Author: Kevin Williams / Survival Skills

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64. The (Ride on the) Right Stuff

I’ve nothing much to add to this except to watch for dynamic speed limits and the increasing use of speed traps where you may be hit with an on-the-spot fine. Riders caught by cameras on autoroutes in France have been stopped the next toll.

The (Ride on the) Right Stuff

If you are venturing to Europe for the first time, you’ll probably be a little nervous. Don’t be. It’s actually much simpler than most riders realise so long as you understand that there are different laws, things like traffic lights work differently, and there are different driving habits. Motoring organisations usually cover most of the technical stuff so check before leaving, but also – and I’ll stress this – watch was the locals do. Don’t try riding the same way you do at home and don’t get upset that the local drivers don’t drive the same way we do at home. Blend it, don’t stand out. But let’s start with the ferry crossing – don’t forget to take a tie-down. You’ll see why.

Although Eurotunnel is quick and convenient, many of us will make our first trip on a ferry. The decks are metal, they get wet and they are slippery!

When board, it may be necessary to ride up or down a ramp. Be cautious if it’s steep either way. Try to do it in one hit. If necessary, wait for other vehicles to get out of the way. If you’re not feeling too confident two-up, you can always get a passenger to walk. Once on board, some ferry companies will secure the bike for you. On some ferries it’s entirely up to you, and some only provide lengths of oily rope. If knots are not your thing, the tie-down will be very useful. I’d recommend placing the bike on the side stand rather than the centre stand. Whilst most crossings on the bigger ferries are quite smooth, in very rough weather, secured bikes do move and it’s possible for the bike

  • to roll forwards off the centre stand

  • to rock sideway off the centre stand

If the machine is on the side stand there are three points of contact (the centre stand is too narrow to count as more than one) and if the bike’s in gear, you have parking brake to help prevent it moving. I wrap a silicone wrist band over the front brake lever and handlebar, which now locks the front brake on. If you use the tie-down to secure the bike downward on the stand, you can get a pretty secure position. If you can secure the wheels front and rear too, you’re pretty secure. Use gloves and / or waterproofs to protect panels and paintwork from ropes and straps. DON’T secure a strap to or over anything plastic or bendy – it WILL snap.

Leaving the ferry involves the ramp again, and there will probably be a queue. Don’t do what one rider did. As we were on an upper deck, I’d paused at the top to make sure I had a safe flat area to stop down on the main car deck. But he got impatient to follow the queue of cars which were stopped halfway down. He pushed past me, and had to brake. Down went the bike which slid to the bottom. Once off the ferry, watch out for slippery surfaces and trucks moving around the dockside, but once on the open road you’ll find driving on the right is surprisingly easy. Basically, we’re following everyone else!

The time to watch out is after a stop. It’s incredibly easy to ride off on the wrong side of the road. The sort of places we get this wrong are:

  • first thing in the morning

  • after any stop that involves leaving the road

  • leaving a filling station, particularly if we’ve ridden in the ‘wrong’ way and are at the pumps facing oncoming traffic – it’s easy to exit onto the wrong side of the road. Turn in so you’re facing the direction of traffic at the pumps – you’re far more likely to come out riding on the correct side again

  • turning out of a one-way street

Take a moment to hit a mental ‘reset’ button. Some people attach some kind of reminder to the key fob, or put a sticker on the bike somewhere. When moving, a good clue we’re on the wrong side of the road (apart from finding a car coming towards us) is to find that we’re looking at the reverse side of road signs. Don’t ask me how I found that out.

In terms of where to be careful when riding, my experience is that the biggest chance of error (after pulling off on the wrong side) is at a T-junction, yet I never actually see this mentioned as an issue. We’re so heavily cued to looking to the FAR side of the road when we look left and to the NEARSIDE when looking right that abroad we forget we MUST reverse this. If we don’t we’re looking on the WRONG SIDES of the road. This is a major cause of collisions for UK drivers abroad (and for Europeans in the UK too). Until we used to looking in the ‘wrong’ place, my advice is always stop, even at a Give Way junction, and take much longer to look both ways.

Here’s another problem which is totally underestimated. Much of Europe operates under the Priority to the Right system – it’s called ‘priorite a droit’ in France. DON’T BELIEVE internet articles or any ‘experienced traveller’ saying “it’s disappearing” or “it’s rare”. It’s real, it’s common in rural areas and urban centres, and drivers DO drive straight out of what appear to be side roads because it IS in operation.

So it’s absolutely essential to understand how it operates and how to recognise it.

In simple terms, when priority to the right is in operation, we MUST give way to a vehicle to our right, even if we appear to be on the ‘main’ road and the other driver seems to be emerging from a ‘side’ road.

On the open road priority is fairly easy to spot. Firstly we need to know if WE have priority. As soon as we turn onto a new road or leave a town look for a yellow and black diamond-shaped sign – this means that WE are on the priority road. At ALL the junctions ahead until our priority is cancelled, we WILL have priority. Whilst major routes often have these priority signs, it’s easy to overlook the fact that most less-important roads DO NOT, and so if we DON’T see this sign, priority to the right will be in operation.

If we are on a priority road, then the sign that CANCELS our priority is a similar yellow and black diamond-shaped sign but with a diagonal stripe through it. From this point on, we MAY have to give way somewhere ahead:

  • we may be coming up to a major road – look for a STOP or GIVE WAY (Cedez le Passage in French-speaking countries) and either SOLID or DOUBLE-DASHED LINES across the end of the road – so the signs and markings are the same as they are in the UK.

  • we may be entering a zone where we have to give way to the right.

Once we know we’re in a town or in a rural area where priority to the right operates, we MUST assess EVERY junction for priority. It’s easy enough. The clue is in the design of red and white triangular junction warning signs:

  • if the sign is a + shape, then we HAVE priority. Double-check by looking for the paint markings at the end of the joining road – we should see the SOLID or DOUBLE-DASHED LINES

  • if the sign is an X shape, then we do NOT HAVE priority over vehicles emerging from our right (although we do over vehicles to our left). And checking the ‘side road’, we’ll also see there are NO PAINT MARKINGS ACROSS IT. This means priority to the right, and we MUST give way to an emerging vehicle. Whilst relatively few drivers simply drive straight out – most emerge cautiously – every now and again someone does pull straight out.

  • in town there probably won’t be a warning sign. Check any road ahead to the right and if we can see either double dashed lines (Give Way) or a solid line (STOP) across the road, then the road WE are riding on has priority. If there are NO markings, then it’s priorite a droit – we must be ready to give way.

The good news is that priority to the right roads are often blind or awkwardly angled – that’s why the driver has priority. Most UK motorcyclists are either blissfully unaware of this system. I took a group ride over to France for a day trip some years back, and carefully briefed all the riders on the train. There was some sceptical looks, and one or two outright didn’t believe what I was telling them.

We were only about thirty minutes out of Calais when a tractor pulled straight out in front of the rider behind me, who had fortunately slowed down. Over lunch he told me that despite many years of riding in Europe he’d never given much thought about priority to the right and was one of those who thought it didn’t exist anymore, thanks to inaccurate internet articles. But having listened to my briefing, he’d spotted the sign, noticed junction was blind and was looking for emerging vehicles when the tractor pulled out. He confessed he would have expected the tractor to stop if I hadn’t covered the issue on the train.

What about roundabouts? Whilst they often worry riders, as the lane feeds us in to the right side of the island, it’s actually very difficult to go the wrong way round.

But we do need to watch other drivers – particularly in France and Belgium – who may be turning left and crossing our path. They will go 270 degrees around the island with NO signal and they WILL make this manoeuvre from the outer lane on the island. In the UK, we’d probably assume the driver’s going straight on, but not abroad. We risk being wiped out. For the same reason, don’t use the INNER lane to go straight ahead to pass slower vehicles on the island. You’ll liable to find the car on your right turning left straight across you. I nearly got taken out this way many years ago. And be on the alert for cycle lanes that go outside the roundabout – cycles and mopeds often have right-of-way.

Motorways are reasonably straightforward, but watch out for confusing on- and off-ramp designs (I’ve left an autoroute only to find myself riding straight back on again) and in Germany, some are very tight corners indeed – they were built before the Second World War. Fly into them at UK speeds and they’re trouble.

Keep your eyes peeled for traffic lights. Firstly, they’re not always in the same place as we’d expect to see them in the UK, and it’s possible to ride straight through a red light. Traffic lights in France and Belgium are dim and often difficult to see in bright sun. Learn the sequences too. French lights go straight from red to green and drivers DO stop on amber, whilst a flashing amber light means they are switched off with no priority. In Italy there’s a green/amber combination, and drivers often turn right on a red when they shouldn’t. But in Germany this is legal IF other signs allow. In France, a flashing pedestrian sign means pedestrians are crossing even though we have a green light – we should give way. French rules on zebra-style crossings changed some years back and now cars DO stop for pedestrians.

Find out what the speed limits are. Whilst urban limits are usually well-signed, in France anywhere where you pass into a village with a red bordered sign, the urban 50 kph applies. There ARE speed cameras around and in Germany they often enforce limits in very odd places – I got flashed turning a corner on a 100 kph road, where a cycle lane crossed the road. Going back up the hill an hour later, the speed limit was 30 kph but I’d not seen the signs. Whilst it’s unlikely you’ll be pursued back to the UK (although increasingly there are stories of debts for unpaid fines being placed in the hands of UK bailiffs), if you get stopped by a police patrol and it’s found there are outstanding fines, you could be arrested. Be aware that roadblocks are employed on autoroutes in France and you could be clocked on average speed over a section. And if you are way over the limit, fines are huge and the bike could even be seized and crushed.

Road surfaces are generally good in the dry, but in my experience the further south we go, the more slippery the surface is when wet. Watch out for:

  • white paint – often slippery in the dry and like glass in the wet

  • gravel – particularly in the mountains – icy roads in winter are often dressed with gravel

  • polished surfaces, slippery dry, lethal wet

  • bevelled kerbs – round traffic islands and traffic-calmed areas and very difficult to spot at night

  • speed bumps – can be vicious

Finally, learn a few common words that you’ll find on signs. ‘Umleitung’ and ‘Route barree’ are useful, as you’ll find out. Have fun!

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63. Dealing with hairpins

Hairpins are just a type of corner. True, they go on longer than other bends, and they usually involve a gradient change, but the essentials remain the same. Nevertheless, they throw many riders off their game. The article provides a practical, step-by-step guide, integrating uphill and downhill considerations, braking, throttle control, line choice, and slow-speed balance.

Dealing with hairpins

Whilst we have a lot of interesting technically tricky roads in southern England, a road feature that few of us are likely to experience until we visit Europe is a hairpin bend. In an example of how demand creates supply, after a number of emails asking for help with dealing with hairpin bends, I wrote first of all this article, then put together some routes that include hairpins for practical training purposes. Though there are hairpins in the more rugged parts of the UK, you might be surprised to know that I’ve found ‘secret’ hairpins for my advanced rider training courses in Buckinghamshire, Oxford, Kent and Surrey. Aside from the London-based course, the only location I’ve not yet found a hairpin – and I doubt I will – is Essex. Surprise, that! And of course, I also know a few for my courses in mid-Wales. So if you want a practical follow up to reading the article, I will cover hairpins on my Performance: SPORT two-day course, but can also offer a short two-hour Basics: HAIRPINS course. Hairpins are great fun to ride but can also become a real problem area if we don’t plan how to deal with them.

So, “how should I deal with a hairpin bend?”.

The broad answer is “in the same way as any other corner”. After all, the elements that make up a hairpin – ‘entry’, ‘turn-in’ and ‘exit’ – are common to all corners. A good starting point – once again – is to apply the standard Survival Skills approach, and to understand how, where and why we might make a mess of them. Once we understand that, it’s not difficult to apply the ‘reference point’ approach and my standard ‘Point and Squirt’ cornering technique to any hairpin.

So where to start?

As mentioned, just like any other bend a hairpin has:

  • a way in – the ‘entry’ to the corner where we have to steer or run off the road

  • a way out – the ‘exit’ where we’re upright again and headed for the next bend

And we can make the standard cornering mistake on hairpin; if we turn in too early then we run wide later.

So you should already have have had a lightbulb moment about the most common problem. The most significant difference between a hairpin and an ‘average’ corner is that the hairpin just goes on a lot longer than normal. Just as on ‘ordinary’ bends, if we ‘turn-in’ too soon, we are guaranteed to run wide on the other side of the hairpin, but with the added problem that if we run wide when we’re on the outside of the corner, we’re unlikely to end up in a hedge but hit a wall of rock or drop over a cliff. The latter is the uniquely scary factor on a mountain road.

But there’s a second problem. A hairpin is – by definition – on a hill. So we’re either cornering uphill or downhill. It all sounds very obvious but unless we’re used to tight corners on hills, we tend to get the balance and timing of our deceleration and throttle inputs in a mess.

And hairpins are often fairly tight so can demand the same sort of slow approach and control we’d apply turning left or right into a junction. If we get the braking / throttle timing wrong AND get on the wrong line AND make a mess of our slow control, we’ve often succeeded in destabilising the bike right in the most awkward part of the corner.

Yet there’s NOTHING about a hairpin bend that should frighten even a CBT trainee, except perhaps the height. (I suffer a bit from vertigo, so I’m in full sympathy with anyone who gets disoriented by looking a 100 metre sheer drop off the edge of the road.)

Mental issues aside, from a technical point of view, what’s a hairpin but a kind of U-turn?

The only significant difference is that we ride into it from speed, rather than start from a standstill (so we need to brake first), and that we accelerate out again rather than come to a standstill (so we need to twist the throttle), but everything else is standard U-turn technique:

  • bracing the knees against the tank to maintain a good posture, keeping the upper body loose, avoiding leaning on the tank, and having loose shoulder and neck so we can turn our head easily

  • slipping the clutch and balancing the forward drive against the rear brake

  • looking as far around the turn as possible

  • using a counter-steering ‘nudge’ to initiate lean into the turn

  • using counterweighting to keep the line tight whilst maintaining enough speed for balance

  • getting the bike upright again at the end of the turn

Let’s break down what we need to achieve stage by stage, and here’s a bit of good news. Unless we already live on top of a mountain, we’ll have to go up before we come down again, so the uphill hairpins give us a chance to practice before we come to the more awkward downhill ones. A second bit of good news it’s unlikely (except in wooded areas) that we cannot see the hairpin coming from some distance. Abroad, make sure you know what the sign for a hairpin is too, just in case it’s not so easy to spot.

As with any corner, the first requirement is to match speed to the radius of the bend ahead, with a bit in hand in case it’s tighter than it looks (or we can see).

  • Get into position for the turn itself. Just like any other bend, we use a wide approach but here’s my first tip. On the OUTSIDE of the turn (and even if your more experience mate is “showing the lines”) DON’T RIDE RIGHT TO THE EDGE. If we’re on the edge of a sheer drop, our mental focus is on staying ON the road. A couple of metres IN from the edge takes a lot of that pressure off. If we’re on the inside of the turn, using all the road is safer but we do need to watch for other vehicles (and I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Here’s my second tip.

  • Once in position, DECELERATE EARLY. Don’t rush up to the bend and brake at the last moment even if your more experienced mate ahead of you is doing that. Slowing early really is a key point. If we’ve sorted our speed early, we won’t be worrying about running out of road, and that means we have the mental freedom to drag our eyes away from the sheer drop and look up and around the curve to see where the hairpin takes us. We need a full turn of the head to do this, so we don’t want to be look round and up the hill just as we’re trying to steer. If the terrain is open, we’ll get an overview of how sharp and steep the turn is, and whether any vehicles are on the way down to meet us at the hairpin – more on that in a moment too.

Third tip.

  • Get into a low gear in plenty of time whilst still upright. Second gear is usually right on the wider hairpins, but it may be necessary to select first on really tight, steep corners. But DON’T OVERRELY ON ENGINE BRAKING – even going uphill, we’ll probably need to bring the speed right down so I’d advice using both brakes even if it’s only lightly. There’s a second reason – we’re going to need the rear brake in a moment and it’s far easier to remember to have a foot on the pedal if we’ve applied both brakes on the way up. And there’s a third reason – it’s good practice for downhill.

The fourth tip is this:

  • get off the brakes and ON THE THROTTLE whilst still upright. We’re going to need the power to drive us round the bend against the slope.

Now we’ve got the speed right, and we’re about to turn into the hairpin itself. Fifth tip:

  • Remember all those U-turns you did on basic training? It’s EXACTLY THE SAME MANOEUVRE, just uphill! Slip the clutch on the really tight ones and remember, the REAR BRAKE balances the THROTTLE to fine-tune our speed just as when we practiced slow control round the cones. With the rear brake ready to control the speed, come off the front brake, look right round the turn, and drive the bike uphill with the throttle.

Sixth tip.

  • Apply a counter-steering ‘nudge’ to get the bike to lean and then use counterweighting (where the rider sits UPRIGHT and pushes the bike DOWN) to help maintain speed around the corner itself – don’t try to ride too slowly or the machine will start to wobble. To get the bike to turn tighter, it’s tempting to ride ever-slower. But there’s a point at which any machine ceases to balance itself, and from then on, we’ll struggle to hold any kind of a controlled line. So to keep a tight line on a hairpin, use counterweighting. We lean the machine IN, but keep our body UPRIGHT. The bike’s extra lean has the effect of needing less space to turn but at the same speed.

So that sets us up ready for the most complicated part of the hairpin – it’s halfway round which is nearly always the steepest part of the turn, and most pronounced on the inside of the corner. This is where the engine is likely to bog down if we’re not driving it against the rear brake. If we are holding the bike on the rear brake, we simply ease the brake off to add drive. But be ready – as the bike comes out of the steepest part of the turn, we will need to ease the brake on again to stop the machine picking up speed and running wide. Once upright AND ONLY WHEN UPRIGHT do we ease off the rear brake and accelerate away up the hill.

So the rear brake turns out to be vital to the slow control needed to negotiate an uphill hairpin. For many riders, this use of the rear brake is the missing link.

Here’s the seventh tip.

  • In the wrong gear? Don’t try to change gear mid-hairpin because the bike will stop dead and fall over. Instead, slip the clutch – and you CAN slip the clutch in top gear if you have to.

The other common error is to try to ’round out’ the corner with a mid-corner apex and a sweeping line that maximises the radius. The trouble is, even a minor error will have us running wide on the exit, and that’s not great news if there’s a sheer drop under the front wheel. So the eighth tip is that we MUST avoid cutting into the corner too early:

  • So under power, stay on the WIDE LINE until we can see BOTH SIDES of the stretch of road leading away from the hairpin. This is our ‘turn-in’ point, where (if clear) we CAN cut across to straighten out the final part of the corner. As I said earlier, it’s exactly the same technique as we’d use on any other blind corner. And if we do encounter another vehicle coming down as we go round, keeping wide is much safer. The deep-in, late-turn ‘Point and Squirt’ line I teach on my Survival Skills advanced motorcycle riding courses absolutely works on a hairpin.

Once we’ve solved uphill hairpins and understood the need to drive the bike right round the turn, but NOT to try to accelerate too early, then suddenly downhill hairpins make more sense too. It’s the same approach. Once again, it’s all about making sure we give ourselves plenty of time to pick our line, set our speed, get the bike turning tight whilst using the rear brake to stop the bike picking up speed and running wide. Rather oddly, it’s going downhill for some reason causes a lot of riders to be very tentative with the brakes. But there’s no run-off on the average hairpin so it’s absolutely vital we are confident to get our speed off because downhill hairpins are all about ‘slow in’.

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with keeping the bike in a low gear, we MUST have sufficient confidence to use the brakes to set our speed. Even if you’re riding a BMW GS with a shed-load of engine braking, once the throttle’s shut there’s no more engine braking left. But even if the brakes are only on lightly, it’s now easy to fine-tune our approach speed, because it’s easy to misjudge deceleration downhill, thanks to gravity.

And don’t forget, whilst gravity also pulls us down around the corner itself, if we were using both brakes down the hill it’s much easier to remember to keep a foot on the rear brake to control our speed round the tightest part of the corner. Just as we did when going uphill, don’t release the rear brake until the bike is all the way round and upright again – let it off too soon and the bike WILL pick up speed and start to run wide. Once again, slip the clutch if needed on a really tight turn but don’t coast round.

Here are tips nine to thirteen:

  • whether up or down, try to minimise gear changes between hairpins. It’s less thing to worry about and if we let the engine rev we’ll get good drive up and good engine braking down

  • if we have a clear view and other traffic allows, we can cross to the ‘wrong’ side of the centre line to open out the hairpin where it’s really tight, and then pull our line back onto our own side as we exit the bend – it’s better than turning-in too tight and running wide later

  • coaches and lorries coming the other way will to need a lot of road to get round the hairpin – if the road’s narrow, it may be best to stop short and let it complete the turn first rather than to try to compete for space

  • if we’re being tailgated by another vehicle through the bends, back off on a straight and let the driver pass

  • remember we’re dealing with bends. That means polished surfaces, rippled tarmac and fuel spills. After rain (or snow) expect water to run across the hairpin, and watch out for gravel or stone chips torn out of the surface

And tips fourteen to seventeen help if you’re riding in a group:

  • ride at YOUR pace, not the leader’s or the rider ahead

  • leave sufficient space so that you can look around and see where the road goes, whilst leaving plenty of space in case they make a mess of it

  • don’t follow the rider in front, and let them get far enough ahead so that they are not a distraction, hold back and let them finish the hairpin before you get there

  • don’t copy the rider ahead but ride your own ride. If you rely on them the guy ahead to get it right and they don’t, so will you.

Eighteen, nineteen and twenty:

  • understand that if we are nervous about hairpins, getting the first few wrong will make us REALLY nervous about the rest of them. That means tenseness, and tenseness destroys control. Take the time to get the first ones right.

  • we’re heading to the mountains, it’s a very good idea (tip nineteen) to practice a slightly different style of U-turn – ride into them from speed so braking is necessary, and leave them by accelerating away. I use a ‘box’ exercise to help with this. That way we can build in some practice BEFORE we leave.

  • don’t forget that building ANY SKILL RIDING SOLO is NOT the same when riding TWO-UP, particularly when it’s loaded with gear – the bike WILL respond differently loaded and the best time to discover this is in Tesco’s car park, not as we hit the first downhill hairpin and wonder why we’re struggling with the turn.

Working your way through those should help you prepare for your first experience of the hairpin bend.

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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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61. Before you overtake, do you…?

The central lesson — never assume left-hand junctions are clear when overtaking — is often overlooked, even by experienced motorcyclists. The scenarios you describe illustrate a classic cognitive trap: tunnel vision on the manoeuvre past the target vehicle while failing to account for other hazards.

Before you overtake, do you…?

…check for junctions on the left?

Whenever I’m giving one of my Survival Skills presentations about avoiding overtaking collisions, it takes a few minutes to work through all the places we have to look out for. Most riders are aware of the hazards posed by junctions and other openings to the right, where the vehicle we’re overtaking might turn right, or another in the side turning might emerge from. But way down the list is the fact that a junction or driveway on the left is just as much of a hazard. Why?

Here’s what often happens. We see a vehicle ahead slow, and indicate left. “Good, that’ll make it easier to pass” we think. And so we do all our other checks, swing wide and commit to the pass.

But as always with the Survival Skills approach to advanced riding, let’s not assume things will go right, but think about what might go wrong.

What if the driver swings out to the right to make the turn easy? It’s highly likely if the vehicle we’re trying to pass is an articulated lorry or a bus, but cars do it too, and not always because the driver’s being lazy, as we’re all too quick to assume. The manoeuvre might be very awkward, maybe because the entrance is narrow or because it turns right back on itself.

What if there’s a second vehicle actually in the side turning waiting to turn right? What’s the driver of that vehicle likely to do as he sees the approaching car slowing with the left indicator on? There’s a significant risk he will pull out, straight into our path and now we’re set up for a head-on collision. Why does the driver go? Because he’s seen the same as us, that there’s nothing coming from his left (that’s why we’re overtaking), but he also thinks it’s clear from his right, because of our position. Wide out to the right, we’re blindsided by the car we’re moving out to pass. We might well be able to see over the roof of the slowing car, but from where the driver is sat, all that’s likely to be visible is the top of our helmet.

Or maybe that second vehicle plans on turning left. Exactly the same line-of-sight problem applies, only this time the driver pulls out and turns in the same direction we’re headed. And maybe that takes away the gap we were planning on moving back into before encountering oncoming traffic.

So even if we back out of the overtake, what if the driver turning left cannot complete the turn? What if he’s turning into a single track road and there’s a vehicle coming the other way? Will the turning vehicle have to stop? And can we stop before we run into the back of it? A surprising number of crashes at junctions on fast roads happen when motorcycles collide with the back of vehicles that have slowed or stopped to make a turn.

And of course, there may be more than one vehicle involved. We may look at a pair of cars travelling relatively slowly, and decide we can hop into the gap between them. And then we realise the leading vehicle is slowing to turning left (or right). What will the vehicle we are passing do? The chances are the driver will be braking but aiming to slow or halt just behind the turning vehicle, bunching up close together. Where is our ‘out’ from the overtake now? It’s probably vanished.

All these scenarios we should be able to spot developing, even if we haven’t spotted where the vehicle will turn. We should see slowing vehicles, brake lights and probably indicators. We should be able to put two and two together and figure out what’s happening.

But there’s a final Worst Case Scenario which is not nearly so easy to detect. And that’s when the vehicle we’re about to overtake is NOT turning left but going straight on, but there’s also a second vehicle waiting in the junction ahead, intending to turn right. Here’s what happens. The driver looks left, sees the road is clear (our ahead – which is why we’re about to overtake too), and pulls out across the vehicle we’re just moving out to pass, straight into our path. The problem is that the emerging car doesn’t need a big gap – the driver just needs enough space to get across the centre line and into the other lane.

That led to one of the very few genuine brown trouser moments I’ve had on a training course. The trainee set up an overtake past an HGV well. He’s spotted we were about to exit a left-hand bend onto a long clear straight, moved wide to take a final check ahead, then started to accelerate…

…just as a Ferrari pulled out from the left, right in front of the truck and nailed it towards him. Fortunately, he wasn’t totally committed and was able to hit the brakes and bail out of the overtake. But it was a scary moment.

Of course, it’s not always easy to spot junctions and entrances on the left, but sometimes it’s a simple failure of observation. One of the problems with overtaking is that it’s such a complex speed / distance computation that we can get fixated on whether the road ahead is clear, and totally forget the job of scanning laterally for hazards. I’ve made this mistake myself, most recently on a BikeSafe assessment – I only spotted the entranceway after moving wide.

But very often, the most dangerous locations are flagged up good and early for us, but we still miss the warnings; a hazard line, triangular warning signs, road direction signs, finger posts, traffic islands and cross-hatched right-turn refuges, white paint in the throat of the junction, dropped kerbs, openings in hedges, gaps in lines of parked cars, even the roof of a cottage visible over the hedge – it WILL have a drive.

[A few days after I originally wrote this article, I added the following first-hand experience.]

Well… deja vu moment or what…

Having written this, there I was, zipping down a nice bit of road, slower car ahead, good straight coming up just around the next right-hand corner… I open up the view, it’s clear… but…

I catch a glimpse of something silver to the left just as I move out to start the pass… and abort…

Just as well, because right in front of the car I was about to pass, out pulls a driver in a powerful Mercedes from a well-hedged driveway. He turns right and accelerates hard into what would have been my path had I continued with the manoeuvre.

I’m glad I was out of the way!

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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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59. Straight line -vs- trail braking

The next article was written well over twenty years ago, well before the current influencer-fuelled fad for trail braking as the ‘right way’ to enter corners became popularised on social media, usually without any cautions as to what happens if the level of grip under the tyres changes whilst the rider is braking and leaning simultaneously. Traction is not just finite, it’s unpredictably variable. There lies the risk on the road.

What I could have made clearer is that I believed then (and still do now) that trail braking is an entirely valid ‘get out of trouble’ technique. When we realise we’re running into a corner too rapidly, and leaning the bike alone is not going to avoid an off-road excursion, then using both front and rear brakes to bleed off some speed and tighten the radius of the turn is likely to be our way out of trouble. I taught it on my first Performance: BENDS courses in the late ’90s and I still cover it now, so I’m not ‘anti-trail braking’ as I have sometimes been labelled. To my mind, it’s a technique to be used when needed and not as a default approach to slowing for corners..

Straight line -vs- trail braking

One of the questions that I seem to get fairly frequently is what do I think about trail braking into bends. And when I do discuss it, it’s often a bit of a biking hot potato, with supporters on the one hand and others who say it’s a dangerous race track technique with no place on the road. First of all, it’s important that we understand the difference beween the two techniques, but also how they are linked. And we also need to be aware of what is sometimes called the ‘Traction Pie’. Essentially, is explains how it’s possible that we can divide up the grip that’s needed BETWEEN braking AND cornering at the same time.

The classic braking technique on the approach to a corner is to complete all braking before we start to steer the bike. The big advantage of this technique is that it separates traction management into two phases, FIRST braking THEN cornering. By keeping them apart we allow the tyres to use ALL their grip for one task OR the other. As a result, we significantly reduce the risk of losing traction at either end of the bike.

By contrast, when using the trail-braking technique the rider carries the brakes from the upright approach into the corner, gradually reducing the pressure on the brakes while adding lean angle until the brakes are off and the bike is at the chosen lean angle.

So what’s the problem?

Essentially, because the braking forces are using up traction AT THE SAME TIME AS the leaning forces, it’s possible to exceed the total amount of traction they tyres can deliver. And if that happens, we’re in trouble.

It’s that potential for loss of grip that’s always been used to promote the traditional upright braking approach to bends – if a wheel does lock under braking, upright it’s controllable even on a bike without ABS.

Separating braking and steering is by far and away the simplest way of dealing with a bend, and there’s far less to go wrong. Not least, if we’re off the brakes, we free ourselves up mentally to look around the corner to see what comes next. If we’re on the brakes, we’re actually mentally focused on the road surface itself (think about it) and what we might hit if it all goes wrong – cars, walls and other hard objects – and that in turn leads us in the direction of target fixation.

So why bother with trail braking at all? Two reasons.

The first is simply ‘advantage’ – since we carry the brakes into the first part of the corner, it’s possible to brake a little later, which means we carry speed a little further down the preceding straight. You’ve probably realised where this would be an advantage – on the track.

You may also have heard that “the bike steers better with the forks compressed”. It’s actually written on Freddie Spencer’s site and it’s hard to argue with a racer as talented as Freddie. But I can honestly say that every road bike I’ve ridden has, to a greater or a less extent, sat up and headed for the ditch on the brakes. Maybe a race bike set up on race tyres and race geometry does steer OK on the brakes, but my thinking is that this is a misunderstanding of what’s happening – as the bike slows on the brakes, it turns on a progressively tighter line simply because the speed is dropping.

Anyway, we’re not riding on the track, we’re on the road. We’re not out-braking other riders, nor trying to squeeze half a second off our point-to-point time. In fact, attempting trail braking as a regular approach to getting round bends risks all the things that goes wrong in bends:

  • running in too fast

  • turning in too early

  • running wide later in the corner

But with an added problem – because we’re braking and steering at the same time, we’ll be edging closer to the limit of traction. And of course, we’re assuming that the surface can deliver the grip we’re asking for – but surface grip can very from metre to metre. When we deliberately trail brake into a bend and get it wrong or the surface fails to deliver, the bend will bite back – hard! Which brings us right back to the benefits of braking upright to sort out speed before we reach the bend itself. On the road, braking hard and late is rarely the key to riding quickly – it just unsettles the bike and unsettles the rider!

As it happens, Nick Ienatsch – another US racer and writer for the US mag Sport Rider who is a big fan of trail braking on the track – says in his ‘The Pace’ articles that trail braking makes steering more difficult and is out of place on the road.

So if we’re not simply trying to use trail braking to ride faster, what’s the other potential benefit?

The simple answer is that we’re not on a track, and that means the road ahead is essentially unpredictable. Not only do we misjudge corners – the bend that looked easy a moment ago suddenly starts tightening up – or we may find the road blocked just out of sight. Even if we approach the bend ‘at a speed that allows us to stop in the distance we can see to be clear’, if our forward progress reveals a couple of cows wandering around mid-corner, we’re going to have to lose some speed. We cannot throw our hands up and say “but I can only brake in a straight line”, we are almost certainly going to have to carry those brakes into the corner itself.

So now we really are talking about a technique that is of genuine use on the road. So long as we weren’t planning on enter the corner at knee-down speeds, then our modest lean angle allows for those brakes to be carried into turn.

And then we have two further options. We can keep the brakes on, and maintain our lean angle – and then, as I just mentioned, our reduction in speed will automatically make the bike turn tighter. That will deal with decreasing radius corner. Or we can use the reduction in speed to reduce our lean angle, and now as the lean angle comes up we can use the second option – brake progressively harder until the bike is upright and we’re braking at emergency levels. That will get us stopped if the road is blocked.

But in both cases we have to understand that if we haven’t already locked up the front wheel by braking in a straight line, there is ALWAYS grip to begin to steer and add some lean. It may not be much if we’re braking hard, but it’s there all the same.

We just have to lean the machine gently to start with, and remember that as we feed lean in, we feed the brakes out.

Mix and match. Slice that pie between the leaning and braking.

One final tip. Having got the speed where we want it, release the brakes smoothly and progressively – don’t suddenly ping them off. If we do, that will unload the front suspension equally suddenly, and that will give us a very nasty surprise indeed. Because we’ve added a little extra counter-steering input to fight the bike’s ‘sit-up on the brakes’ tendency, removing the braking force means that extra steering input makes it fall into the corner rather abruptly.

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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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57. Surface Attraction

Modern tyres and suspension systems give riders more confidence, but the fundamental principle hasn’t changed: traction is limited not by the rubber, but by the surface; no tyre grips on ice.

Surface Attraction

A while back I read a research paper that examined just where road users actually look. Guess what? Motorcyclists looked at the road surface more than drivers. That surprised the researchers but was predictable because it’s the friction between tyres and road surface keeping bikes shiny side up. The level of grip we have impacts on our ability to accelerate, brake, steer and lean so it’s not surprising that we pay the surface a lot of attention. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand why some surfaces are barely ridable in the dry whilst others give near race track levels of grip in the wet.

Perfect surfaces are the exception rather than the rule, but still riders are caught out and panic when they see a dubious surface mid-turn. Why? Because we need time to react – spotting a problem already under the front wheel is too late.

Scan ahead then anticipate if the surface gets better or worse – a change of colour or visible line across the road often warns of a change, and though they look the same, two surfaces may have very different grip. Anything shiny is probably slippery. It makes sense to follow the Survival Skills advanced rider training approach by planning for the worst before we discover the hard way.

Slippery access covers are found around bends and junctions – don’t brake on them, aim to steer round rather than over. A shiny line could be a tar seam – like glass in the wet. Bumps and slippery surfaces together spell caution – beware cats-eyes when overtaking and paint markings that don’t follow an ideal line.

Discoloured patches could be wet patches, gravel, potholes or polished surfaces. Mud and gravel will wash downhill after rain and accumulate at the bottom of hills. Loose chippings will be pushed to the centre and sides of the cars’ tyre tracks – do we want to brake on those?

Irregular streaks are often fuel spills. Petrol is as slippery as diesel but evaporates quickly. If you smell diesel slow down and search! Guess where you’ll find it – near filling stations, bus depots and industrial estates, on roundabouts and long fast bends.

Watch out for shellgrip – it’s a high friction surface laid near pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, and sometimes on bends too, but rarely far enough round to get the bike upright again. Take advantage of the extra grip mid-corner and we’ll hit the less grippy surface still banked over – a recipe for a slide.

Don’t forget rain! After a prolonged dry spell, all surfaces will be extra-slippery.

Things we can change are tyres, suspension settings and – attitude! Super-soft track compounds just don’t work on the road. They don’t warm up and don’t like rain. Hard track suspension settings don’t allow the bike to follow road irregularities. Stick to road set-ups and road compounds, but even then we need to take some care. Modern tyres have excellent grip but can fool us into pushing too hard – our tyres can only deliver the amount of grip that the surface offers. A super-grippy tyre will have more more traction over wet metal access covers or on diesel. And once the bike starts sliding, it may well panic us into grabbing the brakes and having a crash that shouldn’t have happened!

So beware overconfidence. Don’t ride too fast for the conditions, keep back and don’t follow the vehicle in front. Just because the Land Rover made it round doesn’t mean we will too!

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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.