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26. Cornering Problems 3 – Five tips to understanding cornering dynamics

Were I re-writing this article today, I would still emphasise that on real roads, with uneven surfaces, limited visibility, and the very real possibility of needing to find a new line mid-corner, finishing deceleration early and rebalancing the suspension before steering remains the most reliable way to maximise grip, reduce workload, and free up the rider’s full attention to staying on the road, no matter what issues the corner throws up unexpectedly.

What has changed is the current fad for trail braking. Unfortunately braking into a corner leaves the rider entirely vulnerable to abrupt changes in surface grip, something that has actually deteriorated dramatically since the piece was written. If a rider loses traction braking in a straight line, it’s no big deal even on a non-ABS bike so long as the rider recognises what’s happening, and releases then reapplies the brakes. The bike remains upright.

When braking while leaned over, the front tyre is already using grip to generate lateral force (cornering). Adding braking demands longitudinal grip at the same time. If available grip suddenly drops thanks to a polished surface, stone chips or a pothole, and if the front tyre can no longer satisfy both demands, something has to give — and it is usually cornering force first. If we’re lucky, the result is a slide. If we’re not, the tyre lets go. Basic ABS can do little about this since it only modulates the braking force, not the lateral force. The role of cornering ABS is also poorly understood. Since trail braking depends on reducing speed to tighten the line, if the braking force is reduced to preserve traction, the bike will continue to roll into the corner more rapidly than the rider planned for, and that added speed means a wider radius turn. The result is that the bike stays upright but “drifts wide”. In short, when cornering ABS intervenes mid-corner, it prioritises preventing a fall, not holding trajectory.

Cornering Problems 3 – Five tips to understanding cornering dynamics

Why do riders get themselves in a muddle on corners? In my experience as a rider coach offering Survival Skills post-test rider training, much of the problem lies in the lack of training in cornering at basic level. One of the key issues is a lack of understanding of just important it is to get a motorcycle ‘set up’ well in advance of a corner, particularly when a new rider has a car driving background. Powered two wheelers simply don’t work the same way. Whilst the dynamics of cornering are the unique and fun part of riding a bike, they are also the source of many scary moments and crashes.

The key to getting cornering dynamics right is to arrive at the point where we need to steer with the bike settled on the suspension. This means that we need to be travelling at the right speed in the right gear with the brakes released, and with the the suspension balanced thanks to a slight rearward weight transfer that’s effected by a gentle application of throttle.

Forget any articles you may have read about how ‘bikes turn faster on the brakes’. It’s mostly a misunderstanding about what’s happening.

Here’s the first point to understand – as any powered two wheeler slows, it will automatically turn along a progressively tighter line just so long as the lean angle stays the same. So if we brake into a corner, the bike will spriral into the corner more quickly.

But here’s the second. If we go into a corner on the brakes, it affects the steering geometry. Whilst they may look outwardly the same, race bikes and road bikes are set up rather differently. Race bikes – or even a road bike set up for the track – are usually set up to turn on the brakes. The steering head angle is likely to be different, and compared with a road bike where the suspension is designed to absorb bumps, the suspension on a race bike will be very stiff. Track tyres are also a different profile and construction. stiffer. If we brake into a bend on a road bike, with its relatively soft front forks and tyres, the compression of the front end will make the machine sit up in the corner and try to go straight on. If you don’t believe me, try applying the front brake mid-corner and see what happens. Better yet, don’t try it and just trust me when I say it’ll sit up. That’s the force we must resist if we turn in to a corner on the brakes. Rather than working with us, the bike is working against us.

We CAN compensate by adding extra steering input, but that pushes us closer to the limit of grip – see the previous article. And in fact, a bike with a standard road set up on road tyres will handle most sweetly with the forks unloaded by a little throttle.

Of course, we need to slow down approaching a bend so the steering dynamics impose a simple rule – we need to get OFF the brakes and back ON the throttle before we begin to change direction.

Sounds easy? Yet we all get it wrong on occasion, so here are five cornering issues we need to think about.

Suspension dynamics – to soak up bumps, the front suspension on a road bike is fairly soft but when decelerating (either with a closed throttle or with the brakes) the forks compress. This compromises their ability to soak up the bumps. If we hit bumps in a straight line, this is uncomfortable but relatively relatively unimportant in terms of machine stability unless we are really hard on the front brake, but the bumps will cause the tyre to compress and rebound, which compromises front end grip – it’s why the ABS sometimes kicks in when braking hard on a bumpy road. But as soon as we are leaned over, there is a real downside to hitting bumps. Not only does the front tyre lose traction if the suspension’s not moving freely, but the more we’re leaning, the greater the tendency for the bumps to try to ‘kick’ the front end sideways. Even with ABS, we’ll know all about it if we hit a series of ‘stutter bumps’ with the forks compressed midway through a bend. The track is relatively smooth. The road isn’t.

Steering dynamics – if we’ve finished decelerating (either with a closed throttle or with the brakes) and we’re gently back on the power, then the front forks extend again, Now the vast majority of road bikes set up for the road will steer with minimal input from the rider. If we carry brakes INTO the corner, we have to compensate by adding extra steering input which pushes us closer to the limits of stability.

KISS and ‘keep things simple, stupid’ – even when road riders try to avoid braking into the first part of the corner, a common fault is leaving everything a little too late. So we’re arriving at the bend and trying to get OFF the brakes, ON the throttle AND steer all at the same moment. Not surprisingly, the timing often goes awry, and the rider enters the corner still playing catch-up. Starting just a few metres earlier, then performing each task in succession – off the brakes THEN on the throttle THEN steer – we only have to perform one task at a time. We’re far more likely to complete each stage and turn in to the corner back on the power.

A change of mental focus – where do we look on the approach to a bend? Most people will say “at the road ahead” but in fact we’ll be looking DOWN at the surface and OUT from the corner towards the point we might run out of road – it’s a natural tendency to look where we DON’T want to go. If you don’t believe me, analyse your own riding. You might be surprised but it’s really not at all instinctive to look around the bend and away from danger. So we should make it a lot easier by ensuring we’re comfortable with our approach speed good and early. A planned approach to a corner that sorts our deceleration – and thus our speed – in plenty of time is what frees up our ability to lift our view and look up and around the corner. Why does this work? If we are happy to get back on the throttle, we MUST be sure we will make it round the bend. We’re often told we SHOULD look further ahead. This is HOW. It’s almost impossible to open the throttle when we’re worried we’re going to run out of road.

Margins for error – last but not least, we simply must have some space to deal with misjudgements. We are performing a complex mental calculation every time we approach a corner – we have to judge the radius of the bend, work out the speed and lean angle that will match that corner, assess where we need to steer to follow the bend… and we can only achieve that if we correctly estimate how much we need to slow down. It’s easy to misjudge both our initial braking force and the corner entry speed. By AIMING to get our deceleration finished early, we leave ourselves some extra space in case we find we need to lose a little MORE speed.

All this and more is part of the Survival Skills advanced rider training ‘Performance’ courses, focusing on better cornering skills. If you’re serious about understanding how your brain functions as well as how your machine performs underneath you, why not check them out?

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25. Cornering Problems 2 – Cornering lines, stability and the ‘Point and Squirt’ technique

What’s changed since this was first written? Motorcycles have gained sophisticated electronic aids, but the roads have become less predictable. Stability control, ABS and traction control can soften the consequences of poorly timed inputs, but they do not change the underlying physics of cornering, nor do they improve vision or judgement. The real advantage of delaying turn-in and reducing time spent leaned over is not ‘progress’ but retaining options. Modern UK roads are rapidly disintegrating. and actually show the benefits of this ‘late apex line’ (as it’s now often called) even more than when I first wrote this; later commitment allows better vision before turning, slower approach means less lean, quicker steering means reduced time at lean and an earlier return to drive out of the corner. Modern riding aids do not eliminate the problems the roads themselves put in our path, and my demolition of the simplistic “upright = stable” mantra is still justified, as is the fact that it’s our inputs which keep the bike in a metastable condition, and the critique of the maximum-radius line is still necessary, since it’s still repeated uncritically in some advanced riding circles and the explanation that riders simply use that extra radius to go faster — rather than to increase margin — is a textbook description of risk compensation applied to cornering. “Point and Squirt” as a road strategy remains valid.

Cornering Problems 2 – Cornering lines, stability and the ‘Point and Squirt’ technique

You may have heard this statement:

“A motorcycle is most stable when it is upright and travelling in a straight line at a constant speed.”

You’ll find this in quite a lot of writing on advanced riding. Unfortunately, it’s not quite correct. A motorcycle is most stable when it is lying on its side. That’s not a great deal of use to us if we’re hoping to ride it.

So I’ll make an alternative statement for you to ponder:

“If we’re not actually crashing, the bike must STILL be stable – crashing is the definition of UNstable.”

All of our bike control skills achieve just two results:

changes of speed
changes of direction

So have a think about this too:

“If we don’t make steering inputs the bike will ultimately become unstable and it will fall over.”

In essence, as soon as we’re moving, the machine is generating is a different kind of stability which is sometimes called ‘meta-stability’, and by feeding in steering inputs we’re constantly maintaining a meta-stable state.

So what we’re actually interested in is not ‘stability’ per se, but understanding how stability is affected by the INPUTS we make to the machine change speed or direction, where we sit within the LIMITS of stability at any one moment, and whether our inputs (or even lack of inputs) in terms of changing speed and direction are pushing the machine towards those limits. Specifically we need to know if we are about to create an unstable state, because that’s when we are going to crash.

So let’s think about limits of stability. It’s determined by two things

how much input force we apply through the controls

tyre grip against the road surface – even the best tyres offer zero grip if the road surface can’t deliver its half of the bargain

Let’s start with the input forces. There’s applying a braking force (either via the brakes or a closed throttle) and there is a driving force (from opening the throttle), and usually forgotten is that steering also applies a force (which makes the bike change lean angle).

So what pushes us towards the limits of stability? Most of us will usually think of the consequences of an excess of force combined with insufficient grip. Big handfuls of brake or throttle risk tyre lock-ups (or triggering ABS) or wheelspin (or triggering traction control). Big lean angles risk sliding tyres. And these limits are ‘mix-and-match’ too. If we are braking or accelerating, we compromise our ability to lean the bike, and if we are leaning, we compromise our ability to brake or accelerate. This is the basis of the advice to keep braking or throttle use away from corners. If we’re upright, we can brake or accelerate as hard as the tyres’ limits. But once leant over, some of the grip is being used to maintain our curved path, and so we have reduced grip to brake or accelerate. This is the basis of what’s known as the ‘traction pie’, where we ‘slice up’ grip.

Less obviously, instability can be result from the rate of change of one of those forces. we can destabilise the bike by braking too hard (and pulling a stoppie) or accelerating too hard (and pulling a wheelie). Ultimately we could loop the bike. But we can also destabilise the bike if the rate of change of direction is too high – we can generate a big wobble or weave. Bumps or gusts of wind are external forces and can also destabilise the machine. To reduce the rate of change we just back off the input and reduce the force being applied.

So having said all that, if the machine is upright and with only just enough power being applied via the rear wheel to keep it moving at constant speed, then what we have are the biggest RESERVES of stability.

So how could we try to stay away from the limit of grip in a corner?

A common suggestion is to maximise the radius of the turn, instead of simply staying in the middle of the lane all the way round, which is – more or less – the approach taught on basic training. So on a right-hander, we’d start by kerb, cross the width of our lane to come close to the centre line mid-corner, then drift out again so by the time we leave the corner, we’re back over kerb. This way we fit the maximum radius line compared with the ‘middle of the lane’ line. In theory, we are “working our tyres less hard”. That very advantage is mentioned in an early 2000s BikeSafe video from West Midlands police which I have in my collection.

But let’s think about that a little harder.

That’s only true if we keep our speed the same. Let’s think about cornering physics. If we accelerate at the same lean angle, we’ll spiral out onto a wide line. If we slow down at the same lean angle, we’ll spiral inwards. Corner grip – and thus stability – isn’t just lean angle OR speed. It’s a combination of both – angular momentum.

When we corner, we almost all develop a ‘comfort lean angle’ where rider and bike are at their happiest. Now, a moment’s thought should tell us that if we adopt our comfort lean angle at the same time as we follow the maximum radius line, then the wider line does NOT reduce the need for tyre grip at all because we’ll be riding the corner faster. So we’ve not actually increased our tyre grip margins at all because we’ve increased our angular momentum. We actually need to reduce our lean angle (and angular momentum) to increase our margins and to “work our tyres less hard” as claimed in the video.

But in reality, wide cornering lines are nearly always used to carry more speed at our comfort lean angle. A clue to that is its other name – the racing line.

There are other problems. Compared with the middle-of-the-lane line, the maximum radius line starts earlier and finishes later. Or to put it another way, we’re leaned over for longer. When we’re leaned over, our ability to brake or accelerate is compromised. And that means on the way into the corner, we can’t brake as late. On the way out of the bend, we cannot get on the gas as early.

You might have noticed that many bends in the UK are blind – that is, we cannot see our way out of the bend from the point where we start turning. Taking a line that commits us to an early turn-in makes it even more difficult to see through the corner, which means it becomes more difficult to assess it. And if we do get the line wrong, committing ourselves onto this maximim radius line commits us to a wide exit line. If the bend goes on just a bit longer than we expected when we committed to the maximum radius line, there’s a risk we’ll run out of room on the way out of the corner. And that’s the main reason I only ever use the maximum radius line when I have 100% vision, right through the corner and out the other side.

So… if the maximum radius line is a potentially risky one, what are the alternatives?

Ever since CBT was introduced in 1990, basic training has taught riders to follow a middle-of-the-lane line, or even keep a little to the left of centre. It may be ‘basic’ but it keeps us away from the extreme edges of the road. It has some pluses:

it keeps us away from the centre line on right-handers (and gives us a slightly better view ahead)

it keeps us away from the nearside on left-handers (and gives us a slightly better view ahead)

it keeps the bike upright slightly later on the way into the bend (we can brake closer to the corner if we need to)

it gets the bike upright slightly earlier on the way out of the bend (we can get on the gas sooner if we need to)

Whilst we trade off a bit of mid-corner speed at our comfort lean angle, because we’re reduced our angular momentum, we actually need a bit less grip, even though the lean angle is the same as on the wider line. And this bonus tyre grip is useful in case we need to brake or swerve to avoid an unseen hazard.

A second option is to push this ‘follow the bend’ line out closer to the edge of the lane. Not so close we’re at risk of meeting an oncoming vehicle on a left-hander, but far enough towards the centre line that we get a little more view still. Likewise on a right-hander, a line closer to the verge would also improve our view ahead.

But remember I said that if the machine is upright and with only just enough power being applied via the rear wheel to keep it moving at constant speed, then what we have are the biggest RESERVES of stability?

What if we mix and match these ideas? How about this – what if we use that ‘follow the bend line’ shifted to the outside of the corner around the first part of the bend, then use a quick steering input to straighten out the final part of the corner and get the benefits of the maximum radius line when we can see where the bend goes?

What are the benefits? By avoiding turning in on the maximum radius line initially, we do deeper into the corner and stay upright longer before we change direction. Mid-corner, we’ve trade off the sweeping line’s mid-corner speed which gives more reserves of grip, which in turn allow a more positive steering input to change change direction more rapidly at the delayed ‘turn-in’ point which happens only when we can see where we’re going next. The more positive steering input gets the bike turned faster, and pointed where we want to go sooner, which means we can open out the final part of the bend on that maximum radius line. Finally we get the machine upright sooner, which means we’re back on the power earlier.

This is the technique I’ve been teaching ever since I launched my Survival Skills advanced cornering courses, and I call it the ‘Point and Squirt’ line because what we effectively do is ‘point’ the bike first, THEN ‘squirt’ the power on to drive the bike clear of the corner.

It’s slower INTO the corner, but gives us a better view THROUGH the bend before we start to turn, and that means we’re more likely to spot mid-corner obstructions like a parked vehicle, a pothole or a fuel spill, as well as identify a double-apex corner before we’re committed. The wider line means we can keep away from extreme left or right positions in the lane and we can build in a bigger clearance to entrances to our left and oncoming vehicles to our right. The lower speed at the point where we steer to open out the corner means we’ve more reserves of grip. And whatever speed we lose INTO the bend we more than recover on the way OUT. In a short sentence, managing corners to keep both the time and the distance where the bike is learnt over as short as possible is a good thing, not bad.

Despite the explanations, this line still comes under fire, with critics saying:

“it’s slower” – yes, it’s slower mid-corner – is that such a bad thing – but we’re upright sooner and faster out, which fits with the well-known ‘slow in, fast out’ advice. But we’re also upright a little longer into the corner which allows us to decelerate slightly later, and because we’re upright much sooner, we regain speed whilst the rider on the maximum radius line is still leaned over. Yes, that rider will catch us MID-corner, but we’ll leave them behind on the way out of the bend.

“it needs more grip because you’re steering harder” – a misunderstanding of the angular momentum issue. The reduced mid-corner speed more than compensates for the more positive input needed to make the quicker change of direction.

“it’s less fun” – well, if having your head removed by a passing truck is fun, carry on. If I want big mid-corner lean angles, I’ll go to the track where I’m unlikely to have to take evasive action halfway around. The only real difficulty is that we have to get used to a late, postive steering input. If we’ve used to turning in early on a sweeping line, it can take some adapting to.

“if it’s so good why doesn’t everyone teach it” – as it happens, Andy Ibbott, the former racer writing as the UK director of the California Superbike School, featured exactly this approach in an MCN article some years ago, so there are other rider coaches who recognise the advantages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But those numbers need context.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A former police instructor once told me that

“Done right, overtaking is perfectly safe”.

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

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

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

…yet.

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

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

Springing into Summer – polishing off ‘rider rust’

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

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

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

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

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

So what can we do about this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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23. Organising and joining group riding – some rules and tips

If I were rewriting this article today, there’s little I’d change. I would emphasise the ever-widening gulf between hot-of-the-production line bikes and old-school machines. My observation that group riding introduces unique risks remains correct and is now widely accepted in safety research. The Lincolnshire statistic reference aligns with later findings elsewhere, that peer pressure, pace escalation and delayed fatigue recognition are all major contributors to group crashes. The framing of “organising a ride equals accepting responsibility” has received some legal attention, with group rider organisers being held responsible following fatal crashes on riders. That’s a fact that’s rarely emphasised when articles cover group riding . Fatigue as a hidden cause is also something that modern crash analysis has shown up, not just as an end-of-day problem, but as a mid-ride cognitive degradation; rider performance likely begins to degrade before the warning signs actually tell us we’re “feeling tired”. I’d probably reframe the decision to leave a ride early, to emphasise that it’s not a personal failure, but a success in identifying that the ride doesn’t suit us.

Organising and joining group riding – some rules and tips

This particular article was originally penned after a friend of mine (at the time member of an advanced group), told me a sorry tale of things going wrong on their group rides. Three rides, three crashes bringing the rides to an unplanned halt. Now, having organised trouble-free group rides for years I’d like to say that on a well-organised ride, with proper rules and sensible riders this shouldn’t happen. But having written the article, the next three rides I organised were also brought to a halt by silly crashes. Two riders fell off at walking pace on sharp corners, and required medical attention. The third ran out of road on another tight bend and whilst unhurt, needed a van to take his bike home. Bad luck? Perhaps. But maybe we were actually. Shortly afterwards, a survey of rural riding fatalities in Lincolnshire found that ALMOST HALF occurred on group rides. So if we take on the organisation of a group ride, we take on a lot of responsibility and we need to understand just how group riding brings some very unique problems. But we also have some responsibilities if we join a group ride.

Most discussion on how to organise a group ride tends to focus on how the ride’s organised once it’s underway. But if we’re setting it up, we really need to back up a stage and focus on some risk assessment and management.

Virtually all the serious problems I’ve seen on group rides result from just a few issues. Three really crop up in the planning stage:

poorly-planned routes

fatigue

lack of organisation to deal with a mix of abilities

worst case scenarios

And one is down to the ride attendees:

individual poor attitude to riding and a lack of self-control

Planning and Organisation

The route: start by deciding what the ride is for. Is it just a couple of hours out with some buddies? A club outing to a different part of the country? Or do you want to put on a day’s riding for riders you don’t know?

That’s important because it’ll influence the route. For example, if we’re leading a small club group off for a few days riding in a totally different area, then planning a ride up a motorway is likely to be the quickest way of getting there – it’s easy enough to organise a rendezvous at a particular service area or junction. But on a day-long ride with a big group of unknown riders, then short stretches of motorways can cause real problems with keeping the group together. And believe it or not, I was on one group ride where the organisers had forgotten there were a few riders on L plates.

Town centres also cause problems, even with a good system of marking. As well as having drivers get annoyed by being ‘blocked in’ by a stream of bikes crossing a junction, and deliberately pulling out, a big group can be chopped into numerous chunks by traffic lights or roundabouts. This happened on a ride down the French coast through Bolougne with thirty-odd riders. One rider didn’t follow the group riding rules and failed to mark an exit from a roundabout. The next rider just ahead of me couldn’t see where he’d gone so followed the ‘all directions’ sign. He guessed wrong so the back end of the group went the wrong way. After ten minutes we stopped when we realised we’d lost the front. But the group leader was still blissfully unaware because he still had bikes behind him, thanks to that rider who didn’t stop. With no contingency plan and no route map to the lunch stop, we had to contact him by phone – not so easy when someone’s riding with the phone in a pocket. We made it to lunch, an hour late, and that meant we had to abandon our pleasant ride back to Eurotunnel. One mistake totally disrupted the day. One group kept stopping and reassembling after each junction, but this causes inconvenience to other road users, and eventually becomes unworkable if the group’s a big one. You could have a reassembly point marked on a map. That’ll work IF people can read a map.

For the same sort of reason, right turns on fast, busy roads are best avoided. It’ll take ages for a big group to make the turn. Meanwhile, there’s a long queue of bikes backing up and potentially blocking the road.

And think about whether the group will cope with really awkward corners or turns. I planned one route for some new riders, but overlooked one very tight, right-back-on-itself, downhill junction. As I approached I suddenly realised it would be a major problem for some of the less-experienced in the group. I had to pull the group up and warn them at the last moment. That one would have been best avoided.

It may be that the UK’s not blessed with vast areas of open roads, so we’re bound to encounter villages. But with a bit of careful planning, it’s usually possible to avoid the bigger towns and motorways, and to avoid the most awkward manoeuvres.

Don’t forget fuel. It’s amazing how often it’s a last-minute consideration but plan your stops and make sure everyone can reach them. It’s no good planning around your own 250 mile tank. My Hornet has a notoriously short reliable fuel range of 120 to 130 miles. With reserve, I can be reasonably certain of hitting 150 miles… unless we’re riding at speed. On one group ride in France, our destination was only 90 miles away, so starting with a full tank should have got me there with plenty to spare… except the leader didn’t take the obvious route, but a much longer ride that was marginally quicker thanks to some autoroute with no service area and didn’t check if anyone would need a top-up. I had just hit 135 miles when we turned off the motorway and a moment later I ran out of fuel. Fortunately, I was able to coast downhill into the town and straight into a filling station half-way down.

Getting tired: the problem of fatigue shouldn’t be underestimated. I know that because it’s something I’ve been guilty of. I tend to forget that I’m used to spending long hours in the saddle. Just recently, I left at 9am to ride 90 miles to meet a trainee at 11am, covered another 90 miles in five hours training (which actually took six and a half hours because we talked so much), then rode just under 100 miles for another two and a half hours to my final destination, not arriving until 8:30pm.

But not everyone is capable of doing that. We have to remember that for some riders, one hour in the saddle is likely to be a long ride. Others will make problems for themselves. Having organised a ride in North Yorkshire a while back, I was rather flattered that someone had ridden almost 150 miles to make our 10 am start, but in retrospect it meant he’d set off at 7am and by the time he crashed, at about 4pm, he’d covered another 120 miles of fairly technical riding with only a couple of twenty minute refueling stops and an hour’s lunch break. Even though it was in clear sight, he failed to spot a sharp kink at the end of a gentle left-hander. The bike left the road at walking pace, but fell a metre on the far side. The bike was unrideable, and was ultimately a write-off. He said some months later that he was absolutely knackered when he crashed.

Make sure you plan stops. Dehydration is an issue on a bike so we all need to personally refuel and rest up on a long ride, but be aware of the issue that the slowest riders will be last in and have least time to recover. Up front, you may feel refreshed. The rider at the back may barely have got the helmet off. And factor in loo stops, and bum and ciggie breaks. Be particularly cautious after lunch when the combination of food and biorhythms cause a low point in our riding.

Who’s on the ride: we also need to think about who is on the invite list. If we know the riders, then we should be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Similarly if it’s closed-to-club, we should have a reasonable idea of who will turn up. But once it’s an open ride, we have no idea who’ll turn up. We can pitch a ride for ‘experienced only’ or ‘suitable for newly qualified’ but we’re relying on attendees to self-assess. I’ve seen plenty of ‘experienced’ riders with poor skills. Ultimately, we won’t have any idea of their capabilities – or level of self-control – until we see them ride. Or we can suggest a ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ ride. One of the problems of ‘fast’ riders turning up for ‘slow’ rides is that they get bored and start messing about.

We also need to think about the size of the group. It may stroke our ego to be leading a big group of thirty-plus riders, but it causes any amount of problems. We have to find ways of keeping the group together, and to keep it under control. Having said that, I have ridden in groups of thirty where everyone’s behaved impeccably but I’ve also seen chaos. My own preference these days is for small groups – single figures. And with just four or five riders, the leader can usually see everyone else in the group. Plus it’s more intimate, everybody gets to know everyone else – and it’s easier to find somewhere to stop for lunch.

And it almost guarantees a mix of abilities. So what do we do about inexperienced or new riders mixing with an experienced group? The usual solution is to put the slowest or least experienced rider behind the leader. That way, in theory at least, the pace is set for the entire group and no-one will be left behind. But think about this. However much they are told to “ride at your own pace”, the rider behind the leader will not want to hold the group up. So there’s a serious risk they’ll override, and the leader will progressively up the pace to the point where they can no longer sustain it.

If the group’s a large one, does everyone ride together? Or should it be split up into mini-groups which ride at their own pace? This is one way to deal with a mix of experienced / inexperienced or fast / slow riders. Or does everyone do their own ride but following a common route?

If the ride is split into mini-groups do they cover the route at their own pace? That’s an approach I have used successfully in France. Or do the mini-groups plan to meet at intervals along the route? Do they set off together again? If they do, this inevitably means the slower riders have less time to recover. Or if everyone is riding alone, do they do their own thing once they’ve set off?

How are you going to organise the ‘marking system’ so riders know where to turn? Is overtaking allowed? These are all decisions that need to be made before the ride.

With small groups of half-a-dozen or so, the leader can keep everyone in sight, but bigger groups need a marking system. There are two alternatives – the ‘caterpillar’ (as used by the National Motorcycle Escort Group which escorts cycle races and similar and of which I was a member for some years) or the ‘leapfrog’.

In the caterpillar system, the rider immediately behind the leader stops when the leader turns off, and waits for the next rider who slides into his place as the first rider moves off again. This works well with groups which are riding on open roads where riders are riding at their own pace and can lose sight of the rider ahead. Why? Because everyone stays in the SAME ORDER. Each rider knows exactly who is ahead and behind. You’ll see why that’s important in a moment.

With the leapfrog system, the rider immediately behind the leader stops to mark the point where the leader has turned off, but this time that rider stays there and lets the entire group pass by, only moving on again when the tail end rider, sometimes called ‘the sweeper’, comes into view. Now, if no overtaking is allowed within the group, then the group order stays the same aside from this ‘front to back’ rotation. But many groups do allow overtaking. And then two problems arise. Unless it’s a small group and we know exactly who’s on the ride, we’ll probably not know everyone. And that means it’s possible a random rider can get into the group. It’s always possible that the next group rider won’t realise the interloper is not part of the ride, and will follow that random bike when it turns off. Riding with a buddy, that’s exactly what happened when I pulled out into what turned out to be the middle of a group ride. I turned off, stopped to wait for my buddy to appear, and whilst the front half of the group carried on on the main road, the back half thought I was marking a turn for them and turned off where I’d stopped. The second issue is that in my experience getting back to the front can become a competition for some riders, who end up constantly passing the slower riders. I’m not a great fan of this method as it results in dodgy overtakes and scary moments for slower riders as they are passed by the quicker guys.

Worst case scenarios: what can go wrong? The obvious issues are the group splitting, crashes and breakdowns. What are your fallback plans to deal with each? Are you going to provide a route map? Does everyone have a contact number? Can you hear the phone and answer it? Have you got anyone with first aid training? Does anyone have a first aid kit? What about tools? Can you deal with a puncture?

Here’s another to think about. How do you deal with a disruptive rider? It’s worth thinking about because sooner or later, you will get someone who thinks a group ride is an excuse to pull wheelies down the village high street.

On the day

Don’t just set off. Hold a briefing at the beginning of the ride. Make it clear that rules will be operating. You may find that some people will leave at that point. Too bad. If they’re not happy to follow rules, then we don’t really want them along.

Whether you provide route maps and contingency meet points is up to you, but make sure everyone knows the lead and the last rider (the ‘sweeper’) in the group. Ideally, make it easy for everyone to see you. Don’t just wear a fluoro yellow hi-vis, as half the group will – try a different colour like blue or green. Maybe use a coloured headlight cover. There’s little to be gained from an introduction such as I saw on one group ride where we were all sitting in the cafe, drinking tea. “Bob will be sweeper, there’s Bob for those of you who don’t know him”. Bob duly stands up, in his pullover, waves and smiles all round. Yeah right, that’s going to make him very easy to spot when he has his gear on and is riding his unidentified bike.

Joining a ride?

You may be joining a ride, and possibly a bit nervous, so here are my tips for group participants. The main thing to remember is that it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of not looking any further ahead than the tail light of the rider in front and never checking your own mirrors.

1) Ride your OWN RIDE

Don’t ride in the wheeltracks of the bike in front! In the event of a sudden stop, you might not! On twistier roads where there’s only one line, sit well back. On wider and straighter roads, it’s possible to stagger alternately, one bike to one side and the next to the other, but it does require everyone to understand how it works. It’s particularly useful in town, as it makes the group shorter and more compact, thus taking up less room on the road, which helps prevent drivers turning into the middle of it.

Don’t follow the rider ahead either. Stay back and look past the bike in front. Get too close and it’s hard to look at anything other than the brake light. The bike you’re following speeds up, you speed up. That bike slows down, you slow down. The rider cocks up and you follow them straight off the road… it happens. If you find yourself struggling to do this, drop back until the rider ahead is out of sight and trust the marking system – if it works properly, there’s no need to worry about getting lost. That way, it’s possible to focus on your own lines, pick your own speeds, choose your own braking points and cornering lines. Most importantly you deal with hazards for yourself.

2) Ride at your OWN PACE

A major cause of group crashes is someone over-riding to try to keep up with the rider in front. Once you begin to stress over speed, you tense up, stop scanning ahead but fixate on the bike in front, and your riding will go ragged. Let them go. Similarly, if a rider behind catches you up, don’t try to speed up. You can move over on straights, but don’t make silly efforts to let them past, so hold your own line where necessary – it is up to the rider behind to overtake safely, not for you to make things easy. The moment things start to surprise you and scare you, slow down!

3) Don’t hassle other riders

So you’re quicker than the rider ahead and you’d like to pass. Hang back and wait for a safe overtaking opportunity. Don’t hassle slower or less experienced riders, because if they feel they’re being pressured, they’ll often either speed up and over-ride to avoid holding you up, or slow down and pull over in the daftest places. And if the rider ahead is trying to pass another bike or a car, wait your turn, however long it takes.

Whilst it’s important not to get sucked into a copy-cat mentality when riding in a group,

If you’re not happy with the group’s behaviour or simply not enjoying the route – that’s happened when I’ve joined an unknown group and the route consisted entirely of busy A roads – go home. Don’t just turn off but ride to the next group stop, and let the leader know you’re leaving.

And don’t show off. Easy enough.

 

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21. Cornering Problems 1 – Lean or Brake?

Everything in the article still stands. However, a modern complication worth noting is that today’s rider is no longer dealing solely with human drivers. Many cars now use lane-keeping assist, collision avoidance braking, and steering interventions that attempt to keep the vehicle rigidly centred in its lane. These systems may trigger braking or steering inputs that are unpredictable from a rider’s point of view. And here’s something to think about when trying to hold a wide position approaching a left-hand bend (in the UK) we’ll be close to the centre line and if a vehicle appears coming the other way, the driver’s instinct may be to edge left. At that point the lane assist feature may kick in — I had that happen myself on a narrow road. When I steered towards the grass verge to make maximum room and the lane assist feature detected this as me leaving the lane and attempted to steer me back again. It’s worth thinking about, since relying on other road users to “make space” is less reliable than it once was.

Running our of road or losing control in a bend is a primary cause of bike-only accidents in the UK and also in many other countries. The problems start when riders run into the corner too fast. So an oh-so-common question is: “when I’m running into a bend at speed and see I’m running out of road in my lane, is the proper response? Should I lean more? Or should I be braking?”

The answer, as it is so often when we’re talking about motorcycles, is: “it depends”; there is rarely a ‘one size fits all’ solution. I’m going to suggest three options, explain the advantages and the risks of each, and then you will hopefully have a better understanding of how to make a sound choice in your own emergency.

I’ll take a moment to remind you of Keith Code’s ‘Survival Reactions’. In his ‘Twist of the Wrist’ books, US rider coach Keith Code explained how Survival Reactions are unplanned and unwanted reactions to a fear of personal harm. Examples are freezing, over-braking and target fixation. Typically they put us deeper in trouble rather than helping. Survival Reactions are triggered by a failure to predict the problem. When caught by SURPRISE!, and suddenly find ourselves in a mid-corner emergency, even if we have had excellent training, the fact is we’re unlikely to react any more effectively than a rider with only basic skills.

Recent research into crash avoidance suggests the answer is not more skills training but a better understanding of both what can go wrong and which strategies give us a chance to get out of trouble. This is effectively what Survival Skills has been teaching since my first course in1997, and I’ve more recently discovered it’s known as ‘Insight Training’. So to have a change of getting out of trouble mid-bend is that first we need to understand how errors happen, second we need to be know which strategies can to get us out of trouble, and thirdly we have to look at the road ahead to see just what COULD go wrong rather than believe we’re going to get things just right. This is the ‘No Surprise? No Accident’ approach to riding.

Here are two other things to remember:

:: the bike is almost always better than the rider – with the exception of some cruisers with limited ground clearance and my forty year-old classic on skinny skinny tyres, modern bikes will almost always lean beyond the point where the rider is getting uncomfortable

:: the front tyre almost always has more STEERING grip than we’ll ever use – even on wet roads, it’s rare to lose front end grip simply by steering. It’s not impossible and I have done it, but most cornering crashes result from mixing lean angle with braking. Or simply running out of road, of course.

Here’s a quick reminder of counter-steering, because that’s one of two skills we need. Push left, go LEFT. Push RIGHT, go right. Push harder, ROLL quicker, and change direction FASTER. Many riders put very gentle inputs into the bars and the result is glacially slow changes-of-direction, which won’t help one bit of we’re running out of road. Remember – trust that front tyre to grip, use positive inputs and steer the bike quickly.

So what are the three options I talked about?

Option A:- KEEP IT SIMPLE AND STEER

As I’ve just mentioned, most of us arrive in a bend with lean angle in hand. So that being the case, we can can usually exploit it:

:: keep the thottle gently open to keep the steering neutral and avoid loading the front tyre with decelerating forces

:: look through the corner towards the way out (the ‘exit’ of the bend) and NOT at the problem in front of you

:: push HARDER to add an extra counter-steering input to generate extra lean angle to make the turn on a tighter line

All we need is lean angle in the bank.

Option B:- SIT UP, BRAKE AND LEAN AGAIN

If there’s space we may be able to:

:: counter-steer the bike upright

:: use both brakes hard in a straight line

:: counter-steer to lean the bike over again at the reduced speed

This solution has been recommended in some books on advanced riding, and I’ve also been told personally on a training course that it’s the ‘correct’ response to an ‘in too fast’ issue. However, from experience, I’d say there is rarely room to apply this approach on the road. On a left-hander, it almost guarantees we’re going to run into the oncoming lane, and on a right-hander there’s little room before we run off into the hedge or over a cliff. In fact, if we want to get the MAXIMUM straight line space across the lane, we have to turn the bike at a tangent across the corner FIRST…

…and if we can do that, couldn’t we just keep steering?

Option C:- SLOW DOWN IN THE TURN

Slowing down IN the turn is the option most often frowned but in fact motorcycle cornering dynamics is on our side. When leaning, if we keep the lean angle fixed, the bike will turn on a progressively tighter line as the machine slow without us having to add any extra lean angle.

So we can slow in one of three ways:

:: roll off the throttle – straightforward provided we don’t slam it shut and destabilise the machine, a smoothly closed throttle will create engine braking and thus deceleration, but it does depend on the bike. Big twins will slow quite dramatically, small capacity two-strokes will barely decelerate at all. Mid-sized four cylinders like my 600 are in between. The gear matters too – rolling the throttle closed in a high gear will provide less engine braking than a lower gear, which is a good reason for not rolling along a twisty road in a high gear at low regs.

:: apply the rear brake only – if engine braking isn’t providing sufficient deceleration (and I wouldn’t try to force more deceleration via a downchange at this point – tt’s no coincidence many bikes now have slipper clutches to prevent lock-ups on clumsy downshifts on a closed throttle) we can apply the rear brake. This has always been the advice on UK basic training, but with the throttle already shut, we’re already creating a braking force via the rear wheel and even a modest amount of rear brake can take us over the limit of grip. It’s not too much of a problem if we have ABS but it’s still best not to trigger it if possible – most riders react in surprise when the ABS kicks in and let off the brake again. .

:: apply both front and rear brakes smoothly and progressively – modern tyres deliver far more edge grip, and unless we are already sliding the front tyre into the corner, then there IS grip left at the front for a small application of front brake. This is the concept sometimes called the ‘Traction Pie’, where the tyre splits its grip between braking and steering. If we’re braking upright, we’re using some tyre grip for braking but none for steering. If we’re rounding a corner at constant speed, we’re using some tyre grip for steering but none for braking. Between the extremes we can ‘mix and match’, just so long as we don’t bang the brakes on suddenly – that makes most road bikes sit up and go straight on. With both brakes on, even lightly, we’ll lose speed more rapidly than with engine braking along, and the bike’s line mid-corner will tighten more rapidly too. I’ve been told that this is not a technique for novices, but in reality it’s not as difficult to master or as risky as usually claimed.

So here’s how we use both brakes combined with bends:

1 – BRAKING INTO THE CORNER (trail braking) – we brake conventionally before entering the bend, but as we enter the corner, but progressively ease off the brake pressure as the lean angle increases. This sorts out a bend that we’ve entered too fast.

2 – BRAKING MID-CORNER – now we’re cornering conventionally off the brakes but mid-bend we apply the brakes lightly and as the speed comes down and the lean angle reduces, we brake progressively harder. This allow us to deal with a bend that tightened up or an encounter with a hazard such as a stopped vehicle that was out of sight when we entered the bend.

Whenever we enter a bend it’s important we avoid being caught by SURPRISE!

Some years ago, I nearly put my GSX-R750 in the River Exe when I discovered the fast left-hander ahead was actually a sharp right-hander. Having changed direction I was about to run out of room and even as I was saying to myself “lean more, don’t brake”, I hit the front brake hard which stood the bike up – I was lucky that there was some run-off into a riverside viewing point. With some progressive braking mid-bend I’d have got round without the drama. But what that anecdote should tell you is that even mid-lean, the tyre gripped when I braked!

Two final tips. If we release the front brake suddenly mid-corner, the bike will topple into the bend – ease it off progressively. If we need to come to a complete halt, turn the bike at the last moment to get it upright – this will prevent us stopping off-balance and toppling over.

To sum up, practicing quick steering and mid-corner braking is a big help when we need to make mid-corner corrections, but the real benefits come when we begin to plan ahead to deal with a bend that doesn’t go where we expect, and to hold ready in our heads the understanding that we may need to tighten our line on ANY bend. Pre-planning for the Worst Case Scenario helps prevent the panic reactions that cause crashes.

Of course, some people will read this and say that the proper answer is “don’t go into a bend too hot in the first place”. Whilst that’s useful in hindsight, it’s not much use until after we’ve RECOVERED the error, is it?

We all make mistakes, sooner or later. That’s why it’s well to know how to get out of trouble just as much as we try to use ‘better biking’ techniques to keep us out of it.

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20. Filtering – what’s legal and how to do it

Although this article was revised in 2019, the principles behind safe filtering have not changed. UK law still does not define filtering as a specific manoeuvre; instead, riders are judged on whether their behaviour would be considered reasonable and competent in the circumstances. What has changed is traffic density, and possibly driver distraction from in-car systems like GPS. And riders also need to pay attention to and the frequency with which vehicles move unexpectedly within queues.

A modern complication is the rapid spread of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as lane-keeping assist, blind-spot monitoring and adaptive cruise control. At the time of the 2019 update, these systems were far from widespread. It’s likely they do not reliably detect filtering motorcycles, particularly at higher closing speeds or when the bike is offset from the centre of the lane. Some were never tested against motorcycles. It’s likely they change driver behaviour. Many drivers may now rely on warning lights rather than mirrors, make lazy steering inputs because the car normally ‘looks after’ lane position, or make sudden movements when automation disengages in slow traffic. The result is that filtering riders can no longer assume they are dealing with fully attentive human drivers. With autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle trials already under way in the UK, this trend will only increase. As a result, filtering today demands even more emphasis on anticipation, stopping distance and the assumption that we will not be seen—because legality offers no protection once physics takes over.

Filtering – what’s legal and how to do it

This is another tip I’ve completely rewritten for 2019, because filtering past or through slow-moving or stationary traffic is one of the most hotly-debated topics in biking. Please note that this article refers ONLY to UK practice. Whilst other nations have legalised filtering (Belgium for example) and lane splitting is legal in California (which has produced a code), it’s up to you to determine what the law is if you’re not a UK reader. And don’t forget to reverse left and right if you ride on the wrong side of the road.

So, here in the UK Motorcycle Roadcraft explains that filtering is a form of overtaking to make progress past stationary or slow moving traffic but gives no real advice on where or where not to do it. Filtering and other road users’ response to filtering motorcycles is also laid out in the Highway Code, which says in the section about ‘Road users requiring extra care’ that:

“It is often difficult to see motorcyclists and cyclists, especially when they are coming up from behind, coming out of junctions, overtaking you or filtering through traffic. Always look out for them before you emerge from a junction; they could be approaching faster than you think. When turning right across a line of slow-moving or stationary traffic, look out for cyclists or motorcyclists on the inside of the traffic you are crossing. Be especially careful when turning, and when changing direction or lane. Be sure to check mirrors and blind spots carefully.”

There is also guidance on the Highway Code which refer to overtaking, but can be applied by extention to filtering. Let’s mention the places you must not overtake first.

You may not:

cross solid white lines except to pass an obstruction or to overtake a slow (10mph), horse, bicycle, local authority vehicle (with its amber beacon flashing)
overtake after passing a No Overtaking sign, until you reach the end of restriction sign
overtake the vehicle nearest a pedestrian crossing
However, you may overtake vehicles where there is a solid white line on your side of the road if you can pass the vehicle without crossing or straddling the white line with any part of your vehicle.

You may:

enter a hatched lane divide as long as it has dashed boundary lines and it is safe and necessary to do so
pass traffic on the left (ie undertake) queuing or slow moving traffic but you should not change lane in order to gain an advantage
pass traffic on the left if the vehicle is indicating to turn right
pass traffic on the left if you are turning left in a dedicated left turn lane
pass traffic on the left in a one way street

So whilst there are some places we must NOT filter, there are no clear legal guidelines about HOW to filter. Unfortunately, some years back a wholly inaccurate article on filtering claimed to explain the law. As is the way of the internet, search engines turn it up from time to time, whereupon it’s ‘rediscovered’. I’m not going to tell you were to find it because it’s inaccurate but I will tell you why you shouldn’t trust it.

The article’s starting point was that a filtering crash should always be the driver’s fault. Commenting on a case, probably Leeson vs. Bevis Transport (1972), where the motorcyclist was found equally responsible for a collision with a van driver emerging from a side road, the article was penned in a way that implied that a filtering collision was always the other driver’s fault:

“I mean, you’re filtering past stationary cars and some clown t-bones you and you have to pick up half the bill?””

The Survival Skills approach is always to look at why things go wrong on the road, and I always encourage riders to see a situation from the other road user’s perspective. We could easily rewrite that statement:

“I’m trying to pull out of a side-turning into a busy street with parked vehicles on either side making it almost impossible to see, and some clown filtering past the bus that has kindly let me out t-bones me and I have to pick up half the bill?”

But it got worse. The writer then claimed that the law on filtering ‘changed’ after a case was heard in the Court of Appeal in 2006. The writer said:

“…in the case of Davis vs Schrogin, the judge found that “a filtering motorcyclist passing stationary or very slow moving traffic could not be to blame if a collision occurred if the rider had no chance to take avoiding action”, then jumped to the conclusion: “Ladies and Gentlemen, filtering past stationary traffic is no longer a grey area – it’s completely legal”.

First of all there was no ‘change in the law’ for the very simple reason that there was – and never has been – any road traffic law that defines filtering or how to go about it.

You may be wondering how do courts make a judgement on a filtering crash? The answer is based partly in terms of how each road user behaved. The question asked is “did the rider or drive behave in a way that that a competent driver or rider could be reasonably expected to drive or ride?”

Where it gets complicated is that a previous judgement (‘precedent’) by a magistrate’s court, crown court and county court is not binding. Although judges will look at previous decisions if the case is sufficiently similar, each case will be judged on its merits. However, higher court judgments (except in the House of Lords, where the Lords can change their minds) including those from the Court of Appeal, are binding on themselves and lower courts, UNLESS it can be shown that a new case has enough differences that it should be decided on its own facts. In that case, the judge can distinguish it from the previous case by pointing out the relevant differences and thus not be bound by precedent.

So the second error is to argue that a judgement in a single court case defines how other cases might turn out. Whilst case law sets a precedent, that precedent only applies in identical circumstances and the assessment of each individual case will depend heavily on statements and witnesses. There’s no ‘law making it legal’.

In any case, being on the right side of insurance claim doesn’t mean much if being in the legal ‘right’ doesn’t stop us being carted off in a pine box! So, let’s move on to looking at filtering from a practical perspective.

Above all, we need to be aware of where we might need to stop suddenly. What we mustn’t do is treat empty road ahead of us as a ‘motorcycle lane’ whether we’re filtering down the outside of a queue of traffic against oncoming vehicles, or (to use the American term) ‘lane splitting’ between queues moving in the same direction.

And that determines our speed. We have to be able to stop in the distance that we can see is clear AND EXPECT TO REMAIN CLEAR. So what’s the ‘right’ speed? Well, it’s all down to the physics of stopping. Two issues. The first is ‘double your speed, quadruple your stopping distance’. The second is ‘three-quarters of your braking distance loses one-quarter of your speed’.

In the collision between Messrs Schrogin and Davis, Mr Schrogin was stopped in a traffic jam in his car on a straight road, whilst Mr Davis was overtaking the stationary queue on his motorcycle. As nothing was coming in the opposite direction, Mr Schrogin decided to execute a U-turn and failed to see the approaching bike. Mr Schrogin accepted that he had looked the wrong way but argued that Mr Davis was contributory negligent. Mr Davis admitted seeing Mr Schrogin’s car moving towards the kerb in preparation for the U-turn but claimed that as he was no more than five cars’ length back from the point of impact, he had no chance to stop.

What surprises me is that when the case went to the Court of Appeal, it held that Mr Davis was so close to the point of impact that he could not have avoided the collision, so there was no basis for a finding of contributory negligence. But could the rider have stopped, given the quoted five car lengths?

Let’s do a quick sum. Something like a Vauxhall Astra is around 4.5 metres long, and that’s a fairly average sized car. Multiply that by 5 and you get 22.5 metres. Add a metre gap between the five vehicles and we probably have at least 25 metres in which to stop. When I demonstrate emergency stops, I can bring the bike to a standstill on a reasonable surface in the dry in around 10 metres from 30mph. So could a competent rider be ‘reasonably expected’ to stop too? if Mr Davis was accurate in his memory of distance (and post-crash, most witnesses are hopelessly inaccurate) then I’d say “yes, a competent rider could be reasonably expected to stop”…

…if he wasn’t taken completely by surprise by the event! If you’ve read Keith Code’s ‘Twist of the Wrist’ books, you’ll know all about ‘Survival Reactions’, the unplanned response to emergencies. They’re triggered by SURPRISE!, something you can find out more about by looking up our ‘No Suprise? No Accident’ campaign. If we’re not predicting something to happen, then SURPRISE! kicks in and triggers the Survival Reactions, which include freezing and ineffective braking. So the problem is really our expectations about that happens next. Is it really unexpected if a pedestrian steps out from between two vehicles? Or a door opens into our path? Or a car swaps lanes? Or a van pulls out of a side turning. Or a car starts to make a U-turn. Of course not. At least, not if we’re planning for the Worst Case Scenario, rather than looking at the empty tarmac as a motorcycle lane.

If we can see what’s happening ahead – a car edging the left in a queue is a great clue that the next movement will be the driver swinging out to perform a U-turn, whilst a gap being left between two vehicles is an equally fine clue that someone’s leaving space for an emerging vehicle or for someone to cross the road – we just have to interpret what we see. But the moment our view ahead is restricted – perhaps by a bus – then we have to assume that whe might have to stop level with the front of that vehicle – and down comes the speed.

You may read that so long as you keep to a 15 mph speed differential with the vehicles you’re filtering past, you’ll be safe. I know where that claim came from, and what they ignored was the physics. If we’re filtering past stationary traffic at 15 mph, our stopping distance is about a metre. If we’re filtering past traffic moving at 10 mph at 25 mph, our stopping distance is about six metres. By the time our speed climbs to 55 mph, filtering past traffic moving at 40 mph, our stopping distance is out to 35 metres or so. That’s a huge distance back from where things can go wrong. It’s already too late to worry about the cars we’re passing NOW.

Now, if you take a look at the shape of a braking graph, it takes us around half the total stopping distance to lose (very, very roughly) one-fifth of our speed. And we lose approximately three-quarters of our speed in the final quarter of the available braking distance. The result is that if we can’t stop, impacts are MUCH harder than riders intuitively expect. We only need to run out of space by one-quarter of the distance, but we hit with three-quarters of the impact of not braking at all. And the higher our starting speed, the worse the impact. Only considering traffic speed differentials is a really nasty filtering trap. Once traffic is moving at around 20, I’ll be back in the traffic stream. You certainly won’t see me lane splitting at motorway speeds.

What other tips can I give you?

Most important of all, assume you will NOT BE SEEN. Don’t expect to be seen in a mirror. Just like you, drivers are watching the traffic ahead when it’s moving in queues, so that they don’t run into the back of a vehicle that stops suddenly. Mirror use is erratic at best, the view is often blocked by the next vehicle back, and as soon as there is the slightest curve in the road, the mirror won’t show a filtering motorcycle until the last second in any case. All the hi-vis kit in the world, even riding with lights on main beam – makes no odds if the bike’s not visible. And loud pipes? When I’m driving, it’s not uncommon that the first time I hear them is when the bike is alongside. They project the engine sound backwards, not forwards. They do not save lives. So we need to look forwards and be ready to change our plans and even take evasive action. And keep a thumb near the horn – it might just stop a driver moving into your path.

When passing stationary traffic on a single carriageway road, where possible move into the opposite carriageway and stay wide – it gives us a better view of emerging and U-turning vehicles. But don’t be tempted to carry too much speed – as we’ve seen, it may be necessary to stop suddenly so watch out for junctions, where pedestrians might cross and only filter past after checking it’s clear. Don’t be tempted to go the wrong side of a solid line on your side of the road or Keep Left islands, it’s an offence and a guaranteed nick if you’re spotted. When confronted with oncoming traffic it’s still possible to filter IF there is sufficient margin, but as we get closer to the vehicles we’re filtering past the speed must come down – could we stop if a door opened? Eventually, when further progress cannot be safely made, we should find a space and move back into the queue. Don’t forget we should never force another vehicle to swerve or slow down – this could count as grounds for a prosecution.

What about filtering on the left? First of all, there is no offence of ‘undertaking’ if you pass the left of slower traffic on single carriageway roads, dual carriageways or motorways. But… like all filtering or lane splitting, if done in a way that inconveniences other road users, specifically forcing them to change speed or direction to avoid us, it can be construed as careless or even dangerous driving, offences which carry points, a fine and even a custodial sentence if dangerous enough.

Legal or not, fltering to the left of a queue is generally riskier for several reasons. The first is because – bar the odd foreign vehicle – the driver is sitting on the far side of the vehicle and is much less likely to see a bike coming up in the passenger side mirror. Keep a good eye out for side turnings and entrances, and watch for vehicles turning left into it. We’re also at risk from oncoming vehicles turning right through stationary or slow-moving queues because we’re blindsided by the vehicles we’re passing. And don’t forget emerging vehicles too – drivers often miss spotting cyclists as well as bikes filtering alongside the pavement because they’re busy looking at the queue of traffic and working out whether someone will let them out. Although some bus lane allow motorcycle access at any time and it’s perfectly legal to use them when not in use – check the sign boards at the beginning of the lane – we’re now passing slower traffic to our right and the same problems apply. It’s not difficult, if there’s a turning to be see or a gap to the right, then look for – and respond to – the turning vehicle. Slow right down, expect NOT to be seen and be prepared to Give Way.

When lane splitting on any dual carriageway including a motorway, we’re always passing to the left of a stream of traffic, so the same mirror issues appear. Where there are three lanes, passing between lane two and lane three (the right-hand lane) is usually the best bet. HGVs are not allowed to use the outside lane so there’s a bit more space, a slightly better view, and you won’t be lane-splitting between two trucks too often. As a rule of thumb, look ahead for gaps in each lane big enough for a vehicle to move into – if there’s a space, someone will aim to take it, and it’s usually the driver on our RIGHT who, because they are usually moving to a slower-moving lane – is least likely to see us approaching in the passenger side mirror. Be particularly careful when lanes move at different speeds. It’s called ‘lane shear’ and drivers will do exactly what we’re doing – try to get to the faster lane to make progress. Be ready for lane swapping to the faster-moving lane. Watch out too near junctions and services. Drivers will generally move left through the lanes to get to an off-ramp, and after we pass the on-ramp, they’ll be moving to the right. And don’t forget, there are junctions where drivers can turn right across a dual carriageway.

Plan as far ahead as possible. Be particularly cautious passing long vehicles. The driver’s view from the cab is often not very good, they need space to turn on bends and at junctions and may swing wide, so hang back till you know what they are doing, and pass when they’ve straightened up. Watch out for buses parked at an angle in a bus stop – if you can’t see the mirror, the driver can’t see you. Make sure you spot left or right turn lanes so you can anticipate turning vehicles. Look for obstructions like traffic islands and bollards, pinchpoints either side of the road, or cyclists – they will all make vehicles change position and possibly ‘squeeze’ our space. Watch the surface for cats-eyes and painted lines, potholes or slippery surfaces which could make braking or steering difficult. Look for lane markings approaching junctions to predict traffic movements, and watch traffic lights to judge the sequence – we may be able to slip to the front whilst they are red, but we may need to look to slip into a gap in the queue so we don’t get stuck against the island when they turn green.

Watch out for legal traps too. Just because you see lots of other riders breaking laws, don’t imagine they all get away with it. Don’t get caught out by cycle lanes bounded by a solid line, and be aware that we’re not supposed to use the advanced cycle stop box at lights. In practice, nearly everyone on a bike uses them, but riders do get nicked – some are monitored by CCTV. Likewise active bus lanes are often monitored too. Passing in a zone marked with a broken line and cross hatching is allowable if “safe and necessary”, but it’s illegal to enter a zone with chevrons and a solid line. Be careful about moving back and forth to the fastest moving lane on a multilane road to make progress in heavy traffic. A traffic cop told me that he was shown a video of a motorcyclist moving at speed from lane to lane on a busy motorway on a training course, and was asked for comments. He thought that the rider was safe enough, although a little closer to some of the cars than he’d like, but that generally he had no problem with what he saw. So he was surprised that the video evidence had been used to prosecute the rider, who’d be found guilty of dangerous driving and handed a ban!

Try to be courteous to other road users, even the ones holding you up. Don’t harass them with rev bombs or drive a centimetre behind with lights on stun. Even if your impatient bahaviour doesn’t trigger an equally aggressive response, it can distract them into making a mistake that puts you at greater risk. Give drivers a chance to see you – a highly-manoeuvrable bike can cut through traffic and really DOES appear from nowhere. Back when I was a courier, the best despatch riders used to move through traffic almost imperceptibly – but they were always there at the head of the queue. And if you’re from a big city, don’t try the same filtering techniques out in the sticks. What works on the Euston Road in London is asking for trouble in a small Scottish town.

If you are not confident you can do it, don’t! And don’t copy other riders if you’re not sure what you’re doing either. You’ve no guarantee they have a clue what they’re doing. If there’s one rule to follow, look for places it’s easy to filter – wide roads, stationary traffic. Avoid it where it’s tricky – narrow lanes, against heavy oncoming traffic. You might see someone else taking a risk, but a little caution, a little extra time on your journey will mean you arrive at your destination by bike rather than at hospital by air ambulance.

Taken cautiously, filtering can be relatively low risk and we can still make good progress by combining excellent observation with careful planning. I spent sixteen years as a courier, and covered half-a-million miles, so I must have filtered tens of thousands of miles through London, and the worst that happened was hitting a taxi driver’s door when he opened it to empty his ashtray just as I was filtering past. His door caught my clutch lever, which broke one of my fingers. But as I point out in my Urban Survival Skills advanced motorcycle courses, filtering isn’t ‘safe’. It’s one of the main killers of riders in big cities, usually because riders become complacent. Nothing ever went wrong before – but it only needs to go wrong once, and we’re in the KSI stats.

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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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18. Staying awake

If anything, this article was another to pick up a riding issue well before it became better known. Drowsiness remains one of the most consistently underestimated risk factors in road safety, particularly among private motorists and motorcyclists, and we can fall asleep anywhere. Prof. Jim Horne’s research was at the time I reported hot off the press, but now there’s a deeper body of evidence backing up his work. The central premise — that sleepiness kills more people than drink-driving — is broadly consistent with the research base then and now, as modern studies continue to show that fatigue is strongly associated with serious and fatal collisions and still under-reported. Yet the cultural blind spot — acknowledging drink-driving risk but dismissing fatigue — is still very real.

02:00–06:00 remains the highest-risk window and the mid-afternoon dip is well established between 13:00–15:00. The observation that riders feel tired well before control degrades, underestimate how badly they are performing, and push on because “we’re nearly there”, is strongly supported by human-factors research. It’s a danger on group rides, and I have experienced it myself, because experienced riders — who often volunteer to lead — often underestimate how tired other riders are, and because nobody wants to be the rider to stop the group. The phenomenon of micro-sleeps remains one of the most misunderstood fatigue mechanisms, and the “long blink” warning is accurate. Caffeine can temporarily improve alertness, but it does not reverse sleep debt. One modern insight worth adding is that fatigue is cumulative and many riders start long journeys already impaired. It strengthens the “planning matters” argument, before the key is turned. We can fall asleep anywhere.

Staying Awake

This article was first written in the early 2000s, and was prompted by research by Professor Jim Horne of Loughborough University’s Sleep Research Centre. His findings indicated that more people are killed on UK roads due to sleepiness than through drinking and driving. Whilst we generally think of monotonous roads such as motorways are as the problem areas, because of the high speeds and serious consequences are often serious, we can fall asleep anywhere. Whilst bus, truck and coach drivers are strictly monitored, drivers and riders are particularly at risk because there are no rules which regulate the amount we can drive or ride. And as a group, motorcyclists seem to be blissfully unaware of the problems.

So why do we have problems staying awake? The obvious one is spending too long on the road at any one time. I discovered it was a particular issue in New Zealand, because towns are far apart and the roads are slow, but clearly if we’re riding from London to Edinburgh, that’s a long way and if we attempt it in one hit, we will get physically tired and sleepy.

Less obvious are the body’s natural biorhythms. We are programmed to fall asleep at certain times. Not surprisingly the highest risk time is between 2am and 6am, but fewer people are aware there is a similar period between 12am and 4pm, which is made worse if you have had a heavy meal or if you are an older driver. Shiftworkers are particularly at risk because their sleep patterns are disrupted.

So first and foremost, we should try to avoid the risk of getting sleepy in the first place. And that means planning a journey to avoid excessive daily mileages. We should also factor in breaks. At least fifteen minutes in every two hours is recommended, but regular longer breaks are a good idea, with a nap as needed when we start to feel sleepy. And avoid heavy meals during breaks and strong coffee or ‘energy’ drinks. The former divert blood to the digestive system away from the brain, and the latter only provide a very limited, short term lift.

So how do we know we’re at risk? We get some early warning. Simulator research shows a driver will often start to feel sleepy around forty minutes before the real problems occur, but typically we try to ride through this stage rather than pull over and take a break, frequently because we’re close to the end of our journey. At the same time, we don’t realise how badly we are riding, even though others often notice. Witnesses to accidents involving a dozing driver often report that the vehicle was being driven erratically before the accident occurred.

As soon as we realise we’re getting tired, we should stop as soon as it is safe. If you are on the motorway, don’t push on to the next service area, pull off at the next exit. Common ‘cures’ such as opening the windows / flipping up the visor, singing to ourselves or turning the stereo up loud don’t seem to work.

The next stage is something called ‘micro-sleep’, where we doze off for a second or two. Ever had that really disconcerting ‘long blink’ when you suddenly discover the truck ahead is no long three or four seconds away but right in front of the wheel? That’s a micro-sleep.

If we start to be concerned about keeping our eyes open, then stop IMMEDIATELY, even on the motorway. The hard shoulder is for emergency use and in my opinion this is an emergency. Although the police might not interpret it that way, if you get off the bike and kick the tyres or something, even a five minute stop should wake you up enough to get safely to the next exit, where you can leave and take a proper break.

It’s likely that tiredness-related problems are at the root of some seemingly-inexplicable group riding crashes. I know that I had a crash on one of my rides that was fatigue-related. The rider had started early because he’d had a long way to ride. I had tried to cover too many miles on the road and hadn’t factored in sufficient breaks. With around forty minutes to the end of the ride, he lost concentration on a bend and went off the road. He was unhurt but the bike was a write-off. So if you’re organising a ride, watch for signs. And if you’re in a group ride and YOU start to feel sleepy, stop the entire group rather than try to push on to avoid inconveniencing everyone else.

And finally, just in case you think you can’t fall asleep on a bike, you can! It happened to me years ago when I was a courier.

It was a hot summer’s day, around 3pm. I’d been riding since about 9am with just a couple of short breaks and had just passed the last exit before a 20 mile stretch of the M26/M25 where there is no exit, when I started to feel really sleepy. I knew I was riding badly, and then I experienced a micro-sleep. I suddenly found myself about five metres behind a truck.

But I carried on. I lifted the visor, started trying to sing myself away, and made the mistake of trying to push on to the next exit because of that rule about not stopping on the hard shoulder.

Bad move… five minutes later I found myself riding diagonally across the hard shoulder, heading for a grass embankment and with the left hand indicator on.

The weird thing was I could remember a little dream of seeing the exit ahead. This time I stopped, got off the bike and took my helmet off, walked around and jumped up and down for a few minutes before getting back on the bike and pulling off at the next exit. I found a stretch of grass beside the road, and had a kip for half an hour. That way, both rider and parcel made it to their destination, just a few minutes late.

I posted this story to a motorcycling group elsewhere. To my surprise, few people took the danger of drowsiness whilst riding at face value and hardly anyone considered it as a real (or even potential) problem.

A scary number came up with a “I get tired but I continue to ride/drive whilst singing/looking around/jumping up and down and that works for me” rationale. One very experienced rider claimed, he could tell non-dangerous tiredness from dangerous tiredness. Yeah, right.

The interesting thing is that the report highlighted that people do not see driving whilst tired as a high risk activity, and here was a group of experienced riders responding in exactly the way the report predicted.

My guess is that what’s happened is that they have driven or ridden many times whilst tired and got away with it. So they dismiss the dangers as negligible, despite solid evidence to the contrary. It’s the same “I can handle it” attitude that drink drivers habitually use to excuse their behaviour, right up to the day they fail to handle it. I guess we need a lot of educating before we believe the dangers of our behaviour.

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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!