Category: Hazards

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19. Don’t just ride for yourself, ride to deal with the other road user

Although the incident described in this article happened getting on for three decades ago, it still gives me the wobbles just thinking about it; it was that close. The central lesson remains unchanged. Most serious motorcycle crashes are not caused by a rider lacking technical skill, but by a failure to anticipate how other road users might behave when under pressure, impatient, distracted or simply mistaken. Modern road-safety research increasingly recognises that collisions arise from interactions between people, not isolated errors. Riding well, therefore, is not just about what we do ourselves, but about actively managing the risks created by others — and sometimes giving them space, time or options when they run out of judgement. Were I writing this today, I’d probably mention that systems thinking, applied to road safety, explicitly recognises that collisions arise from interactions between multiple road users, not isolated “fault”. With that in mind, my criticism of the coach driver could be usefully reframed as a missed opportunity to reduce overall system risk, rather than suggesting primary fault. That was over-the-top.

However, the idea that we should not rely on others doing the right thing is still as far from mainstream acceptance as ever. Riders still rely legal right-of-way as a safety strategy and explain passive riding (“I was minding my own business”) as a defence.

Don’t just ride for yourself, ride to deal with the other road user

I originally wrote this article after hearing from a friend about a fatal collision including a rider. It seemed a car travelling in the opposite direction had come under a railway bridge on the wrong side of the road. The car had apparently been racing another bike. It brought back memories of a personal near-miss on my regular weekend route when I was working as a trainer at Cinque Ports in Kent.

It was a lovely early morning in summer and I knew the road well, having been up and down it hundreds of times. One section took in a quiet country lane, wide and well surfaced with mostly good views and few houses, farms or side roads. One section is a flat-out downhill straight, almost a mile long. It finishes with a sharp, 20mph left-hand bend which has caught numerous riders and drivers out (the skid marks tell the tale) but that’s not where things got interesting. About a third of the way down this slope, where it would be quite easy to be doing three figure speeds on any modestly-powered machine, is a slight rise. It creates a blind crest with a hidden dip on the other side. I never took it too fast over the top because I knew there was a farm entrance just ahead.

But on this particular Saturday morning, at about 7:30 am, Spidy Sense kicked in. I don’t know why, but I approached the crest rather slower than normal. Coming the other way, the top of a coach appeared. I slowed even more and moved to the left of the lane. Damn me if a speeding car didn’t appear appear on my side of the road, desperately trying to complete an overtake!

If I hadn’t reacted, our closing speed would probably have been around 120mph. But slowing down gave me just enough space to swerve right over to the nearside, and we got past each other with maybe a metre to spare. By the time I got to work fifteen minutes later, I had stopped shaking.

I hadn’t thought about this for ages, till I received Steve’s e-mail, but it brought it all back and I sat down to think about it again.

Whether the driver overtaking the coach was incompetent or took a stupid risk is irrelevant, I found him where he was and I had to deal with it. Any blind area – whether it’s riding over a crest, under a bridge or round a bend – is riding into the unknown. And we need to apply some caution – “never ride at a speed faster than one that allow you to stop in the distance you can see to be clear and EXPECT TO REMAIN CLEAR” is a good the rule but we have to be aware that it’s all controlled by just what we expect. If we expect vehicles not to cross the centre line, then we’re not expecting a whole raft of potential problems.

I’ve no evidence how fast the dead rider was travelling and it seems no blame attached to him, but being completely objective, although I’m probably more cautious than nine out of ten riders, historically I probably rode over that crest a little faster than I should have done. Why? Because for “nothing had ever gone wrong before”.

The trouble is, in situations like this, it’s only ever likely to go wrong once.

It scares me witless when I see riders launch themselves at blind corners and junctions at speeds that give them no chance of stopping in the event of something blocking the road. We should always be thinking of the Worst Case Scenario, planning to stop or at least take evasive action in an emergency.

But ultimately, the driver who was really at fault was – in my opinion – the coach driver.

Why? He made zero effort to get either of us out of trouble. Even if he was half-asleep, he’d have seen the suicidal driver attempting the overtake, and that the car wasn’t going to get back to the correct side of the road before the crest. And his higher-up driving position would have given him a sight of me a moment or two earlier than the driver could see me. If it had been me behind the coach wheel, I would have slammed the brakes on, and made as much space as possible by keeping left, hoping to give the car driver space to avoid the bike.

In the event, the drive didn’t change position and as far as I could see he didn’t even touch the brakes!

Bloodymindedness? Possibly, truck and coach drivers are loath to lose speed because it takes them so long to build it up. But more likely it was a complete lack of recognition that there was a head-on collision about to happen alongside him. It didn’t threaten him personally, therefore it didn’t even register as a danger.

Whatever the reason, the coach driver’s inaction had committed the car driver to a single, unalterable course of action. I call it ‘putting someone in jail’. The driver had no escape route and no alternative other than to keep going and hope for the best.

The point I’m making is that we might be riding along minding our own business, but by doing nothing when other road users create a dangerous situation, we still contribute to it. A good example is the rider who forces a driver to abort a turn across a main road by simply carrying on, doing nothing because “I have right of way”. Or holding a wide line around a left-hand bend forcing a truck to steer to the left to avoid hitting the bike. Backing off the throttle, turning a little tighter would make life easier for everyone. So we need to b aware of everything that goes on around us, including assessing the problems other road users face, and deciding if there’s anything we can do to help them out or even give them a way to get out of trouble.

I often wonder what gave me that premonition… did I in fact spot the coach and car in the far distance before they vanished? I don’t remember seeing them, but it’s possible I clocked them subconciously. I don’t give myself any credit for getting out of a highly dangerous situation alive where another biker didn’t. I’d rather it was seen as a reminder that however careful we are, to some extent we depend on other drivers and riders help out in moments like this, and it’s up to us as thinking riders to actively look for the problems affecting other road users, be aware of their mistakes and help them out too.

POSTSCRIPT

Some weeks later I mentioned the story and the value of keeping left over blind crests to my riding buddy Keith as we were sat on the ferry on the way to Chimay for the June racing. He was not completely convinced about the value of keeping left over blind crests. But guess what happened on the way back? A driver decided he couldn’t wait any longer to get to the front of a short stream of slower-moving cars and went to overtake the lot, towards a blind crest. He ran out of space and ended up passing the final vehicle on the wrong side of the centre line…

…just as a motorcycle appeared coming the other way.

Somehow they missed each other. I don’t know how, because I was already on the brakes, looking for an escape route to escape the expected carnage.

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17. Staying Warm on two wheels

Physics doesn’t change. Only our understanding of the principles does. Given how long ago I wrote this article, it has not just stood up well to the passage of years, I’d venture to say that it was is quietly ahead of its time, at least in the world of motorcycling: the emphasis on core temperature, cognition and risk perception, and decision-making, rather than just comfort, aligns very closely with how cold-weather risk is framed today in both occupational safety and human-factors research. Hypothermia is insidious and often unrecognised and framing getting cold as a decision-making and control problem is crucial, and extends far beyond a comfort issue, something still under-emphasised in mainstream motorcycling advice. That reinforces why riders underestimate cold-related risk. The central insight — cold hands are a symptom of falling core temperature — is the core of the article and scientifically valid as is the explanation of insulation as rate-of-loss reduction rather than heat retention. This is a mistake riders still make even today, relying on layering too much.

Where I writing the article today, I would point out that much of my critique of heated grips is fair, but they are more reliable and somewhat more effective than the ones I struggled with back in my courier days, but they are still more useful as a supplement to heated clothing, but not a solution, particularly on a long ride.

Staying Warm on two wheels

Motorcycles and cold weather aren’t entirely compatible. Whilst the biggest winter risk to riding in the UK is ice, the subtle disorientation caused by hypothermia isn’t that far behind. The wind chill factor is considerable on a bike, and the hands are stuck out in the wind. They also have a large surface area to lose heat from, and so are the first part of the body that we notice getting cold. Unfortunately, because gloves still need to allow us to operate the controls, they are also probably the most difficult part of the body to keep warm. Over the years, I tried all sorts of ways of keeping my hands warm. I tried some pretty expensive kit as well as ideas I knocked up myself for nothing. So have a read, learn from my experience, and before you dash out and spend big cash too, don’t make the same mistakes I did.

In an attempt to keep my hands warm I’ve tried:-

thick gloves
thermal gloves
World War 2 flying gloves (really!)
skiing gloves
silk inner gloves
thermal inners
overmitts
handlebar muffs
cut down milk containers
heated inners
heated handlebar grips

But before I discuss how well they worked – or didn’t work – let’s consider just why hypothermia isn’t uncommon when riding a bike.

Heat is lost from the body by three routes:

radiation
convection
conduction

Fairly obviously, the blood flows out down our arms and legs to hands and feet, and back to the heart. But when it’s cold, the blood passing down arms and legs is cooled by the windblast – their large surfaces act as radiators – and returned to the core of the body. Now it has to be re-heated before being pumped round the body again. The body can cope with mild cooling – it just turns up the heat by burning more fuel – but there’s a limit. Once we start losing heat faster than the body’s self-warming process can cope with, we start losing heat from the body’s core. And the steeper the temperature gradient (ie, how cold it is), the faster we chill.

Now, we don’t really feel any of that, but what we feel is the next stage. As our core temperature starts to fall, the circulation of warm blood to the surface capillaries begins to shut down to reduce further heat loss. Skin feels cold to the touch. Go a stage further and the blood supply to the body’s extremities also starts to shut down – now it’s not just skin that’s cold, but our hands and feet, and eventually even our arms and legs.

What are the effects of this chilling? When are arms and legs get cold, the muscles operating our fingers, hands and feet become stiff and unresponsive. And we start to struggle to control the bike. I remember one icy ride from London to Kent when I couldn’t actually change gear for the last ten minutes.

That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. We also lose heat through our neck and head, and that means the brain is affected too. We start losing focus and making bad decisions.

So that’s hypothermia. And it sets in surprisingly easily on a bike. If you’ve ever reached the stage of shivering uncontrollably, you’re in the early stages of hypothermia. . This is not idle speculation – this comes straight from sports physiology research.

So what was the mistake I made? It’s pretty obvious when you read the list above – they were all attempts to keep my hands warm. Unfortunately, that’s treating the SYMPTOMS rather than the DISEASE.

Let’s just recall what thermally-insulated clothing does. We think of it as ‘retaining’ heat, but that’s not actually how it works. It SLOWS DOWN the rate of heat loss.

So here are two points to think about:

thermal insulation only works up to the point where the temperature gradient across the insulation is steep enough for the rate of heat loss to exceed the body’s ability to heat itself. Once temperatures dip low enough, from that point on, we are going to chill. For clothing with good thermal insulation, that threshold temperature is lower.

if we only ride short distances, thermal insulation may slow down the rate of heat less enough that we don’t notice the chilling effect of cold weather. But on a longer ride in the same clothing, we will continue to lose heat for as long as we’re riding, and then all that our thermal clothing can do, no matter how good it is, is to delay the onset of chilling. It prolongs the agony, as it were. This is a serious problem if you are habitually a short distance rider and suddenly do a long trip. It took me years to understand why the clothing that kept me nice and warm on short rides let me get so cold on long runs.

So the key point is that whilst moderately chilly weather may be tolerable for short rides, as soon as the temperature really dips or we take a long ride, we’re going to chill. Circulation to the arms, legs and brain are all reduced, and eventually we’ll lose our mental focus too.

One obvious solution is to keep adding thermal insulation until we stay toasty. That’s the idea behind ‘layering’. But after a bit, thick gloves with inners get too bulky to be easy to use, and we end up looking like the Michelin Man – try looking over your shoulder!

So let’s step backwards a bit, and recall that if we keep the core temperture high, blood keeps circulating. But how can we supplement the body’s own ability to supply enough extra heat?

Well, the obvious solution if hands are cold is to use something to heat the hands – heated grips and gloves . But remember – this is the symptom, not the disease. They might make our fingers feel warm but they are very inefficient – most of the heat produced is lost again, either by conduction down the metal bars or radiation from the back of the glove. My experience is that I still got physically cold even if my fingers felt warm, probably because the warm fingers ‘fool’ the brain into opening up capillaries to blood flow, which then loses heat. And as a secondary problem, I’ve found heated grips and gloves fail very quickly because of the constant flexing. I generally reckoned on a year for heated grips before the wiring failed and one winter for the gloves, sometimes just a couple of months. It’s the heating elements that go in gloves and the feed wire on the throttle side with grips.

So can we heat the core directly? We can, by using heated clothing. A heated jacket or waistcoat adds heat where it’s needed, and given the same insulation, the result is that we push the point where we start to chill to a lower temperature. With core temperature maintained, so is circulation to the extremities and so hands and feet get a constant supply of warm blood.

In my experience of riding through really cold weather – I was a blood runner for several years, being called out at all hours of the night including in mid-winter – a heated waistcoat may not completely overcome the cooling effect but goes a long way towards it – on one 3am ride in January when it was -10c, my fingers still got cold but they didn’t go numb. I would have struggled to complete the ride without the waistcoat. I’ve found that if it’s chilly (10 – 5C) wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a light fleece then my heated waistcoat keeps me warm. If it’s cold (around 0) I wear the fleece over the waistcoatr. Below zero, I put unlined waterproofs over my riding suit, and that is sufficient to deal with a three hour riding down to about -10C.

Heated waistcoats are available for around £100 and my experience is also that they last much longer. My first Gerbing waistcoat lasted a decade, and my replacement from Exo2 is even older. Only the oldest bikes will have problems with a waistcoat – they draw no more than about 30 watts – half a halogen headlight bulb. It’s also possible to daisy-chain heated gloves, socks, leggings and collars from some manufacturers, but make sure your bike’s alternator can cope with all that lot.

Personally, I’d avoid a heated jacket. You can wear a heated waistcoat under several layers of insulation BEFORE putting a jacket on – you can’t do this if the heating element is built in to the jacket.

Final tip – plug the leaks! Keep wind out of your clothing by tightening wrist straps, using a scarf or neckwarmer and zipping jackets to trousers or wearing one-piece suits. Several thin layers are better than one thick one, unless it is a fleece – the idea is to trap air and stop it moving. If you have a separate jacket, bib-and-brace type trousers help keep the kidneys warm. A cheap one piece rain suit over the top will do wonders if you have separate jacket and jeans.

And a word of warning – don’t put the heated waistcoat next to the skin – the heating element can get pretty hot and you will end up looking like you barbecued yourself! You can get inline temperture controllers, or just wire in a simple on-off switch on the bike’s dash. Don’t forget to fit an inline fuse to avoid self-immolation.

If you want to stay warm on a bike this winter, spend some smart money on a heated waistcoat!

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16. A Moment of Inattention? Or a lack of attention to fixing problems?

A universal and ongoing challenge in motorcycling is understanding how human instinct, fear, and attention interact with skill under real-world stress, what’s now referred to as ‘human factors’. Even experienced riders can find themselves in situations where instinct and fear override skill. This article explores a real-world braking emergency to illustrate how inattention, poor anticipation, and stress responses interact, why emergency skills alone aren’t enough, and how proactive hazard assessment and mindset can prevent dangerous situations before they occur. The article’s core message — that accidents often result from cognitive and attentional failures rather than purely technical deficiencies — remains as relevant today as ever and explains why neuroscience matters to motorcyclists.

A Moment of Inattention? Or a lack of attention to fixing problems?

The following was posted in a discussion group by a friend of mine, Don Kime, an instructor in the States. What can be learned? The rider identifies some of the problems for himself. So why’s he not done something about sorting it out? And here’s the really scary bit: “Here we go again.” So he’s been in this position before. What’s he not learned from the previous incidents?

“More harrowing braking experiences. This is beginning to scare me. I just got back from a ride and was on a two lane, fairly straight and wide, country road. I was following a pickup doing somewhere around 75mph. He was about four car lengths or more ahead of me. I was just enjoying the ride, as usual. Next thing I know all I see is brake lights and I am closing on his tail gate fast. Here we go again.

“I immediately get down on both brakes, and the back wheel promptly locks up. At first I am not really sure which wheel is sliding until the back end starts to wag back and forth. At this point I know I need to be squeezing the front brake harder than I am, but for some reason I am afraid I am going to slide the front wheel and loose control. In retrospect, I don’t think I was anywhere near loosing traction on the front. I am in the grips of fear and (again) fixated on the tail gate of the truck.

“For a moment I am sure I am not going to be able to stop in time, but I feel like I can at least get my speed down before I impact. I continue on the front brake with the rear locked. I know I should have released the rear, but at the moment there was no way I was going to let off either brake. I managed to bear down a bit harder on the front once I realized that it was the rear that was sliding and not the front. I brought the bike to a stop about 10ft behind the truck in a cloud of smoke from my rear tire. (I flat spotted the heck out of my new Macadam!)

“The pickup had just stopped dead in the middle of the road to make a right turn (without signalling). I don’t know if he had slammed on his brakes hard or if I had not seen them when they first came on. All I remember is going about 70 and seeing brake lights and a truck that had come to a complete stop right in front of me.

I made several rookie mistakes (again). First of all, I made no attempt to avoid. I fixated. I probably could have gone around, but once I locked the back wheel that was no longer an option. I don’t remember if there was any oncoming traffic or not. I don’t think I had time to look. Second, I did not brake the front wheel aggressively enough. My first instinctive reaction was to jam down the brake pedal which resulted in the rear wheel slide and making me panic. I think if I had used only the front brake I would have stopped much sooner. But for some reason, I can’t seem to keep myself from stomping on the rear brake in an emergency. Right after the incident I did three practice emergency braking tests. I was able to bring the bike to a controlled stop all three times in a distance much shorter than what I had just done. But I was not in a real emergency situation.

Something happens to my brain when I am in a real emergency situation that prevents me from thinking clearly and braking correctly. Fear, plain in simple. Maybe I just need to practice more so it is second nature. My brain just seems to lock up in panic situations. I need to somehow learn to control my fear instead of letting it control me.”

So what can we learn? What are the issues?

Let’s take a moment to think about what the rider has for himself identified as a problem – his braking technique. Notice he said he practiced three stops immediately after the incident and managed them fine. It should be obvious that he was not familiar with the using the brakes hard. Practicing emergency stops after the event is too late!

But here’s the real problem: “Something happens to my brain when I am in a real emergency situation… I made no attempt to avoid. I fixated. I probably could have gone around, but once I locked the back wheel that was no longer an option.”

Once in a panic situation, self-preservation and instinct took over from planned riding. Why? Because we cannot easily practice emergencies! As there’s no actual emergency in a practice emergency stop, the risk is that if we don’t see it coming soon enough to brake hard consciously, our unconscious ‘Survival Reactions’ take over. These are the primitive and instinctive responses the threat, such as target fixation, freezing and over-braking. Keith Code first talked about this in his ‘Twist of the Wrist’ books. And it’s actually a dramatic limitation of training in emergency techniques. We know what to do in an emergency, but we don’t know how we’ll react in an emergency.

So, how do we prevent survival reactions taking over?

The first option is not to follow so close. He said: “I was following a pickup doing somewhere around 75mph. He was about four car lengths or more ahead of me”. If he’d really been that close, he would have hit the back of the truck before he had even applied the brakes, so let’s make some allowance for hazy perceptions of following distance after the event, but it’s still clear he was too close. If we’re to avoid triggering survival reactions, we need to see the vehicle ahead begin to slow, and still have time to think.

How far back is that?

Well that depends on something else. Our expectations. He said: “The pickup had just stopped dead in the middle of the road to make a right turn (without signalling).” Well, that’s not exactly unusual is it? Vehicles – including motorcycles – stop. Our rider had failed to anticipate it might happen. And that means it was a SURPRISE! And SURPRISE! is the trigger for survival reactions. More about this on the No Surprise No Accident website.

It’s hard to give hard and fast distances but in essence if we’re taken by SURPRISE we can add anything from 1 second to 3 seconds to our stopping distance. That’s not because we’re braking less effectively, it’s because it takes that long to actually BEGIN to react. The Highway Code talks about ‘reaction time’ and ‘stopping distance’, but ignores this ‘recognition time’. Whilst we can certainly stop in less than the near-100 metre distance the Highway Code says we should allow IF we anticipate the need to stop and hit the brakes immediately, if we freeze for three seconds, we’ll have travelled no less than 90 metres before even beginning to brake!

What we actually need is a riding plan that factors in things going wrong before it actually happens. Read this: “I was just enjoying the ride, as usual… I don’t remember if there was any oncoming traffic or not. I don’t think I had time to look.” Do you begin to see the problem? We all tend to drift at times but a lack of focus on the riding task is dangerous. Alertness can’t be sacrificed for relaxation. He shouldn’t have had to think about looking, he should have been aware of other traffic As Don says “I don’t see this as a ‘braking’ issue – I see it as a ‘thinking’ issue”.

Finally let’s look at Don’s summary of the event.

“First, as many of you have said, unless the rider was planning on overtaking, his following distance was far too close. If he was planning on overtaking, he should have been fully aware of all traffic ahead including any sideroads or driveways or other situations which could produced just what happened. I have learned to never put myself in an overtaking posture when there could be reason for the driver to brake for an unsignalled turn, an animal, bad roadway surface, etc., etc.

“Assuming that the rider was not overtaking, it was a potentially disastrous mistake to follow so closely, but this was exaggerated by a very lackadaisical attitude toward having full information on traffic conditions ahead – together, in my opinion, a potentially deadly combination.

“I see this as 90% of the learning opportunity from this situation. Most emergency braking, in my opinion, results from this kind of failure, and I’m not sure that all the braking practice or discussion in the world assures a rider of righting this wrong. I’m not sure how any of us, including me, will react in a true ‘the collision is imminent’ braking situation. I’ve fortunately not had to find out as ‘heavy braking’ has always been enough. Nonetheless, I practice maximum braking as often as possible.

“However, it is my personal preference to concentrate the vast majority of my efforts at avoiding this situation. I personally believe that this is the only right answer.

“My final thought on this is that… with proper anticipation and attention to defensive motorcycle riding these kinds of situations do not have to be the norm. I don’t recall when last I had a traffic situation ‘surprise’ me. …and I don’t say this to blow my horn as a rider. There are many far better riders than me. I simply practice religiously a system of riding which attempts to separate me from situations at which this particular rider failed. In my opinion, this is the difference between motorcycling being a ‘relatively’ safe, wonderfully challenging and enjoyable activity and one which can kill you very quickly. At the same time, I am fully aware that, in spite of all our best efforts, there is one out there that can get any of us. That’s why I wear the gear and am very appreciative of good luck.”

My final comment is to repeat what another contributor said: “The old pilot axiom is that superior pilots are the ones who never get in a position where they need to use their superior skills”.

Absolutely.

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14. Who is writing your biking advice? Make sure it’s good!

I sometimes pick up criticism for commenting negatively on other articles on better biking skills. “Why are you being so negative? They are only trying to help” was something I heard a while back. The trouble is, not all advice is created equal. When it comes to cornering, there’s a still a focus on prioritising ‘progress’ and textbook lines over hazard awareness, leaving riders exposed to surprises. Where we look and how we think about hazards in corners matters more than how fast we take a bend; the aim of the article is to explain why situational awareness should always come first in advanced riding. The reference to the MAC courses from 1998 may seem out of date, but in fact there is still a need for similar cautions, particularly in this age of modern tech; that might change the machine dynamics but cannot replace situational awareness.

Who is writing your biking advice? Make sure it’s good!

Some years back I was reading a new section on advanced riding on another website. The section was designed to pull in readers to the business, and I wasn’t surprised to see that the first article dealt with cornering – it usually does! But rather than being written ‘in-house’, contributions were from readers. In this case, the article appeared it was written by someone who had completed a two day Motorcycle Appreciation Course (MAC) in 1998 as part of that now-defunct Honda-run training initiative. No problem, I thought, I’m always interested in new ideas and new sources. However, reading it more closely revealed a couple of misunderstandings. At least I hoped they were misunderstandings and not what was taught!

So what did I spot that concerned me? The most important one involved our old friend the Limit Point (or vanishing, distance or convergence point) and what we should do with it.

He states “quick riding particularly through bends is all about position. Correct positioning will enable maximum visibility and consequently more rapid progress.”

Uh-oh. First warning sign. Notice the emphasis on quick riding and progress. As I stated in a previous tip, skills-based training has to be tempered by a knowledge of what can go WRONG. My first thought would be “what might make me slow down and maybe even stop”, not how fast I can get around the bend. Our goal in a bend is NOT ‘more progress’. It’s all about identifying hazards that might make us slow down. IF and ONLY IF we are certain that we cannot see any reasons to slow down, THEN we can choose whether or not making ‘progress’ is appropriate. And I know this is where the Survival Skills risk-based approach to training parts company with a lot of other post-test training in the UK.

“Therefore moving to the left for a right-hander, staying in to the left watching the vanishing point until you can see the exit then drifting away from the left towards the right easing out the bend and accelerating away will open the bend out allowing more brisk progress. The opposite applies for left-handers”.

No. Once we realise that our first task is always to work out where we might to stop, then we need to look out for the hazards that might make us stop. Gaining the best possible view around the bend isn’t the same as maximising our view of hazards.

If we’re going to experience a nasty SURPRISE! on a corner, it’s most likely to appear from a hazard called a ‘surprise horizon’. The surprise horizon is a blind area between us and the furthest point we can see is clear. The reason a surprise horizon is a hazard we need to be aware of is because of the risk that a vehicle (or a cycle or a person or even an animal) could suddenly appear. And it’s appearing between us and the limit point.

And that in turn leads to two other conclusions:

positioning to see as far as the limit point MUST be subsidiary to changing position to open up views into these blind areas. If we simply ride to open up view around a right-hand bend, it can place us perilously close to these blind entrances on the nearside.

our speed must be set to allow us to take some evasive action at the surprise horizon, not the limit point

Are there any other hazards?

We mustn’t forget that the more we position to the right-of-centre and close to the centre line, there is the potential risk of conflict with oncoming traffic. The narrower the road or the sharper the corner, the worse the risk. Too far to the right and the only benefit will be that we see what we’re about to hit a moment sooner. We must give up position if keeping right on a left-hander would potentially expose us to a risk of head-on collision. We MUST maintain a broader focus on the ROAD, not just the the corner – we must maintain SITUATIONAL AWARENESS.

Then he continued: “if all this seems rather obvious, it is probably because it is and certainly it came as nothing new to me. So why was I losing speed on the approach to bends and in some cases while negotiating them?

“I had forgotten not the need to assess the line of the road well in advance, but to maintain concentration on where it was going, in other words where I wanted to go… It took me some while to realise that instead of watching the vanishing point and chasing it, my eye was straying to changes in the road surface, the instruments, or minor obstructions. As soon as my concentration strayed, my momentum through the bend or on its approach reduced.”

Maybe I’m deliberately failing to read between the lines, but to me (and possibly to someone reading this with whilst looking for advice) this reads as if the broader situational awareness is being seen as a distraction from the all-important task of ‘making progress’ through the corner.

Of course we look at the road surface, of course we look at ‘minor obstructions’. We have to, because we are not on a race track and we need to keep an up-to-date 360 degree mental map of our surroundings, and a lot of vital detail can only be assessed when we’re closer-up. What’s a dark patch spotted in the distance? Only close up will we be able to tell if it’s a road repair with different coloured tarmac, a pothole, a damp patch or a fuel spill. Clearly, there are good times to make mirror checks and glance at the instruments, and that’s probably not in the middle of the corner, but denying that we need to check the surface or what’s left and right of our path is just plain wrong.

My guess is that the entire diagnosis of the writer’s problems was wrong. It was not ‘lack of forward vision’ so much as a late response to the hazards he had spotted – hence running in on a closed throttle – plus a general lack of a plan allowing the rider to negotiate bends as a flowing sequence. Possibly he got a lecture on the dangers of target fixation.

That would tally with what he says later about it being “a truism that we go where we look”. That’s another old chestnut. We actually look at what scares us – it’s built-in to human responses to threats. It’s target fixation and it’s a far more natural response to the threats of the road, and it takes a real effort to lift our view further ahead and away from the threat. And one of the things that creates target fixation, pulling our view down and to the immediate surroundings, is trying to ride too fast – we start focusing on the Number One job which is simply staying on the tarmac. If we haven’t got time to spread our vision around, then we’re riding too close to our limits. And there’s another reason progress should never be a goal of training, but an outcome of eliminating risk.

So next time you’re out on the bike, have a think about where you are looking. If you’re being surprised by hazards appearng AHEAD, then you need to pick your vision up and search further ahead. If you’re being surprised by hazards appearing from the SIDES then you need to spread your view left and right. In either case, you may need to slow down initially, but what you should not be doing is focusing exclusively on the limit point.

 

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06. Where riders crash – dispelling some myths

LATEST UPDATE JANUARY 2025

SUMMARY

Updating this article with the latest UK motorcycle crash statistics show that the fundamental patterns of motorcycle collisions have remained consistent over the past two decades — even as total numbers have moved mostly down. These figures come from the 2023–2024 “Reported Road Casualties Great Britain” factsheets published by the Department for Transport (DfT), which are the latest comprehensive government data available.

Overall Casualty Numbers (Trend vs 1998)

Then (1998):

  • ~24,969 injury accidents involving motorcycles

  • 498 rider deaths

  • 5,944 serious injuries

  • 18,168 slight injuries

Now (2024):

  • 340 motorcyclists killed in reported collisions

  • 5,468 seriously injured (adjusted)

  • 10,152 slightly injured (adjusted)

  • On average (2020–2024) about 6 riders are killed and 101 seriously injured per week in GB reported road casualty data.

Interpretation:
While the exact numbers have shifted due to changes in traffic levels, exposure, reporting and other factors, the pattern remains: motorcycles are still involved in disproportionately high numbers of serious and fatal collisions relative to their traffic share (under 1% of traffic).

Collision Type: Rural vs Junctions

Junction Incidence (2019–2023):

  • A majority of motorcycle fatalities (≈59–63%) occur not at or within 20m of a junction.

  • Only around 27–32% of fatalities occur at T/Y or other junction types.

  • Junction collisions remain a noticeable but not dominant proportion.

  • Majority of fatalities are not at junctions; many occur on rural roads.

Rural Roads:

  • ~69% of motorcycle fatalities occur on rural roads (where speed and cornering challenges are greater), even though rural traffic is a much smaller proportion of total vehicle miles travelled.

Interpretation:
This echoes my original point that high-speed rural road accidents and loss-of-control incidents continue to be very significant, rather than urban/driver-at-junction scenarios being the overwhelming cause.

Involvement of Other Vehicles

Recent breakdown (2019–2024):

  • A significant portion of fatalities still involves other traffic—fatal accidents involving two vehicles including a car ≈38%

  • These include overtaking crashes, not just collisions at junctions.

  • Many fatalities occur without any other vehicle involved, underscoring the role of single-vehicle incidents.

Interpretation:
This supports the earlier narrative that not all crashes are “car vs bike”, and that single-vehicle crashes are a significant part of the overall picture. While total fatal and serious injury numbers have decreased compared to the late 1990s, the distribution of crash types is little changed.

Back to the Future: the original article

Starting work as a courier in late 70s London made me very aware of the consequences of crashing – after all, if I couldn’t ride, I couldn’t eat. So not only did I do my very best to avoid crashing out on the roads, I also researched the topic as I tried to find out as much as possible about where, how and why motorcycle riders crash. The result was that I survived sixteen years and around half a million miles as a courier. Not surprisingly, once I became a motorcycle trainer, it became a self-appointed goal to educate other riders about why we crash.

Naturally, avoiding crashing has been a feature of my Survival Skills advanced rider training courses but I’ve also been writing on the topic for well over twenty years. My very first column for the Motorcycle Action Group’s magazine back in 2002 addressed crashing, but unfortunately it seems the topic needs revisiting on a regular basis.

Let’s start with a fact. There are a lot of urban collisions between bikes and cars. In 2019, just before re-publishing this article, MAG launched a new safety intiative online and one of the very first comments was along the lines of “it’s time we stopped drivers killing bikers”. It’s an attractive belief – after all, we hear a lot about bikes colliding with cars and now we have YouTube as an easy means of posting up the ‘evidence’.

Unfortunately, it’s largely a myth. Whilst there are fatal collisions at junctions, the fact is that far more riders kill themselves running wide in corners or through a badly-judged overtake.

But so is the idea that it’s power which is the problem. Here’s the text of an article that went up on my website in the early 2000s as I researched my first MAG articles in response to threats of a power restriction on bikes.

Since then, I’ve kept an eye on each new report or study into motorcycle crashes. And here’s the bad news. If you care to dig out the latest stats on motorcycle accidents, you’ll find nothing’s changed. We’re still having the same crashes in the same places. Some elements have changed since I wrote the article below – the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on power went out of the window – but the essential analysis of crashes is still entirely relevant two decades on.

Power Output

If you are a member of either the BMF or MAG, or just interested in motorcycle politics, you’ll know that the EC and various member governments have had serious concerns about power and motorcycle accidents.

Motorcycle manufacturers are slowly waking up to the fact that there has been a change of approach by road safety campaigners, and that vehicles capable of such high speeds are being targeted as socially unacceptable, and possible solutions include compulsory bhp limits and speed restrictors.

Limiting speed of traffic has been on the agenda in the UK for months, and Dutch and German governments have shown concern over recent high performance models. Euro-wide plans for a power limit have been around in one form or another for ten years. Some countries have had power restrictions in place for years. Since 1984 French bikes have been restricted to 98 bhp and Swiss riders have to make do with 85 bhp.

A 125 bhp “gentleman’s agreement” in the UK was scuppered, ironically enough, by Triumph when they released their 143 bhp Daytona 1200, and since then the power race has been on, and speeds have climbed to match, to the point where the Hayabusa and ZX12-R are nudging the 200 mph barrier. The result of concerns in the UK is that the Big Four Japanese manufacturers have put in place a voluntary speed limit of 186mph on their most powerful models.

Power limits are generally justified on the grounds that power equates directly to speed, and that speed causes accidents. The mid 90s Martin Bangemann-inspired 100 hp limit was only ditched by the EC when the research on which it was based was shown to be flawed. More recently a Dutch safety study into motorcycle accidents found no link between accidents and bikes of 100 hp or more and clearly showed that power is not an issue in motorcycle accidents. The study, which was carried out by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, included a survey of existing reports, as well as evidence from the Dutch police.

Existing reports clearly showed that the major factors in accident risk were not engine power, but the motorcyclists themselves

age
experience
attitude
alcohol

and the accident circumstances

type and condition of the road
location
weather etc.

Evidence from the Dutch police accident investigators showed that high speed and taking risks was also a significant factor :

losing control on a bend
other road users wrongly estimating speed
reckless riding

Even there though, there was no evidence that more than 100bhp was being used at the time.

Accident Statistics

Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) figures published in February 1999 show that in 1998 there were:

24,969 Injury Accidents Involving Motorcycles
498 Motorcyclist Deaths
5,944 Serious Injuries
18,168 Slight Injuries

Motorcycle riders and passengers accounted for 15% of those killed or seriously injured in 1998, but powered two wheeler traffic represented less than 1% of all road traffic.

There were 17,422 two vehicle accidents involving motorcycles in 1998 and 5,529 single vehicle accidents. Of the single vehicle accidents, 1,446 involved one or more pedestrians; in these accidents there were 1,490 pedestrians hit, of whom 29 were killed and 344 seriously injured.

On built-up roads, over three quarters of motorcycle accidents occurred at junctions, and almost a half at T or Y junctions. By comparison, on non built-up roads, less than a half of motorcycle accidents occurred at junctions, and just under a fifth at T or Y junctions.

The motorcyclist casualty rate was higher on built-up than non built-up roads. Less than half of motorcycle traffic was on built-up roads, which accounted for 72% of casualties. The lowest casualty rate was on motorways. However, the proportion of accidents involving serious injury was higher on non-built up roads and motorways, reflecting the higher speeds on these roads.

London had the highest rate of motorcyclists killed or seriously injured in road accidents but was only slightly higher than that for Scotland as a whole, but twice that of the South West region which had the lowest rate. London had the highest rate and the North East had the lowest rate for all severities of casualty.

Per registered motorcycle, Great Britain had a high death rate in comparison with other countries. Ireland had the highest and Japan the lowest. Britain’s death rate of 6.8 per 10,000 licensed motorcycles is about eight times that of the Czech Republic, with the lowest rate.

When accidents occur

The average daily casualty count was higher during the week than at the weekend, with Fridays having the most casualties in 1998. However, the proportion of casualties killed or seriously injured was higher at the weekend, at 32% compared with 24% during the week.

There is a marked difference between the proportion of motorcyclist casualties injured during summer and winter, whilst there is much less seasonal variation in all road user casualties. The highest percentage of casualties occurred in August for motorcyclists and in November for all road users.

Who causes accidents?

Riders have long taken (cold) comfort in the findings of the Booth Report (1987) which, looking at accidents in urban areas, concluded that car drivers were at fault in two thirds of accidents involving motorcycles. Equally, high casualty rates amongst the under 25’s were often put down to youth and lack of experience.

The DETR figures show that accidents involving a motorcycle and another vehicle still account for 2/3rds of all motorcycle accidents. However, they also show that single vehicle accidents with no pedestrians or other road users involved accounted for 18% of all motorcycle accidents resulting in injury. This compares with 14% for cars and 7% for goods vehicles.

However, an in-depth analysis of accidents in Cheshire between 1 April 1998 and 31 October 1998 reported in Street Biker (Feb-Mar 2000), the MAG newspaper. John Moss MBE, Chief Road Safety Officer for Cheshire (and MAG member) revealed that fully 67% of all the crashes studied were due to rider error and that the traditional view that most motorcycle accidents are down to blind Volvo drivers is badly flawed.

Let’s look at the bald statistics:

lost control on right hand bend - 16.7%
lost control on left hand bend - 13.7%
right turning vehicle hit by overtaking motorcycle - 12.7%
motorcycle hit by emerging vehicle at junction - 9.8%
motorcycle collides with rear of stationary vehicle at junction - 7.8%
fell off - 6.9%
collisions on roundabouts - 6.9%
motorcycle crosses carriageway on l/h bend
and collides with oncoming vehicle - 5.9%
motorcycle crosses carriageway on r/h bend
and collides with oncoming vehicle - 3.9%
motorcycle collides with vehicle turning right across its path - 7.8%
stationary motorcycle hit from behind - 5.9%
others - 2.0%

Sports bikes were involved in 43% of these accidents and the 26-40 age group in an overwhelming 55.3%. The supposedly high risk group of under 25’s accounted for 23.6%. Not unexpectedly in a survey area which includes the infamous “Cat & Fiddle” over 50% of riders lived outside the survey area.

How can we interpret these figures?

The fact that London dominates the casualty list is hardly surprising. The population of London is something like 6 million, around 10% of the entire population of the UK. In addition, several million drivers and riders more commute into and out of London. Traffic density is high over a very large area. What is rather more of a surprise is that Scotland was only slightly lower. What is not clear is whether the casualties are concentrated in the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas or whether rural accidents make a significant contribution.

Neither is it surprising that over three quarter of motorcycle accidents and just under three quarters of injuries occurred at junctions. If you hit a car, even at twenty miles per hour speed you are likely to be injured.

What is not so clear until you look at the figures more closely is that the DETR figures show that accidents out of town occur at higher speeds and result in more serious injury, even though the figures for in-town accidents appear to dominate the statistics. The problem is one of interpretation. Lumping together serious and fatal injuries is misleading and many serious injuries are not necessarily life threatening. As I understand it a broken finger requiring medical treatment would be considered a serious injury and relatively minor injuries of this kind are much more likely to occur when you ride a bike and are involved in a minor accident than if you drive a car.

The way the figures for serious injury and fatalities are taken together tends to disguise the consequences of rural accidents. Earlier statistics from 1994 show that 50% of all fatalities occur out of town.

Although single vehicle accidents account for slightly less than 1/5th of all motorcycle accidents according to DETR figures, these accidents usually occur outside town and at higher speeds and lead to more serious injury. This is borne out by the higher proportion of serious injuries and fatalities occurring at weekends and in the middle of the summer, which implicates recreational riders rather than workday commuters.

So who is at fault for rural accidents? A common factor between Californian, Dutch and UK research into motorcycle accidents is that many could have been avoided it the motorcyclist had the rider shown more awareness of potential danger, been more visible or had been capable of braking, steering or cornering properly. Alcohol, experience, attitude, high speed and risk taking were other contributory factors, as were the type and state of the road and weather conditions.

The Dutch study in particular showed that losing control in bends was a significant factor. The Cheshire figures show that accidents involving misjudging bends make up 40% of accidents in rural areas. The fatality rate for these kind of accidents is high. This was made clear in our local IAM magazine a couple of years ago when a serving police officer revealed that out of twelve riders killed in Kent in a year, eleven lost control on bends. The Dutch study also found that many of the accidents investigated would have been less serious, or avoided altogether, if the rider had been able to make an emergency stop.

Other more recent statistics than the DETR report showed that there has been a shift in location of accidents from urban to rural environments and that the peak age for accidents has moved away from young to “born again” riders.

The Cheshire report should shake the traditionally-held view that bikers are usually the innocent victims of car drivers, which the DETR figures appear at first glance to support, or that only young riders are at risk. The reduction in accident rates amongst youngsters resulting from Compulsory Basic Training is well documented, and these figures highlight that the 25-40 age group of riders who largely predate the widespread emergence of training schools and would have been mostly self-taught are very much at risk too.

Mr. Moss goes on to consider what conclusions can be drawn from the research. He says:

“Consideration of the various factors relating to rural motorcycle crashes leads unerringly to the conclusion that riders are failing to ride their machines within their personal capabilities even though the bike itself may have been well within its performance envelope at the time of the crash. The vast majority of the “bend” crashes had clues which indicated that the riders had either braked or shut their throttles mid-bend, resulting in understeer crashes. In the crashes where right turning vehicles were hit by overtaking motorcyclists, it seemed that the rider should have foreseen the likelihood of the turning movement e.g. garage forecourt, side road etc..”

Look at the figures. 20.5% of the accidents, the total of bikes hitting cars turning right or hitting them from behind, can be largely attributed to poor observation and anticipation, probably made worse by excess speed, and in my opinion this is not entirely unexpected.

However, the fact that 40.2% of the accidents occurred when riders either lost control in, or ran wide in bends is chilling and far worse than I thought. Bend-swinging is so fundamental to our enjoyment of the sport that we take it for granted. Now it seems that we have to think again. As well as a lack of the observation and judgement skills we need to ride safely, it also betrays that most riders lack a fundamental lack of understanding of the way a motorcycle steers and behaves in a corner.

Mr. Moss recognises that whilst police enforcement of existing traffic laws is important in restricting the activities of a “lunatic fringe” of riders who flout deliberately regulations, it cannot by itself tackle the underlying problem of lack of skill, and cites the North Yorkshire BikeSafe 2000 initiative as kind of mix of enforcement, education and encouragement that police forces across the country should be pursuing. However, he rightly points out that it places heavy demand on police manpower so that its impact is not as widespread as would be desirable, and indicated that some forces have declined to join the scheme as they “do not have a problem”, even though their riders may be crashing on another county’s roads.

He goes on to say “there is a countywide need to equip riders with the skills needed for them to avoid or minimise crashes caused by their shortcomings in machine control, otherwise increased machine sales will be reflected in a parallel increase in casualties” and points out the valuable role that the IAM, RoSPA and commercial advanced riding schools have to play in rider training.

Conclusion

So, research shows that claims that power causes accidents is flawed. But so is the traditional motorcyclist’s view that it is blind Volvo drivers that kill motorcyclists.

Riding experts like the IAM agree that speed and power alone don’t kill. Speed in the wrong place, speed without judgement, speed without skill can and does.

The evidence also pinpoints the sad fact that a lot of us can’t manage to negotiate corners without falling off or hitting oncoming vehicles, and when we get it wrong, the result is often very bad indeed. The message John Moss is giving is that it is down to us as riders to put our house in order. As a member of MAG, he can hardly be classed as a killjoy or a scaremongerer. “Get trained and improve your riding skills” he says. With the proper skills you can have fun, but be safe at the same time.