride the bike would include all four components; the visual resource of looking at the road ahead, the cognitive resource as we interprete the visual data, the psychomotor resource which refers to the movement of arms, hands and feet to control the machine and even the auditory resource which would monitor from the sound of the engine.

So, how does this impact on real riding?

There is a limit to the amount of ‘mental processing power’ we have to ride a motorcycle. It would sound like riding would be difficult, if not impossible, in complex riding situations because we would exceed the workload limit. So we’d expect to see errors in performance of various tasks, a slowing-down of the performance of those tasks, task-shedding where we lose track of one part of the overall task, or rapid task switching where we ineffectually hop back and forth from one part of task to the another.

And in fact, that’s exactly what an instructor will see with a novice rider. A complex task such as a right turn (which involves making visual checks, a change of gear and the movement of the indicator switch, the cognitive element of judging speed and distance of the machine and other vehicles, plus the steering of the machine itself) might be performed perfectly off-road. But as soon as the novice rider attempts the same task on-road, it’s often poorly performed; visual checks go missing, the bike ends up in the wrong gear or the clutch control goes out the window, and indicators get forgotten.

So how do we ever overcome the problem?

The answer is that we ‘automate’ routine tasks – for example, the clutch / gear / throttle manipulation soon becomes so deeply embedded we no longer think about it, it just ‘happens’. And we can also learn to have a pre-planned response to specific ‘cue’ which also occurs below the level of consciousness. People have trouble believing this but our response to a red traffic light is a good example. Once out of the novice stage where we’re still actively scanning around for traffic signals, we don’t really ‘see’ the red light, we just drop into the routine of judging speed and distance, and slowing down effectively.

So, with experience, we become able to handle many straightforward tasks without having to process the incoming data in the real-time conscious ‘thinking’ brain. And that frees up attention for effective mirror checks, checking the surface ahead of us where we’re going to brake, and wondering whether the light might change back to green before we have to stop.

But the more complicated the task, the less attention we have to spare. Maybe we’re attempting to negotiate not just a single set of lights, but a complex road layout with multiple lanes in busy traffic, whilst trying to read road signs. Now, there’s a good chance we start to task-shed and skip steps – because our eyes are scanning the scene ahead, mirror checks often go missing.

And this brings me back to the helicopter. We don’t have the luxury of a second crew member. We have to get everything right alone, and that means the simpler we make riding, the less likely we are to hit the workload limit, and where something has to give.

I’ve written about overtaking, and gone through all the many points at which an overtake can go wrong – this article should give you a better idea why. The workload processing required to decide whether an overtake is ‘on’ or not takes even highly-experienced riders to the limit or even beyond their ability to mentally process all the data. So it’s incredibly easy to miss something, and it’s usually something obvious when we look at what went wrong retrospectively. Something as simple as the vehicle being overtaken indicating to turn right. Because of the demands on our processing resources, the flashing indicator never made it into the rider’s conscious awareness. And that’s why I suggest that we always keep things as simple as possible. If there are two ways to perform a task, the simplest method is nearly always the most reliable way.

And don’t forget the problem of talking on a mobile phone. But what do some instructors ask trainees to do – talk into a radio whilst riding in the form of a verbal commentary. Asking even an experienced rider to make a verbal commentary on a ride isn’t a good idea because it pushes the rider into ‘workload overload’ condition – check out the values from the first table:

Searching the road ahead: 7.0 – (Visually Scan/Search/Monitor (continuous/serial inspection, multiple conditions) )

Think what to say: 6.8 – (Evaluation/Judgment (consider several aspects) )

Say it: 1.0 – (Speech)

TOTAL WORKLOAD: 14:8

That’s way over our workload limit and we’ve not even talked about riding the bike! So that is why I don’t ask riders to perform a commentary ride.

“But the police do it all the time” I hear you say.

Indeed. Now, listen to HOW they talk. They have learned a very stilted, formalised language. They’ve essentially removed the need to THINK how to express what they see. And this brings workload down significantly. They also learn commentary riding and driving as part of a much longer course than a civvie rider will ever experience.

So this is why I do NOT require anyone to perform a commentary AS they ride. What I do is find places to stop, and let them perform their commentary at the side of the road. We’ve removed the workload connected with riding the machine and they can turn all their faculties towards identifying hazards. Even when I perform a commentary ride for the trainee, I’m aware that they have to listen, consider what I’ve just said, and visually search the scene to see what I’m talking about. So I only ever perform a commentary ride at a nice gentle pace that minimises the other workload demands on my trainee.

And finally, the workload overload issue is one of the reasons I use a building block approach to training, and why speeds are kept low when applying those new techniques. Covering new techniques one at a time is less-demanding and keeping speed down allows for correction when (not if!) mistakes are made.

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54. Overtaking – Questions and Answers

Nothing’s changed about overtaking. The central thesis — that overtaking is a risk management problem, not a technical skill exercise — aligns closely with modern advanced riding doctrine and collision analysis. Arguably, the risks surrounding overtaking have not diminished. Traffic density has increased, vehicles are quicker, and the fundamental problem remains unchanged: overtaking is one of the few manoeuvres where we commit ourselves to a manoeuvre which relies on predictable behaviour of other road users, all at high relative speeds. Modern motorcycles may accelerate harder and stop better, but so do cars either ahead of us or coming the other way. If anything, improved motorcycle performance is a trap into thinking it makes overtaking “easier” but actually making poor decisions unfold faster. The principles that follow are therefore not dated cautions, but enduring risk-management tools for one of riding’s highest-consequence manoeuvres.

Overtaking – Questions and Answers

I originally put this particular article together for two reasons. It was partly because of the volume of emails directed to my old ‘Doctor’s Surgery’ page, and an even larger number of questions posted on the bike forum I was moderating. And it was partly because of the crash statistics and the shocking rate of fatalities resulting from overtaking errors. Just one study from Cheshire (see ‘Accident Statistics – dispelling some myths’) showed that just under 10% of all crashes in the study resulted from overtaking errors, including overtaking a car that turned right and head-on collisions. As I wrote at the time I penned the original, that particular study is a few years old now, but from what I can see, nothing much has changed. Give riders a chance to overtake, and a significant proportion of us still manage to get it wrong – badly. So rather than write yet another “here’s the right way to overtake”, let’s look at the cautions we should build into our planning; cautions to be applied whether we’re new to biking or experienced.

There are two kinds of overtaking crash. Those made by riders who don’t understand how to perform an overtake in the first place – I was certainly in that category for my first few years of riding and was lucky to survive some serious errors. But there are a second kind too – what I’ve come to realise over the years is that experienced riders, and especially those with a post-test riding qualification, become rather blase about the risks of overtaking. The more we carry out the overtaking manoeuvre, the more it becomes routine. Riders who started with cautious overtakes and wide margins for error begin to get increasingly confident. And then they begin to cut back on those margins.

Whever the source of the error, the trouble is that when we get an overtake badly wrong there’s a fair chance it’ll be both the first, the last and the ONLY time it goes badly wrong – the consequences are often fatal. When overtaking goes wrong, we may not get a chance to learn from our mistake.

Q What are the legal aspects of overtaking?

A Off to the Highway Code. All overtaking must be made to the RIGHT or offside of the vehicle except:

  • when the driver in front is turning right and there is sufficient room, it is safe and legal to overtake to the left

  • when the rider is turning left and there is sufficient room to do so

  • in one way streets where traffic in the right hand lane(s) is travelling slower

  • in slow moving traffic where traffic is moving slower in the outside lane, provided the rider does not change lanes to gain advantage

YOU MUST NOT OVERTAKE :

  • where it would mean crossing double or single solid white lines. (The exception to this rule is when it’s safe to pass an obstruction such as a road maintenance vehicle, a cyclist or a horse. They must be either stationary or travelling at less than 10mph)

  • within the zigzag area on approach to a pedestrian crossing (i)

  • where signs indicate a prohibition

i) The actual traffic regulation is that you must not pass the car nearest the crossing within the zigzag markings – so you could legally filter up next to it, but not overtake until clear of the crossing.

YOU SHOULD NOT OVERTAKE where forward vision is restricted to such an extent that there is insufficient room to complete the manoeuvre in the area visible, such as on the approach to:

  • a corner or bend

  • dead ground

  • a brow of a hill or bridge

Q I often see bikes overtaking and squeezing by cars just inside a solid line on the rider’s side. Is that legal?

A The law says that no part of the bike (and that includes your body and your panniers – likely to be the widest part of your machine) should cross the solid white line. Just keeping the wheels inside isn’t enough. And crossing it, no matter how tempting, is illegal – points and a fine. But, technically, if there is room then it is legal to pass inside the solid line.

However… drivers will NOT expect to be overtaken on a road with a solid line, will not be expecting it and may react aggressively as most road users think a solid line means no overtaking.

Q What about cross-hatched areas?

A If there are no legal restrictions, there are no specific rules to say no. With cross-hatched areas bounded by a broken line, the problem is a matter of interpretation of the law, which says we can enter if “safe and necessary to do so”. We can – and I have – argued what constitutes ‘necessary’ many times. The problem is that your interpretation of necessary as “necessary to get ahead of a slower vehicle” may not be a non-biking magistrate’s interpretation. Cross-hatched areas are there to create empty space by keeping traffic flows apart, often to protect vehicles turning right, on bends where there is a lot of heavy traffic, or perhaps where lanes are about to diverge or merge together; they are not handy motorcycle overtaking lanes. Using them to ‘make progress’ may not be illegal per se, but it could be risky. I will use them, but I’ll have a good look to try to work out why they are there before I do.

Q OK, so how about up the middle of wide roads with a broken line? Can I pass between lanes of traffic where the road is wide enough? That’s legal, surely?

Legal perhaps, but no-one expects to encounter a bike overtaking down the middle of opposing streams of traffic. What if someone ahead moves out for a better view ahead? What if an oncoming driver reacts aggressively? What if we meet someone doing the same thing from the opposite direction? Although they’ve become very rare, three-lane roads which allowed overtaking from opposite directions were notorious for head-on collisions.

Q OK, so if I avoid those traps, all I have to worry about when overtaking is if it is safe and legal?

A Ask yourself: why you are overtaking? Is there any point in overtaking one vehicle in a long queue on a twisty road where you know there are no other overtakes possible for miles? Is there any point in overtaking just before a roundabout? Is there any point overtaking a car travelling at much the same speed as you? Is there any point making a difficult overtake on a single carriageway when there is a sign saying “DUAL CARRIAGEWAY 1 MILE”?

Q Of course – I make more progress. Isn’t that good?

A ‘Making progress’ has become a byword for ‘advanced motorcyclist’. After a decade and a half of working as a courier, I knew a little about getting from A to B without hanging around too much. Even so, when I put myself through the IAM system back in the late 90s, I rather surprised to be pulled up on an observed ride by my observer for failing to overtake a pickup truck travelling at around 40 in a 60 limit on a dead straight road, since we were just approaching a short stretch of 30 limit through a village, and I could see the national limit resumed on the other side. The conversation that followed was along these lines:

Obs – “you had an opportunity to make a safe pass before the village”
Me – “but what happened to the speed limit 300m past the point I would have completed the overtake?”
Obs – “It went from 60 to a 30”
Me – “but how long did it last? You could see the national limit sign at the other end of the village.”
Obs – “yes, but you could have made a safe overtake before the village.”
Me – “did you notice if the pickup slowed down for the speed limit?”
Obs – “No it didn’t.”

Now, about this point our planning diverged. Mine was based on the reasonable assumption that a driver ambling along a dead straight bit of 60 limit at 40 would probably continue ambling along at 40 in the dead straight bit of 30 limit. His was based on the letter of the law.

Me – “So, I would have overtaken the truck, then slowed for the limit, only to have it stuck to my number plate for the next half mile”.
Obs – “That’s the driver’s problem, not yours.”

I disagreed then and I disagree now. It’s very much my problem. By overtaking, I’ve converted a hazard that was ahead of me, where I can see it easily and can choose my own following distance, into one that’s behind me where I cannot control the gap and one which I can only see in the mirrors. I actually lose control of the situation.

Me – “did I lose the opportunity to make any useful progress?”
Obs – “yes, you could have overtaken before the village.”

Once again, I disagree. The gain was one vehicle on a lightly-trafficked road. Given the short stretch of 30 limit, it was perfectly reasonable to defer the overtake until I was out the other side, and back in the national limit.

So, here’s the first question we ask, and it’s not “is it safe?”. It’s “is it sensible and does it make USEFUL progress?” Getting one vehicle further up the road is neither here nor there, and having to slow down right in front of the vehicle we’ve just passed isn’t sensible.

And here’s the kicker. Overtaking is ALWAYS risky. So if we can defer a riskier manoeuvre – like that overtake on a single carriageway – until there’s less risk on the dual carriageway, that has to be a good thing.

Q Surely if an overtake is done properly, there’s no risk?

A Years ago, an ex-police instructor told me quite categorically that “done well, an overtake is perfectly safe”. He was wrong. As a moment’s thought would have told him, we can NEVER completely eliminate risk. From the moment we ride away from the kerb, there are always things that can go wrong and so our job is risk management. The biggest problem with overtaking is that we’re not facing what the DVSA have called a ‘static hazard’. A bend is a static hazard. The bend cannot change its mind about which way it’s going – what we see is what we’re going to get, and so long as our observation skills and ridiing technique are reasonably proficient, we should get round it. The only person who can get it wrong is the rider.

But an overtake involves at least one other human, quite possibly several humans. And however carefully we plan ahead, we CANNOT control what another human does. And if there’s one thing we should have learned almost as soon as we hit the road, it’s that humans make mistakes. Mid-overtake, however carefully we plan ahead, we’re relying on other drivers to do what we expected them to do. It’s when they behave in a way we were NOT expecting that things go wrong.

Q What are the big dangers whilst overtaking?

A Apart from making such a foul-up of the overtake that we hit a car coming the other way, the biggest dangers are colliding with the vehicle we’re passing as it pulls out itself to overtake, hitting a car as it turns right, being hit by a car emerging from the right, or running into a car emerging from the left and turning into our path!

Q But no-one can miss seeing a car coming towards them!

A Sometimes riders don’t miss the oncoming vehicle, but deliberately choose to pull out into its path. What we have to look at is not just the distance we need to get past a slower vehicle, but to allow AT LEAST the same distance ahead to deal with an oncoming vehicle appearing just as we commit to the overtake. Think about it.

The big problem is that our ability to judge the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles is sketchy at best at the kind of speeds and distances we need for overtakes on the open road. And the quicker the traffic we’re passing, the easier it is to misjudge the gap ahead. Don’t rely on just one glance to judge speed and distance – it’s easy to miss the Ferrari being driven enthusiastically and closing from the other direction at high speed. That’ll fill the gap we were planning on using. We’d better not be in it.

But sometimes we cannot see the oncoming vehicle when we commit to overtaking, because we’re approaching a blind corner or maybe a blind crest. Legally, we have to be back to our side of the road where the line on our side turns solid, so most riders aim to return to the nearside as they pass the two ‘toeing-in’ arrows. But what if that Ferrari appears around the bend going like the clappers? That point-of-return will be far too late. So we need to build in a much bigger margin – essentially, if we cannot return to the left WELL BEFORE the arrows, we really shouldn’t commit ourselves. Likewise, we shouldn’t be cutting back in right in front of the vehicle we’ve just past. A ‘well-judged’ overtake that returns just before the solid line is actually an overtake with no margin for error. And with no margin, they have a habit of going wrong.

The final reason for hitting something head-on is because we attempt a multi-vehicle pass, aiming for a gap somewhere ahead, and the gap closes leaving us hung out to dry. Firstly, the old pilot’s adage – never take-off without knowing where to land. We need to be absolutely certain of a gap to return to on the nearside. I’m highly cautious overtaking towards oncoming traffic, even when there appears to be a gap, because it may close up. I’ve had drivers try to help me out by braking just as I’m planning on pulling back behind them, and I’ve also been caught out passing vehicles that are themselves catching a slower-moving HGV. So we need to be really sure that the gap will still be there when we need it. Really, we should have TWO gaps to aim for – our intended landing zone and a back-up. And of course, if the car we’re intending to pull in behind suddenly brakes to ‘help out’, it’s possible to run into the back of it. That’s a sign the landing zone was too short!

Q But what about the collision with the car turning right? If I’m overtaking and someone turns right, it’s not my fault is it? He’s supposed to check his mirror, isn’t he?

A Unfortunately, riders think they have a ‘right to overtake’ and that it’s the driver’s responsibility to keep them safe. Motorcycle News went as far as putting a “Think bike before turning right” sticker on an issue years back, telling riders to put them on petrol pumps. I’m not even going to go into all the reasons drivers miss bikes in the mirrors. I’m simply going to ask you, if a car COULD turn right, what on earth is the biker doing overtaking just there?

That campaign was another excuse for riders not thinking for themselves. On a quiet bit of road, take a look at all the places a vehicle COULD turn right – side turnings, access roads, petrol stations… they’re all obvious. What about driveways? Is it always easy to see the drive of a cottage on a country road? Where can a tractor turn right? Anywhere it likes. Knowing how difficult some of these places are to spot detunes me compared with less-cautious riders.

Because it’s hard to spot a lot of the places where a vehicle COULD turn, we need to be really on the ball. We can watch the vehicle itself for clues. If it’s just slowed down, that’s not an invitation to overtake, but a warning sign. Watch the driver to see where they’re looking – if it’s not ahead, it could be where they are about to turn. We need to be particularly careful when we’ve just caught a slower vehicle up, particularly on a twisty road or if we’ve just overtaken from behind – the driver may not have seen us. If we do decide to pass, there’s the horn? A short note just before we fully commit will warn him we’re are there!

Q So if I’m sure the driver won’t turn right, I’m safe to overtake, right?

A Wrong. What goes in must come out. If a vehicle can turn right, another can pull out. Most of us – bikers included – look right before turning out to the left. Expecting a motorcycle on the wrong side of the centre line is not in most road users’ minds when they prepare to emerge. Watch out for lay-bys too – drivers are usually searching for traffic in their mirrors.

Q OK, so I’ll take care to look for junctions on the right, but what’s the problem overtaking a car turning left?

A Simple. Here’s one issue. The slowing vehicle swings out wide to make the turn easy and sideswipes the bike into the undergrowth. Surprisingly common. Another is that a second vehicle pulls out ahead of us because our bike is in the blind spot behind the turning vehicle, and the driver’s not expecting anything to be overtaking. If the driver turns right, they’ll be looking left too, and we’ll have a head-on. If the driver turns left, that may be the gap we were planning on moving back into. And of course, the driver may cancel the signal and carry on, hanging us out to dry on the wrong side of the centre line.

And here’s one that nearly caught me out as a courier. I went to pass a car that was turning left on a wide road, but the driver flashed another driver of a car that was waiting to turn right in the same road, intending for him to cross first into the side road. The second driver started to turn, then spotted me bearing down on him and stopped! The road ahead of me was now almost completely blocked. Fortunately I’d long since learned to keep the speed down when overtaking, and was able to stop.

Q So, I’ve finally decided it’s safe to pass – with my powerful bike I should be able to get past as quickly as possible, right?

A Wrong. The performance of modern bikes is a trap, not an advantage, partly because modern cars and trucks are a lot quicker too and partly because the straights on our roads haven’t got any longer. And once we’ve gained speed, we have to lose it again. Especially when we’re passing more than one vehicle, if we simply aim to pass “as quickly as possible” (and I winced when I heard another instructor say that) sooner rather than later we’ll end up regretting all that speed as things don’t go as we expected ahead. It may be tempting to blast past a line of slower vehicles, but we need to treat each individually as a separate overtake and be able to bail out at each stage – if we’re thinking of overtaking, what’s to stop one of those drivers doing exactly the same? So if the only way to pull off the overtake is in one hit at high speed, then don’t.

Q So what’s so risky about overtaking on dual carriageways?

A One of the biggest dangers are junctions where vehicles can turn through the central reservation. These junctions are relatively rare (most have been blocked up) but the crash risk is high. Even when there is no crossing the lanes, slip roads are often very short with emerging drivers struggling to gain speed to match the traffic bearing down. The result can be hard braking or sudden lane changes ahead. In either case, I usually defer overtaking till I’m clear of the junction, unless I can see that the junction’s clear.

Most of the other issues are down to speed differentials. Slow-moving vehicles including cycles and tractors are allowed on dual carriageways and we can come up on them quickly, so we need to look and plan well ahead so we can move out in good time. If we’re already passing slower traffic, look for cars in the inside lane catching HGVs that will probably want to pull out to overtake themselves. Don’t hover alongside in mirror blindspots and don’t approach at excessive speed – you may need to slow down if they pull out. suddenly in front of you, so don’t sit in their blind spots. On three lane stretches, watch out for someone moving from the inside lane as we move back into the middle lane from the outside lane. A signal helps enormously.

And before we move out to make a pass, a series of mirror checks is best followed by a final blind spot shoulder check. However good our mirror checks, there’s always the risk of finding a vehicle lurking right in the OUR blind spot.

Q So I just sit behind the vehicle ahead and wait for a big gap.

A Sort of. The simplest way to overtake is if we can simply move out wide early to get a view past the slower vehicle – if the road ahead looks clear, we simply carry on and our speed differential carries us past the slower vehicle. And if it’s not clear, we simply move back in, then match speed.

But once we have to wait for a gap, then our first decision is how far behind the slower vehicle we should ride. If you’ve read ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’ (or taken Roadcraft-based training) you’ve probably heard of the ‘following’ and ‘overtaking’ positions.

Essentially, the ‘following’ position is the normal distance behind the vehicle ahead, which allows us to stop if the vehicle ahead comes to an unexpected halt. That’s where we should be when there’s no prospect of overtaking. But if we think we may have an opportunity to pass, then it’s suggested we move up into a much closer ‘overtaking’ position from where we make the final Go/Stay decision.

Now, the big problem is that we’ve compromised our following distance. In theory, we only move up when we think we might be able to pass and if it turns out we can’t, we should drop back again and reinstate a safe distance. On a lightly-trafficked road, we should be able to make the overtake without too much delay and just a couple of forwards / backwards iterations, and that was likely the case on most roads when Roadcraft was first written to deal with 50s and 60s traffic.

Unfortunately, real life and heavy 21st century traffic intrudes on the theory.

The first observation I’ll make (and one that I have never heard anyone else explicitly admit) is that the only reason we NEED to use the closer ‘overtaking’ position is because we’re looking for to overtake in less distance – either a shorter straight between bends, or a smaller gap between oncoming vehicles. That restricted distance is why we need to be closer up in the first place. If that weren’t the case, we could overtake from the more distant position.

The second issue (also rarely mentioned) is that we’re often being followed by other vehicles. The drivers will of course maintain THEIR OWN following distance behind us. As we move up, they stay the same distance behind us. So when we try to drop back, we drop back into THEIR following space. And they are now too close behind. Put that together with a busy 21st century road and this moving up / dropping back means we’re ping-ponging back and forth from the tailgate of the car ahead to the bonnet of the car behind. If we make this forwards/backwards movement too exaggerated or too often, it can and will confuse and irritate the driver ahead (who is watching you in the mirrors) and the driver behind (who wonders why you can’t ride at a constant speed).

On a busy road, the temptation is to sit permanently in the close-up overtaking position waiting for the next opportunity because we don’t have so far to travel, but the lack of following distance not only increases the risk if the car ahead slows suddenly, it actually interferes with our observation – if we’re worried about running into the back of the car, then that’s what we focus on – and we end up watching its brake lights rather than the road ahead or even our mirrors. Riders who say “I don’t have time to take my eyes of the road and make a shoulder check before overtaking” are admitting they’re too close. We also have to move out first THEN accelerate if we’re too close behind – overtakes often become ‘swoops’ ending with excessive speed making it difficult to pull promptly back to the left.

You might read something like “moving up to the overtaking position is a difficult skill to learn – timing it right requires excellent observation and planning and anticipation too”. I actually wrote that in the previous version of this article, but being totally honest, this forwards / backwards business quickly becomes exhausting. If it was needed for one overtake, the chances are it’ll be needed for the next… and the next… and so on. And my old courier instinct to make life simple kicks in. If overtakes are that tricky, I probably won’t bother – at least, not till a simple opportunity comes along and I am pretty sure I DO will have an opportunity to pass. I may miss a few overtakes, but I am reducing my exposure to risk significantly.

Q So how do YOU plan an overtake from the following position?

A Typically, I’ll be looking for a straight after a right-hand bend where my following position behind the vehicle ahead will actually give me a good, clear view of both sides of the road – remember, I’m not just looking to see if something is coming the other way, but searching for junctions ahead which could be on either side of the road. If clear, I’ll turn from the final part of the corner straight onto the other side of the road and accelerate whilst the vehicle I’m passing is just exiting the curve. This means getting my rear observations and gear changing done in advance. Done right, the acceleration from the following position to the overtaking position and into the overtake is one smooth movement. We shouldn’t have to accelerate hard or brake hard to dip back in.

Q I find that by the time I’ve moved up to the following position to the overtaking position, the opportunity has gone

A This is why forward planning is so important.

Q I get impatient waiting for cars to overtake. I signalled, so why do they always pull out in front of me just as I want to go?

A Remember other vehicles (most cars and all trucks) have much less acceleration than we do, and will need a much bigger gap to pass, so as soon as such a gap appears it’s a good idea to be ready for the driver to go for the overtake. The average car driver has a lot less practice at overtaking, and will be focusing all his / her attention on the road ahead, so don’t expect your signal to be spotted. And if the car ahead has already signalled, don’t attempt to bully your way through by accelerating more rapidly. Collisions with vehicles ahead moving out to pass out are not uncommon, so be cautious.

Drivers are far more likely to make a mistake and do something dangerous for both of you if you are right on the back bumper. In particular do not harass learner drivers. In any case, hanging back and giving the driver ahead ‘first go’ is polite – dropping back makes it clear that we’re not intending to pass there and then, and that may help the driver ahead make a prompt decision. We may be able to follow through in the same gap, or even pass the overtaking car a moment later. And if the driver does have second thoughts and decide not to use the big gap after all, we can probably still pass ourselves – don’t forget rear observations in case someone behind has seen the big gap, and be ready with a horn warning in case of a last-second change-of-mind by the driver ahead.

Q On my RoSPA test, the things I was marked down for were:
1) changing gear mid overtake
2) following position too aggressive
3) overtook next to a left hand junction

A Hopefully by now you’ll have seen that because most overtaking takes place in a brief window of opportunity, we have to be absolutely prepared to go when that opportunity arises. If we are having to change gear mid-overtake, we clearly weren’t in the right gear to start with, and so we weren’t planning far enough ahead. We may have got away with it on that occasion, but on another overtake which doesn’t turn out as we might rue that missed acceleration. And we’ve already seen the problems of sitting too close to a slower vehicle, and the risks arising from overtaking near a junction.

Q So is any overtake necessary?

A If not overtaking means becoming part of a mobile road block, then the answer is a guarded yes. For example, if we cannot overtake a slow-moving tractor, then we’re adding the the hazard it’s creating, because other drivers will now have to overtake two vehicles, rather than just the tractor. And that puts us at additional risk. But once we are riding along in the general flow, then overtakes are ‘nice’ rather than ‘necessary’.

Q Anything else?

A However quick you are, there will be someone quicker. Mirrors and blind spot checks are essential. Riders DO get taken out by vehicles they haven’t seen catching them from behind. And if you’ve not got time for a blind spot check? You’re rushing the overtake.

Q So what’s a good system for overtaking?

A If we want to make a safe overtake, it’s all about doing it methodically. SEARCH, EVALUATE, EXECUTE. There are plenty of guides to safe [sic] overtaking out there, so this article focuses on understanding the risks. Here are four simple rules to remember:

ONE – just because you COULD, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. If our attitude is “if I didn’t overtake I might as well be in a car” then it’s the wrong attitude. Although ‘progress’ is often talked about as the result of advanced training, what we really should be doing is performing better risk assessments and making better risk management decisions.

TWO – overtaking is NICE, rarely NECESSARY. We should be looking at overtaking as a high risk activity, not somewhere to show off our technical skill. Skills should be used to build margins for error by asking “how could this go wrong?”

THREE – if we’re thinking of an overtake, then so is someone else. And that someone might be ahead or behind. We need to be able to change our plan on an instant.

FOUR – if we don’t KNOW, we don’t GO! A lot of overtakes that go wrong fail because the rider’s taken a chance. And it didn’t work out.

Q Aren’t we being too cautious? Everyone knows bikes overtake cars.

A But bikes are also ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Because we can use smaller gaps, most drivers won’t be considering an overtake, so the possibility that a bike will be passing won’t occur to them – we have to get into the habit of doing the other driver’s thinking for them.

Riding a bike is great fun, but there are few manoeuvres where speeds of vehicles are so high and the risks so high. It’s no consolation that the words on our tombstone read “I had right of way”.

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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?

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47. Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you – an analysis of SMIDSY accidents

The first version of this article was written over two decades ago, but has its roots back in the mid-90s when I first got online, and discovered that the SMIDSY was far from unique to the UK. That was very relevant when, in 1995, I first got involved in rider training back in 1995 and discovered the sum of advice to new riders was to wear hi-vis and ride with their lights on “so drivers would see them”. What my research showed was that SMIDSY collisions are primarily not a driver ‘failure to look’, and much more of a human visual-perception problem. Whilst I found that research into these collisions had been going on since the 1960s and really took off in the 70s, not much of the science had made its way into road safety or motorcycle safety. When I first delivered the ‘Science Of Being Seen’ presentation in 2012, it was met with a lot of scepticism. But since then, much of what I describe here has since been validated time and again by academics and by independent commentators including FortNine.

The conceptual framework — looked but could not see, looked but failed to see, and looked, saw and misjudged — remains one of the clearest and most practically useful ways of understanding junction collisions. The explanations of motion camouflage, contrast issues, saccadic masking, workload, and size-arrival effect are all still scientifically sound and are now increasingly accepted within professional driver and rider training, and these terms are now being referred to by ordinary riders on a regular basis. The article has not been undermined by time; rather, the rest of the motorcycling world has been slowly catching up with it.

Sorry Mate, I didn’t see you – an analysis of SMIDSY accidents

When I updated these articles in the summer and autumn of 2019, I realised that in some ways, this article is probably the most important I’ve ever written. It was written in response to the frequent and strident claims that ‘drivers don’t look properly for bikes’. And it was in this very article – written in the early 2000s – that for the first time I put down in reasonably clear terms an explanation of the need for riders to understand the visual perception issues behind the ‘Sorry Mate, I Didn’t See You’ collision. Historically, the rider has always blamed the driver for not looking properly, but my background of SMIDSY-dodging as a London-based courier plus my increasing experience as an instructor made me wonder why the advice to drivers to “look harder for bikes” and the advice to bikers to “make yourself more conspicuous” wasn’t working. The failure of the ‘Think Bike’ and ‘Ride Bright’ advice – which dates back to the mid-1970s – became very evident when I began to investigate collision statistics – the proportion of junction collisions had remained unchanged from the early 70s (when no-one used day riding lights or hi-vis clothing) to the time when I wrote the article in 2003.

I’d already read a lot of research papers as a way of developing my training courses and had discovered quite a lot about motorcycle conspicuity and the reasons for car / bike collisions when I was invited to work with Kent Fire and Rescue Service on the ‘Biker Down’ course.

So when, in 2011-12, I created the ‘Science Of Being Seen’ presentation (or SOBS for short) it was this research which formed the basis of the presentation. Perhaps not surprisingly given that motorcyclists have seen a stream of road safety campaigns all aimed at drivers telling them to ‘look harder’ or ‘look twice’ for bikes, we have tended to believe that the reason for the SMIDSY collision is because “drivers don’t look properly”. SOBS shows that’s not true, and explains the real issues facing the driver – ‘looked but COULD NOT see’, ‘looked but FAILED to see’ and looked, saw and MISJUDGED’ errors – why the conspicuity strategies we motorcyclists have employed – hi-vis clothing and day-riding lights (DRLs) have failed to have any meaningful impact on collision statistics. It’s why I suggest that it’s down to us riders to take responsibility for evading the driver’s error when it happens.

Since then, I’ve continued to investigate the problem of motorcycle perception and visual perception, and the presentation which I continue to deliver at nearly every Biker Down in Kent, has been continually updated with the very latest research. And in terms of collisions, nothing much has changed since, as it happens.

But this article is where it all started, getting on for two decades ago. So although I’ve annotated the article in places, the basic text is left unchanged apart from a couple of minor typos I’ve corrected. And if you want to read the very latest thinking, then head for the SOBS website at www.scienceofbeingseen.wordpress.com.

Most bike riders these days also have a car licence and drive a car, usually as their main means of transport, using the bike for fun or sometimes commuting. Yet to listen to a lot of the discussion that goes on about “witless cagers” you’d be hard-pressed to realise that.

But given that we nearly all drive cars, and our old friend the SMIDSY accident still accounts for the majority of car/bike accidents aren’t we likely at some time or another to have made exactly the mistake that we pillory drivers for? How many of us when on four wheels have done the unthinkable and pulled out on a bike?

As one honest motorcycle forum contributor admitted [after a near-miss in his car]: “Now if I can do this, what chance for the poor booger in his Mondeo who has got no idea of what we are about… what still bugs me is that, if they’d run into me, I’d have heard myself saying, in total honesty, as I helped sweep them to the side of the road: ‘Sorry mate, I didn’t see you'”.

I’ve mentioned before that I nearly took out an R1 when they first came out… poor gloomy light, twin headlights apparently a long way off against a background of trees, me wanting to pull across the path of the oncoming vehicle and turn right, so all I needed was a gap sufficient to make it to the other lane.

Seemed safe enough so I started to go…

…but something wasn’t quite right about the movement of the lights across the dark background and I hit the brakes again, stopping about halfway across the line.

Just as well I did! By the time I’d refocused on the oncoming vehicle, it was obviously a bike, moving at a fair lick, and MUCH, much closer than I had realised.

Two thoughts struck me at the time. The first was that the widely spaced lights on an R1 DO look like a car further off – I went home and even on the GSX-R where they are much closer together, immediately put a different coloured bulb in one headlight – technically illegal but it’s my safety I’m worried about here.

The second was that the rider hadn’t apparently reacted to me at all. He was just going to sail completely oblivious into the accident I was about to cause. Yes, technically my fault, but did he have to have it with me? Could he not have done something positive himself? There was no blast of high beam and/or horn, no anchoring up, no swerve to the other side of the road (it was clear, remember or I wouldn’t have been about to pull out).

[NOTE – “technically my fault, but did he have to have it with me?”… echoes of my very first article for the Motorcycle Action Group newspaper in 2002 – “it takes two to tangle” – the driver may be the one setting up the crash, but the rider still has to ride into it to complete the collision. And, as in the near-miss I had with the R1 rider, the rider can nearly always see it coming.]

OK, so let’s take a reality check.

Cars do pull out on bikes. Fact.

In around 90% of them, the bike is on the priority road, so technically it’s the car driver’s mistake. Fact.

But if we, as bikers, can STILL make that mistake when on four wheels, knowing all we know about car drivers doing it to us when we’re on two, it’s worth looking at in more depth.

I’ve previously suggested proactive strategies for dealing with SMIDSY incidents, but let’s ask some questions about why drivers don’t see bikes. If we can understand why things go wrong, it may make more sense as to why it’s US as riders that have to deal with the situation, rather than use the “it was the other guy’s fault, I had right of way, he should have seen me” excuse.

There are a whole bunch of reasons to worry when you approach a junction:

There is the driver with simple defective eyesight – plenty of them around…

There is the driver who doesn’t look properly – too many in-car distractions, be it children running amok, the mobile phone demanding immediate attention or just singing along with Des O’Connor.

[NOTE – although ‘defective eyesight’, ‘driving distracted’ and generally ‘not looking properly’ seem likely reasons to explain the ‘Looked But Failed To See’ LBFTS error where drivers don’t see approaching bikes, when I began to look into the issue in more depth it occurred to me that the vast majority of drivers DO see the vast majority of bikes. If they didn’t, we’d not make it far past the first junction.

In total, there are around 350 motorcycle fatalities and some 3000 injuries each year, but they are the result of ALL crashes, not just those at junctions – they total around 100 per annum. But what about encounters that DON’T end in crashes? If we think about how many cars there are on the road (around 40 million) and how many bikes there are (between 1 and 2 million), consider how many junctions every biker passes on every ride, then work out how many times bikes pass through junctions where a car could turn, the number of POTENTIAL collisions that never happen is truly enormous – I don’t think anyone has actually attempted to do the sum. The only conclusion we can make is that drivers DO see nearly every bike when it needs to be seen. And if that’s the case, the only rational explanation is that nearly all drivers DO look properly on nearly every occasion. We can lay to bed the ‘not looking properly’ explanation – it’s a handy myth.]

There is the driver who does see you but chooses the wrong course of action – is the driver inexperienced, merely incompetent, or not used to the vehicle being driven? Ever had a car towing a caravan pull out in front of you and wondered why? I never get anywhere near hire vans for the same kind of reason…

There is the experienced and overconfident driver who looks, thinks he has seen everything but “blanked” the bike because he only sees what he expects to see. New drivers and experienced drivers score very differently in hazard perception tests – new drivers check EVERYTHING in sight but cannot prioritise, experienced drivers check SELECTIVELY, prioritise better but often miss the unusual (ie the bike)…

[NOTE – it turns out there’s an explanation for this too. It doesn’t take long for all road users – bikers included – to develop a different strategy for emerging onto busy roads to the one we’re taught. Rather than the search for vehicles (which is what we think we’re doing), we’re actually all searching for the gaps between them. We all do it, drivers and riders alike. Mostly, it works.]

There is the driver who makes a conscious decision to use you as the gap in the traffic, knowing you will give way – “the bike is softer than a 44 tonner” approach…

[NOTE – I looked into that, too. Evidence from insurance statistics – who you might expect to be looking for a reason to pin a collision on the other driver – suggests it’s actually very rare for a driver to pull out deliberately. We riders tend to interpret it that way because we frequently see the driver appearing to look at us – “I made eye contract but he / she still pulled out” is a common post-crash statement. But as you’ll see if you follow up the SOBS website and check out how the eye actually has a tiny zone of clear, colour vision and sharp focus, it’s entirely likely that what we thought was eye contact, was actually the driver was looking in our direction but focused on the vehicle or gap behind us. I mention this below.]

Even given that the driver knows what to look for, is actively looking for it, knows what to do and isn’t a chancer, doesn’t mean he’ll see you coming. There are a number of reasons.

Most modern cars have huge blind spots:
take a look at the size of the A pillar alongside the windscreen on a modern car. They are designed to make the safety cage of the car rigid in an accident and stop the roof from folding up – it’s no coincidence they are the size of girders!
take a look at the pillar behind the driver’s head where the doors come together – again it’s huge
take a look at the pillar behind the rear window – once again it is part of the safety cage
Depending on the angle the car takes up, it’s quite possible the driver cannot see through you one of these obstructions, and there is always roadside furniture like telegraph poles, trees and letter boxes – if you can’t see his eyes, he cannot see you.

[NOTE – and since I wrote this nearly two decades ago, the A and B pillars have got even thicker as a result of new crash protection requirements. It turns out that around one-in-five collisions actually fall into the ‘looked but COULD NOT see’ category. In the run-up to the collision, although the driver was searching for approaching vehicles, the rider simply hadn’t put the bike in a place where the driver could see it.]

But drivers still don’t see you when they are looking straight at you and you are in clear view. Why not? Two possible causes. An accident analysis I saw the other day suggested that a contributory factor was “visual clutter” – there was so much going on in the direction the driver was looking that she simply didn’t see the bike. The brain was incapable of processing all the information being thrown at it in the time available and bits went astray. Unfortunately, amongst that lost info was the bike.

[NOTE – this phenomenon of processing information has been investigated in other fields – notable aviation – and the sum of the tasks that have to be performed is known as ‘workload’. Only recent has research in workload in driving been carried out, and it shows that in typical driving situations, there’s too much for the human brain to process all at once. So we ‘task-shed’ and focus on only part of the driving task. The very latest research (September 2019) suggests the more that’s going on, the more likely drivers are to forget what they saw a moment earlier. Motorcycles seem to be particularly prone to going missing. This is not carelessness or ‘not looking properly’ either. It’s simply the way the human brain evolved which limits our ability to process complex information.]

The second possibility is down to the way the eye and the brain work in tandem to process visual information. It may mean we see things which aren’t there or be blind to things that are. Even a conscientious driver, looking carefully, may misinterpret what he sees.

The central part of the retina is what sees detail in sharp focus – it’s why you have to look directly at a piece of paper to read what is written on it, but both this and the zone outside this is very sensitive to movement. Try this simple experiment – your eyes will have to move word by word to read this sentence, but if you move the mouse you can see it move over the whole of the screen wherever your eyes are focussed.

[NOTE – and there’s a bit more to this than I realised at the time. As our eyes move to points of interest (the words in this case), they move in jumps and pauses – saccades and fixations. The fixations allow us to focus and pick out the detail of the letters so we read the word. What’s not obvious – although we’ve known about it since the 19th century – is that as the eyes move in a saccade, the visual system shuts down. We’re effectively blind as our eyes move between fixations. It’s known as saccadic masking and is now at last being recognised as a real problem when drivers are turning their heads and looking left and right at junctions.]

As you ride, you’ll often spot motion out of the corner of your eye (a plastic bag flapping in a hedge or a car approaching in a side road) whereas the driver looking back at you is using the sharp focus part of the eye and may not see you because you don’t appear to be moving.

[NOTE – the brain is good at picking out movement in peripheral vision – it’s how our visual system is designed – but approaching a junction on the bike, we’re on a near-collision course with the driver looking in our direction. That means we’re virtually motionless with respect to the background scene, and that means we create no lateral movement to trigger the brain’s motion detection system. It’s known as ‘motion camouflage’. Interestingly this phenomenon has been known about for decades by animal scientists, sailors and fighter pilots, but only recently does it seem to have been realised it applies to drivers too.]

How might he miss seeing you? The brain spots familiar objects by using pattern recognition – as social animals we are very good at recognising faces. As drivers/riders we’ve trained our brain to recognise other important shapes – the silhouettes of another vehicle, the outline of a pedestrian, the pattern of a road sign. The problem is that we learn to recognise these patterns as whole – break up the outline and it vanishes – try recognising a face which is missing the eyes or the mouth! One VD contributor posted an excellent picture of a ‘dazzle-camouflaged’ ship painted in bold strips of grey and blue – it was invisible not because it blended into the background but because the strips gave the eye false outlines to try to make sense of, none of which said ‘SHIP’.

[NOTE – once again, this is ‘old news’ in science but the effects of ‘disruptive camouflage’ is only now beginning to be recognised as an issue. It’s particularly a problem for motorcyclists because our bikes and clothing are often multi-coloured. It’s likely it’s a significant factor in ‘looked but FAILED TO SEE’ errors. Even supposedly hi-vis clothing often fails to create a recognisable silhouette for the driver to see, which may well explain why there’s little evidence that hi-vis clothing has had any positive effect in reducing the proportion of junction collisions.]

When approaching a waiting driver, in certain lights conditions or against certain backgrounds, part of your ‘bike plus rider’ outline may vanish – so the shape that reaches the part of the brain busily processing this information doesn’t shout ‘BIKE’ to the driver’s conscious reactions. If you are approaching head on, without adding movement across the background, there is nothing to alert them to the fact they have missed a vital clue until you get very close and the angle of view starts to change.

[NOTE – this problem of foreground and background colours blending is known as ‘contrast camouflage’. Guess what? We’ve known about it and exploited it for military purposes for a couple of centuries. But road safety has focused entirely on the false premise that if riders wear bright colours they’ll be more visible. Put your yellow hi-vis vest on, then stand in front of a field of oil seed rape in flower, or a yellowing autumn hedge, and see if you stand out. Two of the most important pieces of understanding are:

it’s the CONTRAST that matters, not the colour

the background changes moment by moment and so does our conspicuity

If you want a daytime hi-vis colour that works reasonably well in most environments, it’s not Saturn yellow, but pink! I have been suggesting this for well over a decade, so when I took a BikeSafe day with the Met last year, I was mildly amused to the team suggesting pink hi-vis. I wonder where they got that idea?]

And as if all that weren’t enough that could go wrong, even if the driver does spot you, how does he go about judging your speed and distance?

Well, if an object is heading straight at you, it’s very difficult – switch to sport for a moment. If you’ve ever tried to make the high steepling catch where the batsman has hit the ball straight up, you’ll know that it’s not that easy to judge the catch as it comes down again – even the best players make a mess of it. You have to use an estimate of distance based on what your experience tells you about the apparent size of the object, then use the rate of change of the size of that object to determine what speed you think it’s approaching at, and when you need to cushion the catch.

By contrast a straightforward lob to the boundary is relatively easy to catch even if you have to run to meet it because we use the movement of the ball across the background to give us an extra angle to calculate where it is in 3D.

The driver sitting looking at a bike heading towards him is in the motoring equivalent of that up-and-down catch. At the high closing speeds possible on a motorcycle, it becomes almost impossible to judge distance, speed and time at all accurately.

[This is what I’ve called the ‘looked, saw and MISJUDGED’ error. But as well as the technical difficulty of accurately judging speed and distance, there’s an extra problem. Put a bike side-by-side with a car or van at the same distance and travelling at the same speed, and observers will almost always think the van will arrive first. Looking at the bike, they think they have more time, and make the mistake of pulling out. This has become known as the ‘size-arrival effect’.]

And whilst we’re digesting that, another thing to consider… it’s not just driver to your left you have to worry about, what about the driver turning across your path from the opposite direction? You have little time to react and are likely to add the oncoming vehicle’s speed to your own, and the driver has to factor in their own speed and distance to the turning point. That accident accounts for a whopping 21% of Killed and Seriously Injured in London, despite being the minority accident. By contrast, vehicles emerging from the left account for only 7% of KSI.

[This was the big lesson I personally learned from BikeSafe. I had no idea that the oncoming driver turning across the rider’s path was such a big killer. It’s been something I’ve been flagging up ever since.]

Where’s my coat, I’ll think I’ll take the bus instead!

POSTSCRIPT – Of course back in the early 2000s, what I wrote here kicked off a lot of negative feedback and some stinging criticism, typically suggesting I was “absolving the driver of responsibility”, or “making a victim of the rider”. It wasn’t just motorcyclists either – I was even told by a road safety officer that I was undoing all their good work promoting hi-vis clothing. Even in 2012, my presentation was often greeted with polite disbelief and shakes of the head.

But in the eight years since the first talk, other people have picked up the message and begun to run with it. Biker Down itself has gone national, and is delivered by over half of all fire services, many of which use a version of my SOBS presentation. A year or so after the first SOBS presentations on Biker Down, an RAF pilot compiled a very good article for a London cyclists’ magazine – I still reference that article regularly. And more recently, an excellent video has appeared online under the ‘Fortnine’ moniker on YouTube which covers much of what SOBS began explaining in 2012. Somewhat to my surprise, even BikeSafe in London has begun to cover some of the issues explained by SOBS.

As a result, riders are learning terms like ‘motion camouflage’ and ‘saccadic masking’ and the science isn’t quite so much of a mystery any more. The more of us saying the same thing, the more credible the message becomes and I’ve seen that in the response to my presentations, how attitudes have begun to shift.

Perhaps not surprisingly, as more people become familiar with the concepts of visual perception, critics have now started to say that SOBS is nothing new – that we knew all this already. I certainly don’t claim that I have contributed any original research to SOBS, but what is unique is that SOBS is most certainly the FIRST TIME anyone anywhere has attempted to assemble the research and present it ALL TOGETHER and in a form that is COMPREHENSIBLE to the average rider.

I personally have delivered the SOBS presentation to several thousand attendees on Biker Down in Kent, and many of the fire service Biker Down teams deliver a version of SOBS. Outside of Biker Down, I’ve personally taken SOBS to rider groups across the south of England (so drop me a line if you’d like a presentation delivered to your own group).

And in 2018 and 2019, SOBS achieved international recognition as I travelled to the other side of the world, to New Zealand. At the invitation of the NZ Transport Agency, the Ride Forever training scheme and the Accident Compensation Corporation, I was a keynote speaker on the Shiny Side Up roadshow that toured the county in both years, giving my talk to hundreds of Kiwi bikers at over a dozen venues on both trips.