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05. Training our ‘Inner Rider’ Part 2

In part one of this mini-series, we took a look at an accident that happened to one of my trainees on her bike test. She had just performed a perfect emergency stop in tricky, damp conditions in front of the examiner when a moment later she locked up the front brake and fell off when a car pulled out in front of her. The question we need to answer is that with all the training we did, why did she revert to instinct and grab the front brake when confronted with a real emergency? My suggestions might surprise you but they have a solid grounding in sports psychology. That’s why the concept has been part of my approach to rider training since 1997.

If you missed Part One, you can find it here.

Training our ‘Inner Rider’ Part 2

My trainee had — in theory — been trained to brake in an emergency. Unfortunately, as the crash demonstrated, she hadn’t. She’d simply been trained to use a hard braking technique. What she hadn’t been trained to cope with was an emergency where hard braking was her ‘get out of trouble’ card. And this is the problem — learning technical skills is only one part of the problem. We have to understand how the brain responds to a threat, and right now, that’s barely covered in rider training at any level.

There’s a simple answer. She had the skill and knowledge to perform a perfectly good emergency stop in a situation she knew and expected, but when the car pulled out it was a novel situation. There was no ‘ritual’ automatic response that involved controlled use of the brakes. The amygdala — sometimes called the brain’s “survival centre” and historically referred to as the “reptilian brain” — detected a threat and took over. It reverted to the most basic collision‑avoidance strategy and triggered the panic grab of the brakes.

In riding terms, a ‘ritual’ is simply a learned motor sequence — like changing gear — that the brain can run automatically without conscious thought when it recognises the right cue. Once learned, the amygdala can trigger these responses instantly when it recognises the right cue — for gear changing, it would be the sound of the engine revving. With just a bit of experience, we don’t need to glance at the rev counter. Quite simply, emergency stop training only teaches the amygdala half the job. It learns how to brake hard, but not when to do it. The ‘cue’ is missing.

So we have to ensure the amygdala learns the essential ‘cue’.

Experience is one possible teacher. After locking the brakes and maybe falling off a few times, we learn to appreciate the risk of personal harm. We learn that staying on the bike hurts less than sliding beside it. Although it isn’t practice in the sense that we consciously know what we were doing, it is still learning by experience. We “burn” an alternative pathway to the instinctive reaction of grabbing the brakes. Even if we’re surprised by the next car that pulls out, the amygdala now has a better ritual pathway than its basic fight‑or‑flight wiring and follows that pathway to make a controlled stop.

Thus we defeat the “brake as hard as possible” instinct by learning to moderate our braking. Been there, done that. It’s still unconscious and unplanned, but it’s no longer instinctive. It shows we do learn by experience and this alternative pathway is what enables us to beat Code’s Survival Reactions that are triggered by the half-trained amygdala.

Let’s think about my test candidate again. The cue for her emergency stop in front of the examiner was the visual “hand up” signal. We’d trained her amygdala to run through the correct ritual response: shut throttle, gently apply the front, gently apply the rear, progressively squeeze the front, clutch in, foot down.

But when the real emergency developed, the cue was missing. We hadn’t taught her to link the emergency stop ritual to the trigger of an emerging car. When the car threatened her space, she was taken by surprise. Her amygdala wasn’t programmed to use the emergency stop ritual in this event, so it fell back on its primitive job — instinctive avoidance of harm via fight‑or‑flight — and she grabbed the front brake.

OK, you’ve probably spotted the problem. How do we train ourselves to deal with emergencies without experiencing them — which implies we have to survive the emergency? As I said, after a few front‑wheel lock‑ups, I personally learned not to grab the brakes as the in-built primitive pathways get overwritten my new learned behaviour. But learning by crashing really isn’t an ideal way to learn. It’s painful, expensive and occasionally termina.

Sports psychology shows the way forward. Sportspeople often have to compete in situations they can’t practise in. Tennis players and golfers spend their lives playing in front of a few dozen people, so appearing at Wimbledon or the Open triggers stress and fear of failure. Their performance collapses — a phenomenon known as choking. Their carefully learned techniques go out the window. So they use visualisation to overcome the problem.

At its most basic, visualisation means sitting back and mentally running through the steps needed to deal with the anticipated situation. The brain can be fooled into believing this is “real” experience and burns new pathways that avoid choking and instinctive reactions. The more vivid the visualisation, the more effective the training.

And that’s how we can learn to deal with situations we’ve not yet experienced and can’t practise realistically. We can use the same technique as golfers and tennis players imagining the winning shot to fool our amygdala into thinking “I’ve been here before and I know what to do” when a car really does pull out. That’s how we avoid survival reactions taking over.

And here’s something else — why wait until the car is pulling out? Why not teach ourselves to react to the tell‑tale signs of a junction — road signs, breaks in hedgerows, white paint at the roadside? Why not get into the habit of covering the brakes and horn when we first see the car? This way, rather than waiting for the car beginning to move, we use the sight of the car as the cue that trigger a proactive response.

The more tasks we routinely leave to the amygdala, the more attention we have left for everything else. Just as a competent rider isn’t consciously changing gear, a really good rider lets the amygdala hunt for hazards too.

If visualisation techniques had been combined with real emergency stop training, my trainee would have had a far better chance of reacting appropriately to the first real emergency she faced. Visualisation would have allowed her mind to connect the practical skills she’d learned through repetition with the real‑world trigger.

Unfortunately, visualisation is still missing from rider training at all levels.

 

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04. Training our ‘Inner Rider’ Part 1 

Training our ‘Inner Rider’ Part 1

I’m no longer involved in basic training, but this particular incident was a powerful lesson in the weakness of ‘skills training’. There’s a seductive simplicity to “teach the technique, practise the technique, repeat the technique, use the technique”. But when we look at real‑world crashes, real‑world behaviour, and real‑world human limitations, the weaknesses of skills‑only training become obvious.

Here’s the core truth; skills-only training improves what riders can do, but not what they choose to do. And that gap is where most crashes happen. Skills don’t change how we see the world. We can only react to what we notice. If we don’t spot the developing hazard, misinterpret what we see, or focus on the wrong thing, it’s easy to get mentally overloaded and either freeze under pressure (research indicates that it’s surprisingly common that riders simply don’t brake mid-emergency in which case the skill never gets used, or the skill breaks down under extreme pressure.

Skills-only training assumes the rider will recognise the moment to apply the skill. In reality, many riders don’t. That’s why modern bikes all have ABS and collision-avoidance radar is starting to appear.

And it was no coincidence that I called my post-test training school ‘Survival Skills, either. We need mental skills to ride too.

Training our ‘Inner Rider’ Part 1 

Some years ago, I was waiting for a candidate to come back from the Direct Access motorcycle test when the examiner turned up early minus the trainee. That’s normally a sign the trainee’s lost the examiner (it happens), the bike’s broken down (occasionally), or the bike’s been dropped and is too damaged to ride (not uncommon during the old on-road U turn – the brake or clutch levers can snap off).

In this case, he told me that she’d dropped the bike.

Naturally, I asked what had happened and if she was ok. He told me that she’d just been passing a parked car when a car had pulled out from a side turning just ahead of her, crossed close in front of her and accelerated away at high speed. She’d been forced to brake, and in doing so she’d locked the front wheel on the wet road and fallen off.

Fortunately, he continued, she was only bruised and the bike had only suffered a few additional dents and scrapes, but needed a new brake lever.

He continued: “She was a bit surprised when the car pulled out and had to brake hard on a damp surface, but the odd thing is we’d just done the emergency stop a couple of minutes earlier, and she did a perfect one”.

And that got me thinking.

Performing a good emergency stop for the examiner didn’t surprise me one iota. By the time my candidate got to the test, she had probably performed forty or fifty emergency stops back at the training school, we’d also soaked the pad for some of those, and just before her test, we’d carried out several more on a real road in the wet conditions she was just about to experience in front of the examiner.

So when I heard that she’d managed a perfect stop to the examiner’s signal, I wasn’t in the least surprised. She’d had all the training she needed to demonstrate to the examiner that she could perform them to a good standard, which is exactly what happened when the examiner got her to perform one.

But she fell off in a real-life emergency, the exact circumstance that her training was supposed to have equipped her to cope with. Why? Why couldn’t she use the skills she’d been trained to use when she REALLY needed them?

It was a puzzle for the examiner, but I have to say I wasn’t entirely surprised. After all, in pre-ABS days, riders fell off under hard braking quite regularly, even though the emergency stop has been a feature of the bike test for decades and rider training has covered effective emergency braking since the 1980s.

Let’s look at the training she’d received first.

She would have been introduced to basic braking technique and emergency stops on CBT, working up from very gentle, very slow ‘glides’ to a halt to more positive stops. Finally, she would have performed one on the road somewhere well out of the way of traffic. I’ve already mentioned how I’d covered emergency stops again on her DAS course, both in theory and in practice.

So, she should have been able to stop safely when the car pulled out, right?

Wrong.

Let’s have a look at the other factor; how the mind functions. And we’ll do that by asking another question: “what signal had she been trained to react to?”

The answer is that she had been trained to react to the sight of a person standing off to one side and signalling her to brake by raising a hand. She was looking for the examiner to signal her to stop, and when he raised his hand, it came as no surprise and she was confident in her control. That’s because we’d been practising them for days and she knew just what would happen and what to do, and in consequence performed a perfect emergency stop.

And now you should see the problem. Just like all the other tens of thousands of riders who take basic training and get a motorcycle licence each year — and the other million-plus riders on the UK’s roads — she hadn’t actually been trained to react to a real emergency. She had been trained to react using the right technique but to respond to the wrong stimulus.

I hear you ask: “surely you would have told her that cars will pull out in front of her and that’s why she was practicing emergency stops?” Of course we had, we’d talked about the situations in which she might need an emergency stop — I even had a playmat with roads on it, where I’d set up the classic SMIDSY at a junction.

I’m pretty sure that every other instructor of every other rider who’s fallen off in similar circumstances would have done the same. And of course, the DVSA’s books about safe riding covers the need for good emergency braking. But talking theory remains poor preparation for recognising that a real emergency is developing.

So, when the car pulled out mid-test, it simply didn’t trigger the mental response that would have led to the same ‘settle — squeeze — ease’ technique that stopped her briskly as she responded to the examiner. She had the skills training. But her brain training let her down.

Mid-emergency where harm threatens, we simply don’t have time to run through a logical thought process that:

1. starts with “oh look, that car’s beginning to pull out” 
2. reminds us that “ah yes, that’s why I did emergency stop practice”
3. ends with “let’s apply the brakes, smoothly, progressively and powerfully whilst compensating for the wet surface”

Skills training without cognitive stimulus training fails under real time pressure. As Keith Code explained in his ‘Twist of the Wrist’ books where he talked about ‘Survival Reactions’, in emergencies we revert to instinct. And instinct is often to grab a big handful. That’s why we still lock up the brakes in emergencies despite how we were trained.

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03. Evasion or Avoidance? Successful strategies for any rider

03. Evasion or Avoidance? Successful strategies for any rider

This is another article that dates back to the noughties. And it’s another article that needs no update.

Evasion or Avoidance? Successful strategies for any rider

Following a Google (as you do), I came across a statement where the writer identified a fundamental difference in mind-set between police training in the UK and the United States. He said: “Over there they teach evasion techniques; that is what to do when you meet an accident (or more correctly, crash) situation. Over here if you have gone that far you have got it seriously wrong in the first place.” I have to comment on that! Keeping out of trouble is a great idea but from day one when we first let ourselves loose on the roads, we’re trying to avoid situations where we put ourselves at risk of a crash or a collision. That’s not an advanced concept, it’s basic survival! All advanced training in hazard avoidance does is make us better at seeing those situations and staying out of them; it’s not in itself a concept unique to advanced drivers and riders! But if we’re honest, however ‘advanced’ we get at reading the road ahead, sooner or later we’ll still make a mistake, and at that point evasion tactics are our key to escaping from the situation that’s developing badly. In the course of my research, I’ve had quite a lot of dealing with MSF instructors and the coursework that they teach, and have been favourably impressed by the evasion tactics in their work and as explained by US writers like David Hough. Many accident reports highlight the fact that the bike could have escaped IF the rider had used the right inputs at the right time, yet the very latest UK Driving Standards Agency advice on bend crashes in the UK simply repeats the sage advice “don’t go into a bend too fast”. Aside from the obvious question about how do we know it’s too fast until it’s obvious, it’s not much practical help to the rider who’s already committed the error is it? The inescapable conclusion has to be that neither the “don’t get into trouble” nor the “let’s learn to get out of trouble” approaches are in themselves wrong; but that each, if practiced to the exclusion of the other, is inadequate alone.

 

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02. Must, Should, Could know – the hierarchy of learning

02. Must, Should, Could know – the hierarchy of learning

I often hear riders saying to the less-experienced:

“Just go riding. Do some miles and you’ll get better.”

It sounds good in theory, but in reality there’s a huge problem – what if we don’t really know WHAT we need to be better at? What if we don’t know HOW to improve? And even more importantly in some way, WHY should we be aiming to improve and how do we know we NEED to improve?

How is simply piling on miles going to us improve our riding?

Simply going riding won’t automatically improve skills, particularly if we’re ‘practicing’ the wrong stuff. Experienced riders often forget their own learning experience was sometimes painful for that very reason.

So here are some thoughts of mine that will help you see where to focus your efforts going forward, and to better understand the content of these riding tips.

Let’s start with what we know. ‘Must Know, Should Know, Nice to Know’. There are various versions of this ‘triple tier of knowledge’ around. My former instructor buddy Malcolm Palmer used ‘Must Know, Need to Know, Nice to Know’ to define the necessary levels of our biking knowledge.

These are roughly aligned with ‘novice’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ riding standards.

‘Must Know’ encompasses the absolute basics every motorcyclist needs to grasp before even turning the key. These are the non‐negotiable skills, concepts and knowledge that form the bedrock of riding, and they are what we learn at beginner level. Examples include an understanding of the function and the need for a correct fit of a safety helmet, knowing the rules on licences and insurance, being aware of the rules of the road (the basics are in the Highway Code here in the UK) and how to apply them, being capable of using the clutch to move off and change gear, and knowing what to do when we get to a ‘Give Way’ junction.  

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Working out what ‘we know’ allows us to define just what it is that we ‘don’t know’ and arguably this is actually more important because it’s much more difficult to become aware of knowledge and skills gaps, at least not until something goes wrong and we realise we weren’t prepared.

This is where the downloads will help you. The ‘Advanced Riding in 500 words’ guide defines what advanced riding is, then the other two help you work out just where you personally sit on the scale of personal development.

As experienced riders, going ‘back to basics’ may sound unnecessary, but it can remind us of sound practices that may have slipped to the backs of our minds over time, and nudge us to do something to correct any bad habits we’ve slipped into.

As developing riders, we might re-discover something that slipped through during our training, something we might have forgotten in the flurry of learning

And at any stage of development, returning to PRACTICE the basics not only reinforces what we learned by using repetition to turn good riding practices into habits – practice makes permanent.

Just print the form off, have a good think about your riding and mark your riding from inside to out for each category. If you’re honest, and don’t overrate your abilities, then the chart will help you identify weak areas where you need to work.

So, what if you do find a weak area?

Have a think about how you’re going to fix it. Read around the topic, watch videos, ask questions. Think about getting some professional help – I’m happy to answer questions about riding without obligation by email, and if you need a more in-depth response, I offer one-hour online coaching sessions which can be run for anyone, anywhere in the world.

If you need on-road coaching, and you have a specific issue, then I’d always recommend a personal riding coach because they will work to to identify YOUR weaknesses and offer a PERSONALISED programme to fix them. Groups like the IAM have a different role – to get you up to their standard of riding so you can pass their test. RoSPA is a bit more personalised but the benchmark your riding is measure against still their own test standard.

Survival Skills offers personalised on-road training and on-line coaching . And don’t forget my re-launched e-course too. They all aim to interact with you as an individual.

Start riding with Survival Skills Riding Tips today and turn every mile into an opportunity for growth and safety. Absolutely free.

 

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01. Rider Competence: Who’s Truly Ready for the Road?

I’ve been directly involved in rider training for just over three decades as I write. Even before that, I was writing about riding technique, based on what I’d personally learned via the usual mix of theory from books like ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’, and how I had interpreted what I’d read in those books via my own experience as a motorcycle courier, a job I enjoyed for sixteen years. And I was doing a bit of informal coaching with a university bike club too. It was that role that pushed me towards getting some formal qualifications. This article explores the question of rider competence and how to judge it.

As I write this short note, the UK government is holding consultations on reforming rider training. Whether anything will happen, who knows? If it does, I’ll update this particular article.

Rider Competence: Who’s Truly Ready for the Road?

Back in 1995, I was just starting out on my journey to become a qualified rider coach by starting at the bottom – as a CBT instructor. Along with three other novice instructors, I took a very intensive and thorough training course with CSM – at that time the biggest rider training school in the country. The course was very hard work, and as I was to discover over the next couple of years, an excellent foundation for working with riders at all levels – I learned more about teaching in six days than I had in six months on a post-grad education course.

But at the end I still didn’t have an answer to a crucial question:

“How do you know if a trainee rider is at an adequate standard to issue a CBT certificate?”

Rider Competence and CBT

So I asked our trainer. Here was his answer:

“Is he or she likely to kill themselves as soon as they ride out of the training school gate? If yes, then they’re not at the CBT standard. If no, then give them the certificate.”

That was pretty brutal but it answered the question. If the rider could cope out on the road, being aware of the most likely hazards and having the necessary skills to change speed and direction to negotiate those threats, then that was good enough. Scary, really. It certainly doesn’t demonstrate rider competence.

And that brings me to a question that anyone involved in coaching riders, whether directly via a training course, or even when writing articles online:

“Rider competence – what is it, what level should it be set at, and who qualifies as competent?”

Rider Competence – who qualifies?

Here’s my answer.

Competency is about being to move beyond rigid context-free rules. My favourite example of a rigid routine that is often followed without thinking about WHY we’re applying it is the basic routine taught to all new drivers (*) in the UK:

‘Mirror – Signal – Manoeuvre’.

Condensed to MSM to help us remember, it’s all too often followed by “oops!”

It’s taught to new riders too – just substitute ‘Observation’ for Mirror and you have the OSM routine.

Using mirrors and indicators competently requires us to understand the limitations of mirrors and why a blind spot check may be needed, how our signals will be interpreted by other road uses and why it’s still necessary to double-check all the way through the manoeuvre to ensure that it’s still going the way we planned it.

This is one measure of competence – being able to assign importance to particular activities and events, and thus being able to prioritise our responses to situations by analysing what matters most, rather than following a routine we learned by rote.

CBT routes are carefully chosen to take the new riders around a range of hazards, but at the end of the two hour road ride, the trainees have only learned ‘by rote’ routines for a very limited number of traffic situations. And of course, the instructor is there all the time at the end of the radio link, ready to stop in with help and advice at any moment.

Learning by rote doesn’t allow for thinking application, and learner riders straight out of CBT may not even remember the OSM routine at the end of the long day. So, if you ask me, a rider straight out of CBT definitely isn’t about to demonstrate rider competence – far from it. CBT really doesn’t equip a new rider to cope with the roads. It offers the barest selection of survival tools. And that’s why the DVSA always intended CBT to be the lead-in to training for the full motorcycle test.

But what about riders who’ve passed that full bike test?

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Rider Competence and the DVSA bike test

One thing I’ve heard many times is that trainees carry their trainer’s voice in their heads, sometimes for years after taking the UK motorcycle test, but out their on the road in front of the examiner, there’s a crucial difference when compared with CBT.

Candidates have to make their own decisions.

They don’t have the comfort zone of their instructor and the radio link to keep them out of trouble, though the examiner will step in when there’s clear danger, though of course that’s an instant test fail.

And since on test a candidate can end up anywhere, those riders cannot apply fixed rules – they have to be able to use their knowledge to solve problems. They may need to negotiate an unfamiliar roundabout or junction by using reason and analogy, thus applying what they already know to a novel situation.

This ability to move beyond rules and and rote learning, and to apply what’s already known flexibly to new challenges is the first of our measures of competence.

This is exactly why practice must be structured — something I explore in my piece on the Salami Principle and why practice makes permanent.

So by this measure, I’d say that a rider who passes the bike test – or at least, passes it without racking up a dozen minor faults – qualifies as competent. Since riders who manage a test pass must have managed to ride the test route without putting themselves at risk, I’d say most riders with a full licence are by these measures competent. Not necessarily ‘proficient’,  note, and definitely not ‘expert’. But most are competent enough to deal with the the majority of the challenges they will encounter on the roads in the next year or two…

…with one major proviso. The DVSA test creates rider competence within the context of the riding environment they are tested in. And given the limitation of the the basic DVSA motorcycle test, that’s urban riding with a bit of country road and dual carriageway thrown in. The test simply isn’t in-depth enough to cover much ground physically – the candidate is on the bike for not much more than half-an-hour. Thirty minutes doesn’t allow for much riding outside town centres so basic training rarely covers cornering or single carriageway overtaking, for the simple reason neither are likely to be severely tested on the DVSA test.

In reality, both of which are actually pretty essential skills. Nor do most learners get to tackle heavy city-centre congestion or mountain roads. And none ever ride on motorways. So by these measures, whilst a newly-qualified rider should be capable of coping with standard town traffic, they would not likely be competent in all areas.

I’ve written elsewhere about how cognitive load and fatigue limit learning — see my article on how far is too far for a training day.

What about riders who’ve taken post-test training, maybe gaining an advanced riding qualification along the way?

Rider Competence and post-test training

Well, even with their gong, some riders continue to dodge big cities. Others still avoid motorways. Many actively stay away from narrow country roads. Many a time I’ve been told “I don’t enjoy riding in those conditions so I avoid them”. We may not enjoy all riding environments, but when there are places we actively avoid, then we can’t claim to be fully competent either, regardless of having demonstrated an ‘advanced’ level of riding skills on test.

There’s also a mental element to rider competence which I believe is very much ignored at both basic and post-test level, And that’s the acceptance of responsibility for our choices.

And that starts with understand that we actually MADE choices and that we weren’t forced into a course of action by unavoidable circumstances. A driver didn’t pull out on us “from nowhere” – the car came from somewhere. The bend didn’t “tighten up on us” – we didn’t read it correctly. Most dangerously of all, if an overtake goes wrong, it wasn’t “the driver’s fault for not checking his mirrors”, it was our responsibility not to put ourselves into the position where we could end up in difficulties. In short, if we’re still blaming other road users when we end up in a potentially-dangerous situation, then we’re not demonstrating competence either.

So here’s what I do when I’m training; I apply a cascade of questions:

1. did we arrive in one piece at the end of the journey? If we didn’t then we’re obviously not competent. If we did, we can move to the next question…

2. did we force other road users to change speed or direction to avoid us? If we did, then it’s the actions of others keeping us safe on the road, not our own riding behaviour – we’re still not competent.

3. did we scare ourselves and have to take serious evasive action along the way? If we did, then clearly there was an element of luck involved in keeping us out of trouble, and we’re not competent yet. If we got there with no frights, then the next question…

4. did we arrive by gliding around other road users without impacting their choices, did we arrive without any sudden scares or evasive manoeuvres on our part? If we did, then it’s likely we are competent enough.

If you want to check your own riding for competence, you can try answering  these questions based on your own riding. But naturally, those answers lead to another series of questions. What are the skills and knowledge that are absolutely NECESSARY for a rider to know and to be able to perform to reach competency? What SHOULD a rider know? And what’s just NICE – the superficial gloss which looks good but doesn’t actually add any particular value to our riding? Next time, I’ll try to answer that.

Final point. We are unlikely to be competent at every area of riding. But the more areas we can tick off, the safer we’re likely to be out on the roads.