Tag: behaviour

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85. How easy is instructing?

Much of the discussion around rider training focuses on what we teach — braking, steering, throttle control, positioning — and far less on how that teaching is delivered or questioned. In earlier articles, I’ve argued that riding skill is unlocked not by technique alone, but by understanding when, where and why those techniques should be applied. The same principle applies just as strongly to instructors. If training is to improve outcomes rather than simply tick boxes, we need to examine not only how riders learn, but how trainers themselves continue to develop, reflect and challenge established practice.

How easy is instructing?

Riding — and teaching riding — is arguably the most dangerous activity most of us will routinely undertake. And yet, all too often, training is delivered and received in a surprisingly blasé fashion. I’ve already touched on the dangers of rote learning at basic level, but the problem doesn’t stop there. Even at advanced level, relatively few trainees are actively encouraged to question what they are being taught. Post-test skills are commonly delivered — and accepted — on trust.

That is not, in itself, a criticism of instructors’ enthusiasm or commitment. Most instructors care deeply about their trainees and take pride in their role. However, comparatively few spend much time reflecting on what they might learn in order to become better trainers. There are, of course, notable exceptions. I have worked alongside some excellent instructors who had clearly gone well beyond the minimum, and others who were actively trying to improve. Organisations such as the IAM have also recognised this and put systems in place to raise observer standards.

At basic training level, however, the picture is less encouraging. I have long been surprised that many CBT schools invest so little time and effort in developing their instructors once they are qualified. Even allowing for the commercial realities — the pressure to move candidates efficiently from CBT to test — better training would pay dividends, not least in reduced retests, fewer problems downstream, and safer, more confident riders. One frequently cited concern is that a well-developed instructor will “jump ship” and set up their own school. That may happen occasionally, but it is a poor justification for accepting stagnation as the norm.

Part of the problem is structural. Ours is a largely solitary profession. Once past the initial training stage, even in larger schools, instructors rarely observe one another teaching. There is little cross-fertilisation of ideas, limited challenge, and few incentives to reflect critically on established practice. The results are easy to spot: instructors still insisting that trainees look over their shoulder before signalling — a habit the DSA dropped back in 1997 with the introduction of Direct Access — or basic trainers still following long-defunct CSM manuals, often third- or fourth-hand copies of material from an organisation that ceased trading in the early 2000s.

Another factor may lie in the DVSA’s own approach to check tests. For many basic trainers, these are viewed with genuine trepidation. The reason is simple: check tests are almost always experienced as critical rather than developmental. Innovation is rarely encouraged, and deviation from a narrow interpretation of “the approved way” is often discouraged. Faced with that, it is hardly surprising that instructors play safe, stick rigidly to familiar routines, and avoid experimentation or reflective practice.

Finally, there is a cultural issue. Motorcycling has always traded heavily on ideas of freedom and independence, and that can sit uneasily alongside professionalism in training. Riders’ rights groups have often opposed further training requirements as restrictive or unnecessary. Against that backdrop, it can be difficult to persuade riders that better training brings genuine benefits. And yet the evidence is there: the introduction of structured basic training, and particularly Direct Access, has significantly broadened the appeal of motorcycling — not least by encouraging far more women to take it up.

If training is to move forward, we need to accept an uncomfortable truth. Teaching riding is not just about transferring techniques. It is about developing judgement, decision-making and understanding — in trainees and instructors alike. Without a culture that values questioning, reflection and continuous improvement, training risks becoming little more than a production line, delivering certificates rather than competence.

If there is a single thread running through all of this, it is that good training is never static. Riding is a complex, high-risk activity carried out in an unpredictable environment, and it demands more than the mechanical repetition of drills. The same is true of teaching it. An instructor who simply delivers a syllabus without questioning its purpose, relevance or application is no better placed than a rider who can operate the controls but does not understand the risks they are managing.

Professionalism in rider training should not be seen as restrictive, bureaucratic or contrary to the spirit of motorcycling. On the contrary, it is what allows riders greater freedom — freedom from fear, from uncertainty, and from avoidable mistakes. Encouraging instructors to reflect, to learn from one another, and to keep their knowledge current is not an optional extra; it is a safety intervention.

Ultimately, better-trained instructors create better-thinking riders. And better-thinking riders are not just more skilful — they are better equipped to survive in the real world, where judgment matters far more than any single technique ever could.

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83. Using goals to defeat anxiety

The longer I’ve been involved in rider training, the more I have come to realise that a focus on the purely mechanical side of riding (the use of the brakes, the throttle, the gears, balance and steering etc) is more or less useless without a full understanding of how, where, when and why those skills should be used. In short, mechanical skills determine what a rider can do but mental skills determine what a rider will do — and whether they do it at the right time, for the right reason, in the right place. This thinking aligns with the use of outcome, performance and process goals from sports psychology and contemporary thinking on workload management, stress and attentional control. We just need to make it mainstream in riding and driving.

Using goals to defeat anxiety

Some time ago, a rider came online and posted a tale of woe about his regular commute. It was, it seemed, all going horribly wrong. After a couple of years of relatively trouble-free riding, he been badly scared by some near misses in the past few weeks and was seriously thinking of giving up biking altogether as “too dangerous”.

OK, so let’s ask a question. Is riding really dangerous? Well, if we simply look at the comparative figures for different modes of transport then riding a motorcycle is around 30 to 40 times more likely to end in a fatal crash than if we drive a car over the same distance.

However, in terms of how likely we are on an individual basis to be killed, then the risk is actually pretty low. For the last few years, the annual number of fatalities has hovered between 300 and 350. Still too many but given there are anything between one and two million active powered two-wheeler riders, the risk’s not that extreme. A bit of perspective always helps when it comes to risk.

But even so, it’s a good idea to tilt the odds somewhat to our side, and we can do that in a number of ways. Once more, I’m going to dip into Sports Psychology by talking about outcome goals, performance goals and process goals.

Our overall ‘outcome goal’ represents the big picture and in this case it’s to get to work and to return home again. Our ‘performance goal’ is how we’re going to achieve that and we might say it’s to maintain situational awareness and an effective risk management strategy over the whole of the ride. But how do we reach our performance goal? How do we break our journey down into manageable, bite-sized chunks?

Think about a batsman in cricket. His outcome goal is probably to help his team post a big score, and his performance goal might be to make one hundred runs. But stood at the crease when the bowling is good and it’s hard to stay in, let alone score runs, that goal’s a long way off. It’s easy for it to see impossibly far off, rather like getting home safely seemed to the worried rider.

How would the batsman cope with the pressure. One way is to set PROCESS GOALS. These are the small steps via interim goals we take to move step-by-step towards our performance and outcome goals. The batsman might decide first of all to survive until the first bowling change which brings on a weaker bowler. Having achieved that, he might decide that he will aim to stay put for the first ten overs. And having made it that far he might start to aim to score ten runs as his next goal. Then another ten. Then ten more. (If I’d known about this technique myself, my-best ever batting score in quite a few years of playing cricket might have exceeded 19!)

So how can we transfer that to riding? Well, if we’re on a regular ride which is getting on top of us, we can break it down into sections. Reaching the first major junction. Getting out of the 30 limit. Reaching the motorway. Getting off the motorway again. Negotiating the rural roads to get home. Whatever represents your own journey.

The important points are that process goals are entirely under our control and they break down a task that might appear overwhelming when view in toto, into smaller and much more achievable chunks where we can focus on specific aspects of each task – maybe negotiating a busy cross roads, dealing with a known slippery corner, finding our way around a complex roundabout. At each stage, we mentally reboot for the next section of the journey.

Viewed one at a time as individual tasks, an overwhelming outcome goal suddenly seem much more achievable.

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82. Input, Processing & Output – the necessary steps within a ‘system’

A riding system exists to support decision-making, and is worth nothing without that understanding. It’s also worth pointing out that IPSGA, the Police System, is heavily weighted toward outputs which can lead some misunderstandings about where the effort should be placed. This is another article which expanded out of my investigations into ‘Spidey Sense’.

Input, Processing & Output – the necessary steps within a ‘system’

Exactly what IS a ‘riding system’? How does it work, and what is it meant to achieve? Those are sound questions because only by answering them will a riding system be an effective tool.

In short, it helps us link our answer to the “What IF…?” question we asked about what we observed to “…then THIS” response that explains what we’re going to do about it. So a system consists of three sequential phases:

INPUT
PROCESSING
OUTPUT

That’s all a riding system is; to be able to use one is not the goal in itself, since a riding system – ANY system – is only there to help us enhance our situational awareness and make better and more reliable proactive decisions to the events developing around us.

If you think about that for a moment, you may already have spotted the weakness in the Police System – ‘Information Position Speed Gear Acceleration’. Position, speed, gear and acceleration are all outputs. The equally important components of the system, the INPUT and PROCESSING stages, are all compressed into ‘information’.

By structuring the system so that it culminates in Position, Speed, Gear and Acceleration, there’s a real risk users end up placing too much emphasis on the importance of those outputs, with a consequent under-emphasis on the importance of the input “gathering information” and processing stages, and that’s likely to result in a flawed result. In computer programming terms, “garbage in, garbage out”. Our riding plan may be worth nothing if our choice is based on incomplete inputs or faulty processing.

Moreover, with IPSGA implicitly biasing riders toward action — particularly visible or measurable action — it subtly presupposes that evaluation must result in a physical intervention. That’s not surprising since the original police ‘seven point’ system from the old Blue Book version of Motorcycle Roadcraft showed how to use it to make left and right turns. Indeed, my own belief is that IPSGA was primarily designed as an ASSESSMENT tool first and foremost, to allow instructors to check whether their trainees were doing what they were supposed to do.

The fact is, a physical intervention is not always the best — or even a necessary — outcome. Two important points:

First, doing nothing can be a deliberate, skilled output. Choosing to hold speed, maintain position, keep a neutral throttle and simply observe is not a failure of decision-making; it is often the result of good evaluation. In uncertain or ambiguous situations, the safest and most information-rich response may be to delay commitment, increase vigilance, and allow the situation to resolve itself. That is still execution — just not a mechanical one.

Second, evaluation is often about buying time, not spending it. Many hazards do not demand immediate control inputs. They demand attention, patience and monitoring. For example, a vehicle edging at a junction, a pedestrian near the kerb, or an oncoming driver whose intentions are unclear may all trigger a “Spidey Sense” response — but the correct execution may simply be “watch closely, cover the controls, and wait”. This aligns perfectly with the “What if…? Then this…!” model, where the “Then this…” can legitimately be “no change yet”.

It’s important to see that the output phase of any plan can be defined as any conscious decision, including:

  • holding a stable plan,

  • maintaining space and options,

  • or deliberately postponing action until more information is available.

Whether we follow IPSGA, SEE or any other system, it’s important to realise that the goal of a riding system is not always movement, but only ever an appropriate response — and sometimes the most appropriate response is simply to keep watching and let the picture develop.

The information stage of IPSGA is sometimes divided into three sub-stages which are ‘Take’, ‘Use’ and ‘Give’, with the information element ‘stretched’ over the PSGA outputs to imply that new information is available at all times, and that plans need to remain flexible. Structurally, it’s all become a bit of a mess.

That’s why I personally prefer and teach the US Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s SEARCH EVALUATE EXECUTE approach. The three stages match the input – processing – output structure of a system far more exactly, and they can be applied cyclically; we collect information, we consider it and form a plan, we go ahead and carry it out, and then we check the results to see if they are working or if the situation calls for a revised plan.

In particular, the EVALUATE stage matches the “What if…?” “Then this…!” question and answer I talked about in the last article. We use what we see (or hear or smell or even feel) to provide the input which the “What if…?” “Then this…!” routine then processes. Only when we have the “Then this…!” answer in our head can we actually make a decision about position, speed, gear and acceleration.

Finally, here’s something else to consider – if we’re more concerned with demonstrating that we know how to use a plan – by showing off our ‘position, speed, gear and acceleration’ – then the routine has become more important than outcome. Systems are there to serve us, not to control us.

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81. Developing “What IF…?” “…then THIS!” routines

Seeing a potential hazard is only the first step. To ride safely, we must pre-plan our response and rehearse it until it becomes automatic. The brain works best when it recognises patterns and has a ready-made response, allowing split-second reactions without freezing or overthinking, and dramatically reducing the risk of panic-driven mistakes. It’s not enough to notice danger; we must know exactly what to do, and have practised doing it, particularly when under stress when decision-making speed slows and cognitive load spikes. This is supported by research into dual-task interference and real-time hazard response. Cognitive psychology research supports this principle: hazard perception without a prepared response has limited protective value. This threat-response model explains why experienced riders consistently outperform novices; it’s not because they “see more” but because they know what to do when they see it. However, while planning responses is essential, riders must retain flexibility. Hazards rarely present identically each time.

This is another article that developed from my original ‘Spidy Sense’ tip, as I investigated how we respond to hazards and was incorporated into my paperback MIND over MOTORCYCLE, which you can purchase at http://lulu.com/spotlight/SurvivalSkills.

Developing “What IF…?” “…then THIS!” routines

A fundamental part of the Survival Skills approach to riding is to develop an understanding of the risks of riding, and having a strategy to manage those risks. And an essential part of the approach is to have those strategies in mind when we detect a hazard. Here’s what I mean. Asking the “What if…?” question is a good start because we’re making some educated guesses about what will happen next.

But here’s the problem.

If we ask the “What if… the driver pulls out anyway?” question, we need to follow it up with an answer. Why? Because when things start to happen, it’s almost certainly too late to figure out the correct course of action. The situation changes very rapidly when we’re riding and we’ll almost certainly succumb to SURPRISE! and set off all the unwanted ‘Survival Reactions’ that Keith Code has talked about. We’ll freeze or we’ll panic. We need to know how we’re going to deal with the problem BEFORE we actually have to take emergency action.

I’ve talked about how we can apply sports psychology techniques to riding and this is another place they work. We need something akin to a ‘pre-shot routine’. A golf course, for example, is designed to set traps for the golfer. Bunkers are full of sand, greens slope, and the ball can vanish into water hazards and long grass. There are two ways to play hazards. We can try to get out of trouble after things go wrong. Or we can make pro-active compromises to the ideal shot that gives us the best chance of avoiding the obstacles.

That’s not too different from the road if we consider the road to be full of traps too. We too need a routine that applies a pro-active response to the next hazard once we’re aware of it. And here’s how. Asking the “What if…?” question is good, but we need to follow it with a statement about how we’ll then proceed; we extend the “What if…?” question to include a “Then this…!” answer.

Here’s a very simple example. We see a car waiting ahead of us, indicating and clearly ready to turn right into a side road on our nearside. “What if… the driver doesn’t see us and pulls across our path?”

It’s almost certainly too late to figure out the correct course of action if we wait until the car starts to move. Even if we have time (unlikely) we’ll almost certainly succumb to SURPRISE! and all the unwanted Survival Reactions that Keith Code has talked about. We need real answers in our heads, ready to apply to the problem BEFORE we actually have to take emergency action. Seeing a car about to turn across our path at a junction should trigger a veritable cascade of possible defensive responses – mirrors, reduction in speed, possibly a change of position, use of the lights and / or horn, preparing for a possible emergency stop, or getting ready for a swerve if we can see an escape route. Even, finally, if a collision is inevitable, Malcolm Palmer’s version of an ejector seat, the ‘jump’ routine.

Each and every one is a possible “Then this…!” response to the “What if… the car turns across me?” question. But none of them will be in the front of our minds unless we already understand that they are possible responses.

Here’s another example. Having seen a bend, “What if… it tightens up out of sight?” “Then this… we check mirrors because we may need to change speed or position, perhaps select a lower gear, ensure we don’t turn-in too early, and maybe even slow down mid-corner so we don’t run wide”. But if we’re to avoid a nasty SURPRISE! we have to be aware of our options and have them in our minds as we approach the corner.

In many cases the “What if…?” trigger event is a ‘visual cue’. We can use the colour and shape of road signs (which is why they are different shapes and colours), the presence or absence of vehicles in a junction or even the fact that we have a view or there’s a ‘vision blocker’ obscuring our line-of-sight. A hazard warning sign should trigger us to check mirrors and consider slowing down, whilst scanning harder for the specific hazard we’re being warned about. A vision blocker might prompt a change of speed and position, and readiness for an emergency stop.

Of course we can use other senses. “What if… we hear a siren?” “Then… start searching for the emergency vehicle!” What if… we smell diesel?” “Then… start scanning the surface for the tell-tale traces!” What if… we feel an unexpected vibration?” “Then… pull over and find out what’s wrong with the bike!”

The great thing about the “What if…?” “Then this…!” routine is that it IS a routine – and that means it is:

  • consistent

  • efficient

  • effective

  • easily repeated

Still struggling to see how extending the “What if…?” question with the “Then this…!” answer will benefit us?

How about the humble traffic light? We all know that red means stop, green means we can proceed if clear, but what about amber? It means we “should stop unless it would be dangerous to do so”. So how do we know if it would be dangerous or not? What dies dangerous mean in this context?

Well, it could mean being too close and / or too fast to brake without risking a locked wheel. Or it could mean that we’d put ourselves at risk from a following vehicle if we braked. So our third “What if…?” question is:

“What if… the lights change when we are right on top of them?” “Then we have to decide whether it’s safe to stop or safer to carry on!”

Generally speaking we don’t ride through red lights or stop at green lights unless we are completely distracted by another task. But even the best of us WILL cock-up when it changes to amber IF we haven’t already made a conscious assessment of the situation. How long has the light been green? Is it likely to change? How fast are we approaching, and how much space would we need to stop? What’s behind us?

If we haven’t asked those questions and got some answers, then getting the stop / go decision right is going to be guesswork.

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80. Cue : Response – learning to link what we see to how we react

This article came about because of questions about the original ‘Spidy Sense’ tip that investigated how we respond to hazards. I realised that the use of visual cues is absolutely fundamental to developing ‘situational awareness’ (and an integral part of my Survival Skills advanced rider training courses), and my increasing understanding of how they work together with a pre-learned but subconscious response also came from deeper research that eventually became incorporated into my MIND over MOTORCYCLE book, my first foray into publishing [which you can purchase at http://lulu.com/spotlight/SurvivalSkills.]

The core message — that linking visual cues to pre-learned subconscious responses reduces cognitive load and improves hazard management — is essentially ‘pattern recognition + motor-program automation’ remains highly relevant. Modern cognitive science confirms automaticity frees conscious attention for higher-priority tasks. This is the principle behind much aircrew instruction. The discussion of mental overload, task shedding, and attention limits is aligned with current understanding of working memory and selective attention, and the examples of overload during complex overtakes and the benefits of automated responses to hazards accurately illustrate real-world application.

Cue : Response – learning to link what we see to how we react

In a previous tip, we looked at the concept of “Spidy Sense” and how riders develop an early warning system to danger – a vague sense that something isn’t quite right somewhere – and the roles played by the various parts of the brain in avoiding harm when riding. The problem is that the rider may not know what caused that sense of unease, and so won’t know what the correct response is. We looked how the Mid-brain filters incoming information and decides whether to route it for further processing in the real-time, thinking part of the brain – the Neo-cortex – or hand it over to the subconscious Reptilian brain, which deals with responses to the threat of harm by triggering our automatic panic ‘Fight or Flight’ modes which may result in our reacting in an unwanted response.

So it might seem that so long as our thinking brain is engaged, all will be well. After all, that’s the basic concept behind the idea that if we ‘concentrate properly’ (something that crops up over and over in road safety theory and advanced riding guides), we’ll be able to cope effectively with riding hazards.

But there are two major problems.

The first is one we should really know about – human attention span. We can only concentrate on anything for short periods because our brains get tired. Twenty minutes or less is that adult attention span before our brain needs to switch gear. That’s why learning to ride and drive is so utterly exhausting. Unless we stop every ten or fifteen minutes to recharge the brain, the concept of ‘100% concentration’ is a faulty one.

The second issue is something I covered in a previous article. There’s not just a finite limit to the number of tasks that the thinking brain can handle at any one moment, but there’s active competition for the ‘channels’ that the brain uses in real-time. Any riding activity that takes up a lot of mental processing power will mean that other tasks – potentially important ones – are shed to free up attention for the most important task. This is what Keith Code is getting at when he talks about $10-worth of concentration in his ‘Twist of the Wrist’ books. Read my ‘workload’ article for more on this.

Here’s an example of the workload problem. Overtaking is a complex task. We need to search the road ahead for blind areas and junctions, watch the mirrors for vehicles attempting to overtake us, calculate how long it will take us to pass the slower vehicle and return to our side of the road, and we have to spot oncoming vehicles and work out their speed and distance, and decide if the ‘time-to-collision’ calculation allows us time to complete the pass safely.

If we’re on a dead straight road, with bare ground to either side, in fine conditions with good visibility, then the only really complicated bit is making sure we don’t pull out into the path of a vehicle approaching at a higher speed than we expected.

But what if the overtake is tricky? What if we’re trying to overtake a queue of slow-moving traffic behind a tractor, on a twisty road on a wet day with rain trickling down our visor? Now the task is considerably more complex. Guess what? We reach mental overload and begin to shed tasks. The one that goes missing most frequently, by my observation of other riders and recognising my own errors, is checking the mirrors.

So if we’re already saturated with information, how can we train ourselves to NOT to lose sight of important tasks like this? How can we process MORE information?

Well, the answer is that it can be done – aircrew have to learn to take in and process lots of information, and so do police drivers. Even riding instructors have to learn to ride safely for themselves, whilst monitoring what the trainee and other drivers are doing, plus anticipating what might happen, have a plan to cope… and at the same time as all that, we have to communicate with the trainee too! Training other riders is a much more complex task than the average rider realises.

But if we can up our game, so can a ‘normal’ rider.

The key is to learn to automate some of the less-complex tasks. Some riders – particularly those schooled in the idea that we need to concentrate 100% as we ride – have a problem with this idea that we can process information below the level of the real-time, conscious part of the brain, but we all learn just that technique – we just don’t realise it.

For example, how do we deal with traffic lights? When we first started using the roads, we all have to use our real-time, conscious brain. We look to see:

  • if there is a traffic signal at a junction

  • check what colour it is

  • remember what to do next

With a bit of practice, more and more of the task becomes automated. We simply ‘see’ the lights, and our response to a green or a red light is automatic.

What we’ve done is to learn to recognise ‘visual cues’ – the presence of the traffic signal itself, and the colour of the light, although it’s worth pointing out that many experienced riders still make a real-time decision when the light turns amber! And this automated system can break down completely when we go to France (where the light sequence is different) or the US (where the lights aren’t where we’d expect to find them). I rode straight through the first red light I encountered in the US because I wasn’t expecting it to be strung from a wire high above the road.

Another, more complex, visual task is performed by using a combination of peripheral vision and unconscious steering adjustments to steer the bike accurately within the lane. Once we’re out of the novice stage we don’t have to think about it, we just keep the bike on the tarmac. That works right up to the moment when there’s a difficult decision to make – which side of a pothole to ride, for example. We suddenly find our real-time, thinking brain is fired up to make that decision, because our subconscious system steering the bike down the lane decides it’s not got a routine to deal with the pothole.

Now, here’s the clever bit. We can train our brain to handle some of the essential visual search tasks via this subconscious subsystem. Road signs, particularly the triangular red and white hazard warning signs, provide information about hazards which we need as we ride, but searching for them consciously takes up a lot of processing power. So we do a bit of programming of the subconscious brain. All we have to do is ride the bike, and slow down a bit – because that frees up some processing power – then actively SEARCH for road signs. As soon we give ourselves this little bit of extra time, the signs start leaping out of the hedges at us. Try this out, and in a very short period indeed you’ll find that you no longer have to search for them, they simply appear in your consciousness. This is a technique I apply in my Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses and my trainees are usually astonished just how many road signs there are that they’d previously failed to spot.

Now, this is a big step forward but we can go one better. We can tie this ‘visual cue’ to trigger a response. Here’s what I mean. If we see a triangular warning sign telling us that there’s a junction ahead on the nearside, what might be appropriate responses? I’d suggest that a movement out towards the centre line (if safe) would be a good one. Covering the brakes is likely to be a smart move too. And we might also hold off on any acceleration too.

Well, here’s the good news. It’s entirely possible to automate those responses too. All we have to do is start by applying them as a thought-out response to seeing a junction on the left, and very quickly our brains learn that this is an appropriate response to the visual cue.

And now we have built the cue : response link. We see a side turning, and we automatically change position, get ready to brake and ensure we’re not carrying more speed into the danger zone. And having automated those responses, not only do we defeat the SURPRISE! mechanism that’s liable to trip the unplanned and unwanted ‘Survival Reactions’ identified by Keith Code, our conscious real-time attention is freed up to search for vehicles, to see whether we have a line of sight to the driver, and judge whether or not the driver is likely to turn into our path or not…

…and check for following vehicles. It’s amazing just how often mirror checks go missing in times of stress.

Hazard warning signs are particularly effective visual cues because of their distinctive shape and colour. Once catalogued in the subconscious brain’s database of important things, they will start to jump out of the background at us.

Whilst many of the cues are visual, there are cues we can hear (horns, engine noise) and smell (diesel or freshly-mown grass).

Remember – link the cue to a response. Freshly-mown grass means there might be a hedge-trimming tractor just round the bend, so we might have to slow down suddenly – losing some speed NOW would be a very good idea, as would being ready to take prompt evasive action, whilst not forgetting a mirror check.

Other cues I consciously practice spotting include dropped kerbs, broken white lines at the side of the road, gaps in hedges, direction signs and finger posts, traffic islands and islolated lamp posts. I’m sure you can guess where you’re likely to spot all these and just how I’ve trained myself to respond.

Having seen a waiting car in the junction, what kind of visual cues might set off a more significant response? How about:

  • not being able to see the driver

  • not being about to see the driver’s head behind the A pillar

  • the driver looking the other way

  • sudden left / right movements of the driver’s head

  • one hand taking up a different position on the wheel

  • the car visibly beginning to move forward

Here’s some really good news. None of this is difficult, and we can learn it quickly, as people who’ve taken my Survival Skills advanced riding courses will testify – just a few minutes working on this cue : response technique will show improvement out of all proportion to the effort put in.

But we also have to make the effort to keep the skills fresh by working on them for a few minutes every few now and again. The brain is a bit like a cluttered desk – what we use all the time is right at the front where we need it, but the bits and pieces you haven’t looked at for a while slide backwards. And what we haven’t used for ages has probably fallen clean off the back! Practicing regularly keeps techniques in the forefront of the mind. A good time to refresh is when we’re in no rush to get anywhere, or perhaps stuck on a road with a solid line for several miles. Drop back, open up some space and practice spotting visual cues and using the correct response.

It’s this cue : response pre-programming that allows us to move a significant step beyond ‘Spidy Sense’. By identifying then learning the specific cues that can be seen, it’s a relatively straightforward task to link them to a specific response to deal with the hazard.

All it needs is a little thought about the hazards we face, how we spot them, and what we do about them. And then some practice to gain – then KEEP – our subconscious defence mechanism functioning at a high level. Don’t take my word for it – after a two-day course Barbara Alam commented:

“I’ve got a lot better at that since doing your course. It really didn’t take more than a day or two of practice, with the occasional effort to “revise” by consciously doing it, to make it become an unconscious thing”.

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76. What is ‘Spidey Sense’ and how do we develop it?

This is another article which pushed boundaries at the time I wrote it — and got a lot of push-back too — but the core concept that experienced riders developing a subconscious “sixth sense” through pattern recognition is very much valid. Modern research into situational awareness, threat perception, and tacit knowledge in driving and riding supports the idea that repeated experience trains the brain to detect subtle cues. The description of Reptilian / Mid-brain / Neo-cortex interactions has turned out to be a rather over-simplified model and neuroscience today sees the brain as far more interconnected than this triune model suggests, with threat detection and decision-making distributed across multiple networks, but it works well for communicating automatic vs. conscious responses to riders and in the context of helping riders understand their reactions, it remains a clear, accessible metaphor. Experienced riders develop Spidey Sense by building a large internal database of patterns, so potential hazards trigger an early warning before the threat becomes immediate. Coupled with proactive scanning and deliberate practice, this allows us to anticipate, prepare, and respond effectively, reducing reliance on panic reactions and improving overall situational awareness.

What is ‘Spidey Sense’ and how do we develop it?

If you’re anything of a fan, you’ll know that when the bad guys are around, Spider-Man gets a “tingle” from his ‘Spidey Sense’. And experienced riders will also report how they get a sixth sense that things aren’t quite right, so they slow down, look around, just before something unpleasant happens, and thank their lucky stars for the warning. When that happens, we’re developing a kind of biking Spidey Sense. As you have probably realised by now if you’ve read some of the other related articles, the design brief for our 200,000 year-old brain never included the ability to ride motorcycles, so we have to make considerable compromises to ride motorcycles. But what exactly is this ‘sixth sense’? A quick lesson on how our brains are put together will help.

One model of the brain is the so-called ‘triune’ brain, because it consists of three parts.

At the top is the ‘Thinking Cap’, the Neo-Cortex which the most modern and largest part of the brain. In very simplistic terms it’s where conscious thinking is performed and where our reasoning skills are centered.

At the bottom – it’s directly connected to the spinal cord – is the most primitive part of our brain. It’s sometimes called the ‘Reptilian Brain’ because we share it with crocodiles. Responsible for controlling many of the basic body functions, it’s also constantly on guard for danger. It’s blisteringly quick in responding – it needs to be if we’re to duck when someone hurls a rock at our head – but it doesn’t think. It only chooses the most basic fight or flight responses.

Sitting between the two and hard-wired to both is the Mid-brain. Here the Reticular Activating System works with the Limbic System to control attention. This part of the brain works completely below the level of our awareness and acts as a filter on incoming data, attempting to pick out parts with meaning. You’ll probably know how we can hear someone mentioning our name across a crowded room, and how that perks up our conscious attention. The same process goes on to filter relevant information from the vast amount of visual data sent to the brain by the eyes.

But in certain circumstances, the Mid-brain can also route data perceived as a potential threat straight to the Reptilian brain, which goes into automatic fight or flight mode. In biking terms, that’s usually manifested as a panic grab at the brakes, freezing completely and target fixation. Recognise those reactions? You should, because these are the ‘Survival Reactions’ that Keith Code identified in Twist of the Wrist some years ago.

With the proviso that to learn, we need to survive, we can learn from emergencies. We may do some reflective thinking after the event and come up with a better option – why controlled braking is better than a panic grab, for example.

But it seems that scary incidents are also subconsciously ‘logged’ and become embedded. As we continue to ride, what seems to happen is that the Mid-brain continues to process the incoming data – remember, this is happening below the level of consciousness – but increasingly compares it against a database of stored memories, trying to find a match. The more riding experience we have, the bigger the database of past experiences and the more likely the Mid-brain is to find a match. If the past event had unpleasant consequences, then a “things aren’t right” message gets sent to wake up the Neo-cortex. Just as hearing our name across the room flicks us into full-on attention, we’re suddenly on full alert with Spidy Sense triggered.

Of course, it’s not foolproof.

For starters, inexperienced riders don’t have much experience to call on. So in novel circumstances, there is nothing alarming enough to trigger the Mid-brain to wake up the Neo-Cortex. We ride, totally oblivious, into danger. Only when the threat of personal harm becomes obvious enough is control turned over to the Reptilian brain – and that’s when the panic responses kick in.

For a more experienced rider, there’s a second issue. Although we are now on high alert, we’re still only aware that things aren’t quite right. That may help us to take some pro-active action – slowing down is nearly always a good first step – but it’s no guarantee we’ll respond appropriately.

Worse, we may be out of time before we finally identify the source of our anxiety. Analyses of accidents and in the laboratory suggest that it can take us two to three seconds to consciously turn our attention towards a developing threat, to analyse the situation and figure out what’s happening, and come up with a solution. 200,000 years ago, that might have been acceptable, but on modern roads and travelling at a very modest 30mph, it’s an age. We’ve covered forty metres in three seconds. So out of time, the Mid-brain may hand over control to the Reptilian brain. We’re no better off than the novice rider who never saw the threat coming.

A partial solution is to create ‘muscle memory’ pathways to defeat the Survival Reactions. Despite the name, the links we build are really in the brain, but they do control muscles. For example we can learn to overcome the instinctive front brake grab when a car pulls out, or the frozen steering when we’re running wide on a corner, by ‘burning’ learned responses. And we do that by mastering, then regularly practising, techniques such as progressively squeezing the brakes and controlled swerves. The idea is that even when the Reptilian brain tries to take over, we don’t let it totally control our reactions.

But there’s one more thing to think about. The trigger for the Reptilian brain to kick in is often motion detection in our peripheral vision, which is incredibly sensitive to movement. If we suddenly detect movement close at hand, swerving the other way can save the day. But it’s essentially a ‘reactive’ response, after the problem has developed.

The clearly-focussed, colour cone of vision which allows us to see sharp detail is a very narrow, just a few degrees wide. If we only look at the road ahead of us, we won’t gain information about hazards left or right of our path. So we need to be PRO-ACTIVE with our observation, keeping our eyes moving so we are actively searching out potential hazards before they become bigger threats that tingle our Spidey Sense.

By developing ‘situational awareness’ we reduce the chances of having to rely on Spidey Sense too often. And then we give ourselves a MUCH better chance of avoiding triggering the Reptilian brain’s panic reactions. Find out how to develop situational awareness of a Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training course.

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74. Overtaking on left-handers – experts only or best avoided?

Some things don’t seem to change. And how motorcyclists kill themselves is one of those things. I said in the article that “half of out-of-town fatalities result from overtakes that go wrong” is valid, and the data that the UK’s DfT continues to collect reinforces this point. Overtaking generally is rarely ‘necessary’, and overtaking around a left-hand bend is even less so. Remember, in most cases a better, safer opportunity will appear within moments.

Overtaking on left-handers – experts only or best avoided?

Back in 2005 and 2006, one of the best series of articles on advanced riding techniques was penned by Andy Morrison from Rapid Training, and published in Bike magazine. But when he talked about the technique of overtaking in left-handers in February 2006, I think he went the proverbial ‘bridge too far’. He stated plainly enough that it’s dangerous but then goes on to assert that it’s a manoeuvre within the grasp of the expert rider. The article gave the impression that all that’s needed is a high level of technical skill and judgement yet whatever dissenting voices might say, there is something every one of us should understand: contrary to claims elsewhere, overtaking is NEVER, EVER ‘safe’. Even if we can be reasonably sure WE won’t make a mistake, when overtaking there are always other humans involved and one thing we can be sure of is that humans can and DO make errors. An overtake ALWAYS exposes us to the risk of someone else’s mistake.

I read the article and the first thing that struck me was that it focused on technical execution. Yet to my mind, understanding that the skills to carry out a tricky overtake are complex is far less important than developing our understanding of risk and our ability to see that technically complicated manoeuvres are more likely to go wrong. It’s our ability to make a realistic risk assessment that allows us to place a manoeuvre on the risk / benefit scale. To my mind, for a relatively limited benefit, this one is far over towords the risky end. We really need to understand the difference between ‘need’ and ‘nice’.

Overtaking generally sits further towards the ‘nice to do’ end of the spectrum than the ‘need to do’ end – it’s very rarely an absolute ‘must-do’. You may have heard people say that “if I didn’t overtake, I might as well not be on a bike”, or that “I overtake because I want to demonstrate I can make progress”.

Personally, I think they are deeply flawed reasons. My own thinking – based on that risk / benefit calculation – is that we need to balance the risks that might arise through making the overtake, with the risks of staying put. If there’s no particular problem with following – for example, when moving in a steady stream of traffic – the less-risky option is nearly always choosing NOT to pass.

I’d suggest that overtaking only begins to move towards the ‘need to do’ end of the scale if sitting behind a vehicle puts us at greater risk than making the overtake. Maybe we’re following a tractor on a rural road, when a queue of traffic begins to form behind us. If a relatively straightforward opportunity to pass arises and we don’t take it, we are now part of the problem. The chances are that someone will try to overtake both the tractor and our bike. That makes the overtake more difficult for the driver, and potentially increases our own risk. So if we can see a way to set up an overtake in such a way to minimise the risk, does that tip the balance? Perhaps. The crux of the matter is “if we can see a way to set up an overtake in such a way to minimise the risk”. Too many overtakes are assessed from the “what do I gain” perspective first, with risk trailing a very poor second.

And so we come to overtaking out of left-hand bend. Compared with setting up a pass out of a right-hand corner, overtaking out of a left hand bend generates a lot of “What ifs…?” that aren’t easy to answer.

We start by setting up the overtake by sitting to the nearside, looking up the inside of the vehicle ahead. The article pointed out problems of dead ground (that is, the areas that are blind to our search) but however thorough our search, we need to be absolutely clear that if we cannot see over the vehicle, there’s a blind spot ahead of it on the offside. As we move out to the right to commit to the pass, that blindspot doesn’t go away – it simply moves. There is ALWAYS this blind spot.

Some years ago, I watched a rider set up exactly this pass around a sweeping left-hand bend from the car. His line-of-sight up the nearside was good, but he couldn’t see what I could, thanks to my driving position offset to the right. It was the local postie climbing into his bright red post office van that was pulled up in a layby on the other side of the road. As the rider moved across behind the truck, the post office van started to move forward. The rider came out from behind the truck just as the PO van moved into the road.

And of course, if a vehicle could pull out, the one we’re overtaking could turn in, and we may not be aware of the turning for the same reason. This is another point I always make – overtaking ALWAYS relies on the driver we’re passing to do what we predict. Setting up an overtake where we’re visible in the driver’s interior or right-hand door mirror means that there’s at least a chance the driver will know we’re there. But sat to the nearside of the vehicle we’re about to pass, not only are we far more difficult to see, few drivers would expect to find us overtaking around the outside a moment later. We really do need to hang back long enough to clear the view right along our path and eliminate any openings.

And there’s a further problem. It’s the pesky extra warning about making sure the road not just clear but that we can “expect it to remain clear”. The neatly-drawn diagrams in the magazine showed how the rider would need to ‘visually sweep’ the road ahead of the lorry before attempting the overtake. Although the text talked about “far enough ahead” the diagrams showed a distance of just a couple of lorry-lengths. I know the diagrams were drawn distorted to make the point (rather like the ones showing how a wider position gives a better view in ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’), and Andy did mention the danger of meeting an oncoming car head-on, but what wasn’t emphasised was just HOW far ahead we need to see.

Let’s do a few quick sums. Let’s assume the truck is travelling at 45 mph. That’s 20 metres per second. Let’s assume we pass the truck at 60 mph – we’re thus travelling 15 mph faster than the truck (6.7 m/s). Assuming a typical HGV (16.5 metres long), it’ll take us approximately 2.5 seconds to travel from front to rear. In that time – whilst we are riding at 60 mph or 27 m/s remember – we’ve travelled no less than 67.5 metres.

But of course, we have to move out and move back again. The total distance travelled during the entire manoeuvre is not going to be less than three times 67.5 metres, so to accelerate, pass and tuck back again, we’re looking at a minimum total distance of around 200 metres.

Except we need treble this distance.

Why? What about the effect on other road users when we pop out from behind a truck and the oncoming driver suddenly sees us? Assuming the car is coming the other way at the same speed we’re making the pass and we want to move out, make the pass, then manoeuvre back with a minimum MARGIN FOR ERROR between us, we actually need to COMPLETE the overtake in around one-third of the total “distance we can see to be clear”. So the minimum distance we actually need FROM THE MOMENT WE COMMIT is AT LEAST 600 metres – that’s over one-third of a mile. And we’re now mentally juggling with speeds and distances at which the human brain struggles to make accurate computations.

Of course, to make up for the lack of forward view, the temptation is to nail it. But the faster we attempt to make the pass, the more difficult it is to bail out when it starts going wrong.

My take on this is not to hurry into such an overtake. We definitely shouldn’t underestimate the the difficulties of seeing far enough ahead and the blind areas. Technical ability is NOT a substitute for sound judgement. In practice, I’d suggest only the shallowest left hand bends with the very best views allow a reasonably risk-free overtake past the slowest-moving vehicles, which brings us full-circle to whether an overtake is ‘need’ or ‘nice’.

What was left pretty much unsaid was that a better opportunity will probably come along in a minute. I intensely dislike this ‘take every available opportunity’ approach to riding. It may be appropriate to police riding, but I doubt the validity for civvie riding, even at ‘advanced’ level.

Most of all, I was concerned at its publication in a magazine, where Andy had no control over the riders reading the article. It’s an issue I’m very aware of when writing my own riding tips of my own, and even when delivering my own Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses. It’s why each tip tends to have exhaustive discussions of the risks as well as an explanation of benefits.

Statistics show that around half of out-of-town fatalities result from overtakes that go wrong, so to my mind we should be eliminating the technically-tricky ones with the highest potential for going wrong. I’m certainly not going to say I’ve never overtaken in a left-hander but I can definitely say there have been a few times I wished I hadn’t bothered.

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72. Anger Management – dealing with road rage and red mist

This article explains the important distinction between red mist (self-induced risk-taking) and road rage (reaction to others) and the advice to recognise anger, avoid the victim mindset, and give control back to the reasoning part of the brain is entirely consistent with safety psychology. The core principle remains the same: control your response rather than the road, by anticipating situations that might provoke anger and giving our reasoning brain the opportunity to override instinctive reactions and avoid escalation.

Anger Management – dealing with road rage and red mist

From time to time I get asked if I have any solutions to what the issues known as ‘red mist’ and ‘road rage’. Of all the questions I’ve tried to answer, this one is probably the most difficult. Although my background is in science, I’m not a psychologist. Mostly what I’ve written here is what I know works for me on the occasions I feel myself getting a bit carried away with riding or acting aggressively if someone makes me angry. What I do know is the one thing we simply cannot do is let it take control. In particular, anger needs to be recognised for what it is – we are never far away from behaving like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. We never grow up, we just learn how to behave in public, yet there’s a limit to self-control. If we bottle anger up, it will simply build up until we ‘kick the dog’. Some unsuspecting and innocent party bears the brunt of OUR resentment.

First of all, we need to try to identify the problem. Whilst because ‘red mist’ and ‘road rage’ are both psychological states we might develop whilst riding, they are not the same.

Red mist is a state where we are no longer assessing risk realistically. Perhaps we begin to ride at higher speeds, pull off more overtakes, or corner with bigger lean angles than we would normally. Instead of this increasing our stress levels, as it would normally, we can actually get a ‘buzz’ from this kind of riding when everything seems to be ‘in tune’ and effortless. Maybe we begin to enjoy the thrill, maybe we start to justify our behaviour because we’re out to impress others – perhaps riding in a group, or even on an assessed ride. It’s a state that racers, and even professional drivers such as police or ambulance drivers can get fall into in pursuit of the ‘noble cause’ of responding to an emergency call. It’s something the professionals are warned about, but nobody tells the average rider how to look for the warning signs, we just get castigated when we fall into the trap.

Road Rage is a somewhat different psychological trap, and has been around since Daimler first stuck four wheels round an engine. If you want a classic literary example of a driver with road rage, think of Mr. Toad in “The Wind in the Willows”. Essentially, it’s aggressive behaviour around other road users, particularly when someone does something that irritates us, perhaps by impeding our progress. According to research on what annoys drivers, the main triggers for driver anger are:

  • tailgating

  • being cut up

  • inappropriate overtaking

  • undertaking on motorways

You’ll notice the word inappropriate. It’s nearly always a subjective view, where someone does something someone else doesn’t think they should have. Not too long ago, I was rounding a fairly gentle left-hander positioned around half-a-metre from the centre line when I spotted an oncoming car. I moved inward to the centre of the lane – a completely unhurried manoeuvre that in no way inconvenienced the driver coming the other way. Nevertheless, he found it necessary to swerve aggressively towards me, sound the horn and make rude gestures.

Road rage can be relatively low-level ‘shouty’ behaviour such as unnecessary flashes of headlights or use of the horn, or hand signals that aren’t to be found in the Highway Code so if we find ourselves doing those, it’s important to recognise what’s going on.

The problem is escalation. Hopefully we can shrug it off when others display that kind of behaviour towards us, but if we respond in kind, then the situation can rapidly move into aggressive tailgating, swerving towards other vehicles, or brake-testing the vehicle behind. Bikers have been known to kick cars or knock off mirrors, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the one who will come off worst in any argument of four wheels -vs- two is the rider.

Of course, our own view of what we just did is usually completely different. My position on the bend was – compared with a lot of advanced riders – rather restrained. I always aware that motorcyclists often appear impatient to other road users because of our ability to accelerate and overtake, or by taking up positions which a car driver finds inexplicable. Have a read of this:

“Aggressive drivers are careless drivers who want to get ahead of everyone on the road… [who] put their own convenience before anyone else’s safety. Other drivers may develop road rage, potentially violent anger, in response and retaliation to the violations they feel other drivers commit.”

Anybody here ride a bike because they think it allows them to make ‘better progress’ than “everyone else on the road”? Hmmm. We must never forget that when we share the roads, we are judged by everyone else’s standards of behaviour. What seems perfectly good and sensible riding to us may not appear that way to the driver we just passed or coming the other way. Simply because think we are a ‘better’ rider than they are a driver is not an adequate reason for ignoring what ‘the other fellow’ thinks about our riding.

So who’s right? The biker? Or the driver? If there IS an answer, it’s probably “neither of us”, but what I would say is that a really advanced piece of riding is not one that necessarily gains us ‘advantage’ but one that’s almost imperceptible to other drivers.

What really doesn’t help are smug statements like this next one:

“The truth is that no matter where you go, no matter how safe, careful, and considerate a driver you are, there is going to be someone on the road who is not. They’re going to challenge all the patience you have built up, possibly putting your life at risk… a road rager feels a certain degree of superiority over all other drivers on the road. They feel it is their duty to punish bad drivers and teach them “lessons”… their behaviour is equally selfish, immature, and dangerous.”

It’s positively complacent: “it’s not me that’s the problem, it’s everyone else”. This positively hinder our understanding. The fact is that road rage is not something ‘other people’ suffer from – anyone with a human brain is a potential road rager.

So, how do we keep ourselves under control when provoked? How do we detune ourselves when the buzz starts to get the better of us?

There are plenty of helpful-seeming articles online which usually start by saying something like:

“The best way to keep yourself from flying into an uncontrolled rage on the road is to remain calm and keep perspective. When someone does something you feel is careless or stupid on the road, you have to just let it go.”

Errrrr… but HOW??

I did some reading around the topic and it seems that at the most fundamental level, the issue is at least partly down to how the human brain has developed. The most primitive part of the brain, sometimes called the ‘reptilian brain’ because we share it with crocodiles, is designed for survival rather than reasoned thinking. It’s around 300 million years old and its basic programming is ‘react or die’. The first mammals with more advanced brains only appeared around 100 million years later, and the human brain which gives us our flexible reasoning capabilities is only around 200,000 years old. But even in our human brain, that primitive reptilian brain always on the alert and it cannot distinguish between a real threat demanding instant action and a scary surprise that turns out to be nothing significant when we have had a moment to think about it. Whenever we’re shocked, there’s a conflict as the ancient, hard-wired fight and flight response of our reptilian ancestors is pitted against the flexible reasoning responses of our ‘new’ human brain.

So when we react instinctively and without thinking – and sometimes violently – we’ve let the reptilian brain take control.

Now, if you’ve read any of my other writing on the so-called ‘survival reactions’ – the totally inappropriate reactions that kick in when we suffer SURPRISE! on the road, you may begin to see something of a connection.

Not only do we need to try to defuse our own responses when we feel provoked, but we need to understand how not to provoke road rage in others.

I’ve long stopped looking at the road as a place where everyone should “do the right thing” because I’ve learned the hard way that when a dangerous situation arises because someone does something wrong, that’s guaranteed to make me angry. And no-one using the roads is perfect. Not you and not me, and not even the most highly trained riders. We all make mistakes, and many of the dangerous situations really are the result of a simple error of judgement. There but for the grace of god, etc..

So I’ve learned to try to predict the situations where drivers could put me at risk – the classic SMIDSY near-miss is a good example – and to see it coming before it happens. If we’re expecting something to happen, our reasoning brain deals with the fall-out and won’t give the reptilian brain chance to take over – we’ll simply say to ourselves: “I saw that coming”.

And what if we’re the unlucky rider greeted with an inexplicable display of aggression by another road user, like that driver who didn’t like my cornering line? Maybe we were behaving in a predictable manner. Maybe we’ve just surprised them. Or perhaps we’re on the receiving end of some ‘second-hand anger’ after the previous rider triggered the response we just saw. It doesn’t make the driver’s aggression right, but it does make it a little more understandable. Try not to get riled.

Most importantly we need to get out of the ‘victim mindset’ where we believe that all other drivers on the road are out to get us. They aren’t. Drivers are mostly relatively careful around motorcyclists – it’s just that our reptilian brain is far better at noticing the rare occasions when another road user puts us at risk than our reasoning brain is at spotting the far more common moments that drivers keep well clear of us.

If we do start to slip into red mist or aggression, we need to recognise it for what it is. We MUST acknowledge it. Only then will the reasoning area of the brain re-establish control, and decide what, if anything, we are going to do about it. But don’t ignore red mist or anger. Once we realise we’re not acting like a grown-up, breath deeply, count to ten, think it over and move forward.

And if I had to sum up my advice in one phrase? It would be:

“Start looking for the positive on the roads, tune out the negative.”

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71. Off-siding – a technique that crosses the line?

The crucial decision here is to balance risk versus benefit, the potential gain in situational awareness versus the real possibility of putting ourselves in a dangerous position. The perception of our manoeuvre from the other driver’s perspective is all-too-often completely overlooked. However, that doesn’t mean we should never consider taking up a position on the other side of the centre line and hazards such as narrow single-lane bridges can create real vision problems if we don’t exploit the full width of the road.

Off-siding – a technique that crosses the line?

I originally wrote this tip as an expanded response incorporating questions being asked by a nearly-new rider. With a year’s experience since passing the bike test, he was shown the technique of ‘offsiding’ on a riding assessment. If you’re not familiar with the term, offsiding is positioning to the RIGHT of the centre line (here in the UK) to improve the view ahead, rather keeping within our own lane. I remember being told many years ago that “you’ve paid to use all the road – so do so”. I’m not implying he was being encouraged to use this position but many riders do, myself included on rare occasions – I’ll explain the limited circumstances in a moment. In the time I’ve been involved in rider training offsiding seems to have gone from a technique that was generally accepted “but do it carefully” to one that’s generally frowned upon as “controversial and we really shouldn’t”. So what’s the right answer? Is there ever a time when it’s a good idea to cross the centre line to gain a view?

Before we go any further, we need to sort out if it’s legal. So long as the centre line is broken – that is, we’re looking at crossing either the short lane divider markings or the longer hazard line, it’s not illegal – we can cross a broken centre line. But we could end up on the wrong side of the law if we’re seen to be riding carelessly or even dangerously – in the case of a longer hazard line, the Highway Code says we can cross the line “if safe and necessary to do so”. Much will depend on who is interpreting ‘safe and necessary’. My view may not be the same as that of a policeman or magistrate.

If we can say “yes, it’s legal”, my approach on Survival Skills advanced motorcycle rider training courses is always to get trainees to ask two questions in order to perform a basic cost / benefit analysis:

  1. what are the benefits

  2. what are the risks?

The usual benefit that is proposed is extra vision – the further right we move:

  • the further we can see ahead around a blind bend to the left

  • the more we can open up a view into a blind area on the left

  • if we can see further, we may also be seen from further away

Let’s start with the the blind bend, and the idea that we can open up the view from riding right of the centre line. What about the risks? The most obvious one is in riding along the ‘wrong’ side of the carriageway, sooner or later we WILL meet someone coming the other way. As we’re on the same side of the road, we’re on a collision course.

It should be fairly obvious we need to be able to return to our side of the road WELL BEFORE the other vehicle gets anywhere near us. But if we have this kind of clear space, isn’t it likely we’re already seeing a long way ahead? What exactly are we adding? As I’ve said elsewhere, the practical reason for extending “the distance we can see to be clear and expect to remain clear” is nearly always to carry more speed. Whilst speed might be essential as part of a police rider’s pursuit activities, it’s NOT part of the remit for an ordinary civvie rider.

If there’s a bit of a question about the advantage, what about the disadvantages? A bit more thinking should reveal some real problems:

  • the shock experienced by the oncoming driver who finds a motorcycle on the wrong side of the road in front of him

  • the need not just to get back left of the centre line, but to shed any extra speed too

Let’s reverse the position. If we were rounding a right-hand bend and suddenly found a car approaching on the wrong side of the centre line, how would WE respond? Would we be thinking calmly: “ah, advanced driver doing a bit of off-siding”? Would we be thinking at all? What’s the chance we’d respond with a WTF and a panic grab of the brakes? I rather think it would be the latter. And what if we panic-swerved too, to our right into the other lane and away from the car? What happens next? This confusion alone is a very good reason to avoid offsiding into a blind corner – we should always avoid putting ourselves into situations where our safety depends on other road users behaving reliably. Even if we don’t scare the bejasus out of the driver, we still have to return to our side of the centre line. A typical response is along the lines of: “I only off-side at a speed that allows me to return to my side of the road in time”. But what if the other driver is going a bit quicker than usual? What if the oncoming driver has cut the corner to straighten it out? Check out the worn paint on the middle of a lot of fast kinks – the reason it’s worn is vehicles straight-lining that bend.

And if we were carrying more speed towards the corner to exploit the better view, we now have to get rid of it. Have we got enough space to do so? And if we’ve had to cut back to the left closer to the bend, does that means we’ve just turned into the corner too early? And is there a risk we’ll now run wide later in the bend? ‘Turn-in too early, run wide later’ is a classic bike cornering crash accident so why take a line that could actually precipitate this error? About the daftest ‘benefit’ to offsiding I’ve heard is that “you get a longer braking distance because you’re not directly behind the vehicle in front”. Eh? Have a think about that for a moment. What if something comes the other way? Could we now safely return to our side of the road and slow down before running into that vehicle going the same way? I’m baffled by the thinking here, and if I feel my braking distance is being compromised by the vehicle ahead, I’ll open up space ahead, and probably slow down too.

If the argument FOR offsiding towards a blind left-hand bend is that we have plenty of space to deal with the above problems, then we can make an argument AGAINST offsiding that our view around the left-hander probably isn’t that bad in the first place. And the sharper the left-hander, the less the benefit but the greater the risks.

However, there is a time I will CONSIDER offsiding approaching a left-hand bend, and that is where an off-side position will MAINTAIN a view that I already have – that is, I can already see clearly and by crossing the centre line I avoid losing the view ahead. It’s sometimes possible that as we exit one corner – typically but not always a right-hander, we can see round the following left-hander, usually because it’s a gentle kink.

For example, on one of my training routes we encounter a narrow single lane bridge. As we exit the previous right-hand bend, we actually have a long view ahead, across the bridge and for around 400 metres further down the road. So if we turn IMMEDIATELY onto the ‘wrong’ side of the road we MAINTAIN the view that we already had, as we ride up to and over the bridge, and we can see if there are oncoming vehicles we might have to give way to.

But if we don’t offside, and do the conventional thing and remain in the left-hand lane, the view ahead gets cut off by the hedge. Now the bridge is blind, and we have to ‘pop out’ from behind it to GAIN the view over the bridge at the last second. In this case, the long forward view beyond the bridge more than compensates for any potential hazards from oncoming vehicles – we have ample time to ‘see and be seen’ and we can move back if necessary – there’s also a chance the driver coming the other way will give way to us.

So if by moving to the right of it we can MAINTAIN the view we already have, then there is an argument for offsiding. But early planning is essential. What I nearly always see in this kind of situation is that riders take too long to work out the lines-of-sight, then move too late, often only when they realise they have lost the view. Now we are attempting to REGAIN it. It’s risky because even if it’s only takes a couple of seconds, that’s a couple of seconds we’ve been riding blind. Sometimes, riders will anticipate a right of the centre line position could open up a view and move to GAIN it, but move far too late. Now the risk is we might gain a close-up view of the front of a Scania – something we didn’t really want to see.

There’s one last case. I mentioned that crossing the centre line can open up a view into a blind area on the left, and that may help someone see us coming:

a driver about to pull out of the blind area to see us coming. The roads are littered with blind driveways, entrances and side turnings, and sometimes I will spot a particularly risky one. I could slow right down just in case a vehicle started to emerge, but I could also slow down AND move to the right if the view ahead and behind shows the road is free of traffic

approaching a left-hand bend with a car parked on my side of the road on the corner. It’s a situation not dissimilar to the bridge I mentioned earlier – by moving right early, I MAINTAIN the best possible view around the parked car, and give the oncoming driver the best chance of spotting me coming. What I don’t want to do is pop out jack-in-the-box style, and GAIN a view only to meet someone head-on

So, to sum up…

…there are some occasions when I will cross the centre line. But it’s always tempered by the realisation that whilst I am in control of my own speed and position, I cannot control how the driver coming the other way reacts. I also have to distinguish between the advantages of ‘maintaining’ a view and the risks of attempting to ‘gain’ a view.

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70. Overtaking, lifesavers and following distances

Crash stats don’t lie. Overtaking continues to be one of the most hazardous manoeuvres a rider can perform. The core message that mirror checks alone are insufficient and that well-timed blind spot checks can provide critical and complementary information remains an important one. The coming trend towards technology such as blind spot warning systems may assist us, but I very much doubt they can fully replace these fundamental techniques. Since overtaking is inherently high-risk, anything that reduces the threat should be considered.

Overtaking, lifesavers and following distances

My position on ANY technique that we use whilst on the bike is that it should IMPROVE safety by reducing risk. Or to put it another way, if a technique increases our exposure to risk it’s worth asking if we should be using it. Overtaking is inherently high risk. However good we are, we can only reduce those risks, we cannot make overtaking ‘safe’. Think about it. It’s about the only accident we’d ever accelerate into. But we’re also involving other human beings, and humans don’t always behave predictably. Ovetakes often go wrong when the driver we’re planning on passing does something we didn’t expect. And now we’re carrying a lot of speed. And of course, no matter how fast we think we are, there’s always someone quicker. And they might just possibly be planning on ovetaking too. We need up to date situational awareness before we commit ourselves to an overtake.

A regular ‘advanced riding’ debate is: “should the rider perform a ‘lifesaver’ before pulling out to pass another vehicle?”

As with any question like that, the answer revolves around what we’re attempting to achieve. As explained in another article, the ‘lifesaver’ is a final over-the-shoulder blind spot check that we make before moving sideways into a position where there might possibly be another vehicle.

The debate hinges on whether or not we can rely fully on what is sometimes called ‘mirror history’. The theory is that if we check our mirrors often enough, we’ll have spotted another vehicle catching us, and we’ll know that there is nothing in our blindspot.

Here’s the issue as I see it. Here’s the upside. If we DO check, and there’s something there, we can abort our manoeuvre. And if there’s nothing there, we’ve taken our eyes off the road ahead for a second or so to take the look. Does that really matter? Not unless we’re very close to the vehicle ahead, or we’re trying to squeeze the pass into the tightest possible opportunity.

But what if we’re relying on the mirrors? However often we look in the mirror it can only tell us what’s behind us, not what’s alongside in the blind spot.If we spotted something in the mirrors, then we abort the manoeuvre. But if we didn’t spot the vehicle in one or more of our mirror checks, WE DON’T KNOW IT’S THERE. Now the danger is that we commit ourselves into the overtake and put ourselves at risk.

The real problem is that we have limited attention, and the busier the road gets, the less likely we are to make our mirror checks frequent enough to fill in information about what’s catching us from behind. As one contributor put it:

“I find there are some situations where I think a shoulder check is essential and some where they aren’t needed. It all depends on the complexity of predicting the future. If you have gathered a stable but dynamic, developing ‘picture’ of the space around you from the information gathered in the period before the manouevre – other traffic, behaviour, speeds – and can confidently predict that nothing will adversely affect the manoeuvre… then you make the move without a shoulder check. If the situation is one of high complexity then you make the check.”

In essence, I agree. But given the human propensity for making mistakes, I’d have to be very, VERY certain there was nothing around me NOT to do one. Positions of vehicles change very fast and we need up-to-the-minute situational awareness, and it’s debateable whether mirrors alone can ever provide this.

Look at it this way. We wouldn’t rely on three or four glimpes of the road through a tall hedge before deciding it was safe to drive straight out of a minor road. We’d take a final look before committing ourselves. Mirror checks give us the rearward equivalent of these glimpses. Only a shoulder check can show us directly what is actually IN the blind spot.

On a single carriageway, at least we know where the danger’s coming from – behind us. But on multilane roads, it could be from either side. In the middle lane, a vehicle will come up fast on the nearside, then swoop across behind us, switching to the outside lane. There’s a significant risk that any checks in the right mirror will not have spotted this vehicle. Even if we’ve made mirror checks to the nearside, it’s unlikely we’ve spotted what’s happening unless we look at just the right moment. This can also happen as we pass the ‘on ramp’ on a motorway or dual carriageway. And drivers also move up into, then sit in the blind spot so we can’t see them either in the mirror or peripheral vision. The only way to see is via a blind spot check. In either case, all that’s needed is a quick ‘chin-to-shoulder’ glance into the blind spot before we commit ourselves.

So if looking into the blind spot can only have positive effects on our situational awareness, what’s the objection?

“It’s potentially dangerous if the car ahead suddenly slows down.”

That’s easily answered. If the car ahead slowing down instantly puts us at risk, we’re too close. No arguments. No “if’s”, “but’s” or “maybe’s”. If the car ahead slows and we are instantly put at risk, it doesn’t matter where we’re looking – it could have been in the mirror. We should have been further back, no matter we’re looking to be in the ‘overtaking’ position. If we can’t look away from the car’s brake lights, we are too close. And what’s less obvious is that if we’re in the least bit worried about running into the car ahead, we’re not going to be giving our overtaking planning full attention! It’s a form of target fixation.

“A lifesaver takes too long.”

Someone once quoted two seconds as “the time it takes to look behind”. That shows a bit of a misunderstanding about WHERE we’re looking. There’s more about this in another tip, but we’re only looking into the blind area, not ‘behind’. If we combine our final mirror check (and you ARE going to make one, aren’t you?) with the over-the-shoulder lifesaver, it doesn’t actually take all that much longer than the mirror check alone – try it.

You may see it as a ‘belt and braces’ approach, and you might argue that if we’ve got a good belt, we don’t need braces. Maybe, but belts do slip and then we might be very glad to have the braces to hold our trousers up.

One of my least favourite expressions is “if I didn’t overtake, I might as well be driving a car”, as if a motorcycle is an automatic licence to overtake.

It’s hard to Personally, I believe that there’s nothing more dangerous that we do on a bike than overtaking.

So I tend to think that everything we do that decreases risk when overtaking is a good idea. And one of those good ideas is knowing what’s behind you, which is probably the area that most riders forget to check! “After all”, they reason – “if you are overtaking you’re going faster so the hazard must be in front of you, no?”

Well, actually, no! If you’re thinking about an overtake, so will someone else be. The most obvious candidate is another bike but there are plenty of cars out there these days with stunning acceleration – ask Jeremy Clarkson!

Given the ever-more crowded state of the roads, the chances of an overtake being completely free of oncoming traffic is going down every day – you need more attention AHEAD of the vehicle you’re planning to pass and behind you too, not less by worrying about running into it.

It’s been claimed that looking behind takes too long. Some quoted two seconds

Half the reason for this argument on the issue is that many riders still think that a lifesaver is a long look behind. That was what riders were supposed to do until fairly recently, thanks to the DSA’s reluctance to acknowledge bikes had mirrors till the late 90s, but it’s really not necessary. A lifesaver is simply a chin-to-shoulder blind spot check timed before an important change of position, into a potentially dangerous position. In other words, it’s the timing rather than the action.

It’s simple enough to combine a mirror check and follow through straight into a blind spot glance. Your head check has now filled in the entire picture alongside and behind. I really cannot see why people are so against the idea of doing them. If it’s timed correctly it’s no more dangerous than looking in the mirror.

Whilst I’m on overtakes, I’ll comment on the habit of moving up to a very close “overtaking” position behind the vehicle ahead when looking for an overtake. It’s recommended by police instructors and can be seen demonstrated on the Bikesafe 2000 video. For my liking, that position is far too close – at one point on that otherwise excellent video, there is barely a single hazard line between the bike and the car ahead. Even their safer “following” position is about half the distance I’d like to keep between me and another vehicle.

So, I’d double the distances shown in that video – my following position would be around the 2 second minimum safe distance, and my closer up overtaking position around 1 second back.

Whilst it’s true that the holding a more distant 1 second “overtaking” position means you are accelerating from a greater distance, with good timing you don’t need to twist the throttle so hard because you can get something of a “run” at the overtake. Hanging back further allows you to catch up in the final part of the corner, and often makes it easier to pass without excessive speed or any wasted time. If you are too close, it’s hard to accelerate before you are wide and clear, which tends to lead to big throttle openings.

In reality, if you overtake from further back, what you have to avoid is carrying too much speed into the overtake. If a situation starts to develop that looks awkward, you may have to pull back in. If you can’t pull back in, you are passing with too much speed. You should pass slowly enough that you can bail out if you need to. I can’t begin to say how many times I’ve been in the middle of a pass and something goes wrong that I’ve had to brake to avoid, and I don’t just mean misjudgements on my part – but brain out manoeuvres by the other driver.

If you yo-yo between the close “overtaking” position and the more laid back “following” position, you need to think how incredibly distracting that can be to the driver you are trying to pass, particularly if you have lights on. And something else that’s rarely mentioned is that as soon as you move up, the car behind YOU maintains their own “is that a fly on that bike’s numberplate?” following position, so dropping back becomes problematic, if not potentially dangerous – another reason for not getting too close in the “overtaking position” and finding yourself the meat in a sandwich.

Following too close through a bend is a mistake too, as most drivers decelerate until they can see their way out of a corner – if you’re too close, that means you decelerate too and end up at lower revs than you meant to.

Slow + high gear = longer time to make the pass when you finally go.

Another factor which is frequently ignored is that cars are massively more powerful than they were even 10 years ago. Even something that looks like it ought to trundle out of a corner like a massive 4×4 can often accelerate pretty quickly. Yes bikes are faster too, so we end up using ever higher speeds to make up the pass.

Even a good overtake is potentially dangerous – so it makes sense to make them as safe as we can, not to risk all on a hurried and botched pass.

There are two problems, if you discount the obvious one of failing to look often enough. Working out speed and distance – and then deciding when that vehicle will arrive along side you. to do this

You’ll need to look into the blind spot to see the bike or car that comes up so quickly that you don’t spot it between regular checks. Do some sums. At 60mph you’re travelling around 27 metres per second. Say you check your mirrors every 5 seconds (and that’s pretty enthusiastic mirror checking, too) – in that distance you’ve travelled around 130m.

Now, what if there is a bike (or possibly even a police car) doing 120mph coming up behind you? If you check your mirrors four times at 5 second intervals, with the final check when it’s along side you, the first time you check it’ll be over 500m back – more than a quarter of a mile. There’s not that much chance you’ll spot it – think about how mirrors make things look further away!

Second check and it’s now 270m back – that’s still more than the length of two football pitches – there’s a pretty good chance you still won’t see it if there is a lot of other traffic in the lane.

Next check will be when it’s 135m behind you. Sounds easy enough to spot, but if it’s in the same lane, and there is another vehicle close behind you, will you see it? And even if you do, if you didn’t see it in either of the two earlier checks then what you don’t know is how fast it’s going.

On your fourth check, the car/bike is alongside you. Scary.

Another problem with mirror history that you may find on a

So, things can change very fast indeed on motorways. Even if you think you know what’s there and it’s going to stay there, you might be wrong. Read this:

“The dangers of the assumption above were brought home to me when I was being observed a few years ago. We were on our way back and it was getting dark; my observer was riding a Pan and another Pan had caught up with us which I hadn’t seen; this second Pan had gone past the observer who had moved over accordingly, so the lights I saw in my mirror weren’t his at all; thus there was very nearly a meeting of fairings when I pulled out to overtake, thinking that my observer had anticipated the overtake and was ready to follow me through, when, in fact, it was the “foreign” Pan overtaking me.”

So, given the safety benefits, why are some riders and instructors so dead-set against them?