Tag: fatigue

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

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

Organising and joining group riding – some rules and tips

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

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

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

poorly-planned routes

fatigue

lack of organisation to deal with a mix of abilities

worst case scenarios

And one is down to the ride attendees:

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

Planning and Organisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the day

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

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

Joining a ride?

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

1) Ride your OWN RIDE

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

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

2) Ride at your OWN PACE

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

3) Don’t hassle other riders

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

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

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

And don’t show off. Easy enough.

 

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18. Staying awake

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

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

Staying Awake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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08. How far is too far?

When this piece was first written, the language of “cognitive load”, “human factors” and “decision fatigue” was not yet commonplace in rider training. Since then, research and experience have only strengthened the case made here: that learning on a motorcycle is limited not by ambition or mileage targets, but by the rider’s capacity to concentrate, absorb feedback and recover. High-mileage, endurance-style training made sense in an operational policing context; its uncritical transfer into civilian advanced training remains questionable. Traffic environments are now busier, bikes more capable, and distractions more numerous — making the question “how far is too far?” more relevant than ever. Mileage alone is a poor proxy for training value.

How far is too far?

There is undoubtedly a fine balance to draw between theory and practical time on the bike but good teaching demands both. Genuine riding exercises have a definite place but they require explanation. Simply piling on the miles is not good teaching technique, just as endless ‘chalk and talk’ offers limited opportunity to practice the theory.

Reading an industry mag some years back, the star letter writer – a training school owner – referred to a discussion with the owner of another school who, he claims, boasted of controlling his costs by: “padding out talks and never covering more than 50-60 miles during a full day’s training”. The letter writer, by contrast, claimed to offer “maximum on-road instruction” which reminded me of an ex-police instructor who claimed never to cover less than 200 miles in a day when out with his trainees.

So how far is too far?

There’s a simple answer to this. If the trainee is getting tired, then the session has gone too far.

Fatigue is dangerous. When we’re tired we make mistakes. Think back to your car lessons and remember how knackered you were after a two-hour session behind the wheel. Or remember how exhausting CBT and each day’s subsequent training was. As concentration slips, learning deteriorates and far worse, the risk of a riding error is magnified manyfold.

An experienced WORKING rider (such as a police rider, an instructor or a courier) may well be able to ride all day, but I worry when I hear of trainees doing eight-hour days and 200 mile rides. If the rider averages a reasonable 40 mph, that’s 5 hours riding time. 200 miles would have been a fair distance to ride in a day when I was despatching. These kind of distances will push typical commuting or recreational riders to (and possibly beyond) the limit.

And we still have to fit in the theory training, any off-road exercises and some breaks. Given the need for rest stops, I really wondered what the 200-miles-a-day instructor was actually managing to deliver in his eight hour day. It’s a lot more informative to ride short stretches for ten or fifteen minutes with interim debriefs whilst everything is still fresh in the trainee’s head, than hack fifty miles up the road between cafes. Well-designed theory sessions, as well as short off-road practice sessions, give the trainees a physical rest and a mental change of gear.

It’s also often overlooked by training schools that whilst the instructor is likely to be close to home, the trainee may well have had an early start and a long ride to get to the school. Even starting from an inn just ten minutes from the circuit, I had to set off at 7am for a race school to arrive in time to complete the formalities. By 1pm – six hours later – I’d spent two hours on track and another two hours in briefings and debriefings, and I was shattered. That’s why my own Survival Skills advanced rider training courses are pegged at five hours; beyond that fatigue sets in and learning drops off. And trainees have to get home again! I had 170 miles to ride back after that session. I left at 2pm and missed the afternoon session completely.

The perfect balance will vary from rider to rider since different trainees respond to different approaches. Too much talk is a turn-off for some, who want to get on the bike and ride, but others actually want to talk – they may want to discuss particular issues at length or be willing and able to learn from in-depth question and answer sessions. It’s up to the instructor to vary the lesson to suit each client, and not to make a teacher-centric decision about how the course should proceed.

The least charitable view would be that trainers running high mileage courses are actually padding out the lack of theory by simply keeping the trainee sitting on the bike all day! After all, spending a few ££s on another five litres of unleaded is much easier than actually writing a decent syllabus and putting together a lesson plan for the day. But mostly I get the feeling it’s simply lack of imagination and a case of “that’s the way it’s always been done” and yet another hangover from police training.