Tag: strategy

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84. ‘All dressed up’ – coping with loose chippings

This is based on an article I wrote for the old ‘Survival Skills’ forum on a now-defunct bike forum back in 2007. Having looked over the text (which has had a mild rewrite for clarity) nothing I wrote two decades ago has changed; at least, not the advice about dealing with the freshly-load surface itself. However, what has changed, and changed significantly, is that we now have solid research evidence showing that chip seal isn’t merely an unpredictable low-speed stability problem — once fully cemented in place and when riding speeds are back to normal, it’s exceptionally destructive to rider clothing once things go wrong. It’s one of the harshest abrasion environments we’ll meet on public roads. That makes clothing choice for open-road riding to the fore. The danger is that riders who accept lighter kit because it’s “fine for ordinary road speeds” may be making assumptions that surface-dressed chip seal roads directly undermine. This shifts surface dressing and chip seal from being “a handling problem” to being “a personal protection problem” too, and that’s something all riders ought to be aware of.

‘All dressed up’ – coping with loose chippings

One worry that new riders have (and I guess a few more experienced ones too) is how to treat roads which have been ‘surface dressed’; this is the low cost repair where a new layer of chippings is simply spread on top of a layer of sticky resin sprayed on the old surface. The road is then re-opened with a temporary low speed limit and relies on the passage of vehicles to ‘roll’ the loose chips into the resin binder to form a permanent bond and create a durable surface. Eventually, a sweeper comes out and hoovers up the remaining loose chips. This surface is quite common on quieter UK roads. In France and the US, I’ve found surfaces treated this way to stretch for miles at a time, and is widely used in Australia and New Zealand where it’s known as ‘chip seal’. The locals cope, so we can too.

Most concerns focus on the loose chippings themselves, and on how each lane of traffic quickly becomes a pair of relatively clear wheel tracks with a ridge of loose stone between them, as well as another ridge along the centre line, and one more at the edge of the carriageway.

Generally speaking, riding in a wheel track makes sense since it’s usually the cleanest line and offers the most predictable grip. I’d normally pick the offside wheel track since it keeps us well clear of unexpected hazards on the nearside, and I wouldn’t attempt swapping lines on twisty road. On narrow roads where oncoming traffic could get close, I’d likely chose the nearside track though.

Either way, it avoids riding directly on the deeper ridges of loose stones, and it’s rarely as dramatic as people fear. Provided we avoid hard braking, excessive lean angles or handfuls of throttle, then we can treat the gravel in the wheel tracks much like any other low-grip surface..

If we genuinely have to ride though the deeper, loose material — maybe the road has only just been reopened to traffic — it’s still perfectly possible to ride through it. Counter-intuitively, trying to crawl along at walking pace can make the bike feel less rather than more stable. A modest, steady speed creates momentum and that helps stability. The bike may squirm slightly beneath us, but that movement is normal and self-correcting. The trick is to use the ‘brace position’ — the posture where we keep our upper body, shoulders, elbows and wrists loose to allow the bars to move around but lock onto the bike with the knees on the tank. This is the key — to stay relaxed and let the bike move under us. But keep good gaps and get braking done early and in a straight line. There’s often more grip available on loose chippings than riders expect, but sudden inputs overwhelm it quickly. Keep cornering lean angles modest, maintain a neutral or gently positive throttle, and wait until the bike is upright before accelerating.

If we need to cross a ridge of loose stones, do it deliberately. My tip here is to turn the bike as much as possible so as to cross the ridge as close to a right-angle and as upright as possible. It should go without saying, we should avoid braking or accelerating while in the deeper deposit.

Other hazards worth watching for include:

    • Piles of chippings mid-corner or at junctions, where traffic sweeps them sideways, and at downhill stops where stones fall from car wheel arches. Brake early and positively, then ease to a stop with minimal front brake pressure at walking pace.

    • Hidden potholes, sunken repairs, and speed humps, which can disappear completely under fresh stone. Visual clues are reduced, so read the wider road environment carefully.

    • Freshly laid high-friction surfaces (such as Shellgrip), which often shed loose aggregate initially. Treat them with caution until they’ve bedded in or been swept.

Finally, I’ve found that speed limits are often set unrealistically low and as a result they are widely ignored. If we ride too far below the prevailing speed, we’re simply inviting close overtakes and being sprayed with flying chippings. I’d recommend riding at something closer to the general flow, whilst leaving a generous gap to the vehicle ahead. That way we can avoid being pebble-dashed as we ride, and we’ll also have plenty of space to brake smoothly if we need to.

Surface dressing isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t a lottery either. With good observation, smooth inputs, and sensible decision-making, it’s just another surface — not a reason to tense up or tiptoe.

 

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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?

 

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69. Where does Point and Squirt come from?

It’s the cornering technique that pulls everything together but I didn’t learn it from Motorcycle Roadcraft. If there’s one topic I’ve always felt UK-based training at basic and post-test level has been seriously lacking, it’s a comprehensive approach to cornering that goes beyond the mechanical inputs and positioning, but covers hazard recognition, risk assessment and risk management. In short, I picked up the various elements from a number of different sources, tested them via trial-and-error, then combined them into a system of cornering that I used personally. When I started post-test coaching, I taught riders what I’d learned and called it ‘Point and Squirt’ for the “slow in, late apex, quick steering, delayed and upright acceleration” combination that seemed to me to work best on awkward bends. It remains a highly practical and, adaptable approach to cornering.

Where does Point and Squirt come from?

Although I’m often told that what I teach on my Survival Skills post-test training course is the same as you’d find if you read the police handbook ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’ (the most recent critic called it “Roadcraft with lipstick and blusher” which made me chuckle), that’s not actually correct. There are plenty of areas of commonality, not least that the aim of ‘Roadcraft’ and Survival Skills is to try to keep riders upright and that there’s nothing any rider can do with a motorcycle except change speed and direction. But Survival Skills is most definitely not ‘Roadcraft’ under a different name’. The Survival Skills approach avoids seeing ‘progress’ as the goal of advanced riding and changes the ‘do it the right way’ approach to riding to a more pragmatic ‘have we prepared for things to go wrong’ approach. And in particular, Survival Skills has always offered a far more organised approach to cornering. In the mid-90s, the current edition of ‘Roadcraft’ barely covered the topic – steering wasn’t even in the book. Even now, with a much-improved updated edition, it’s my opinion that the Survival Skills Performance: BENDS and Performance: SPORT course go way beyond ‘Roadcraft’s’ new content. Read on, and decide for yourself.

In the UK, and with just a few exceptions, most advanced training – whether it’s delivered by the IAM, RoSPA-certificated instructors, or even in a watered-down form by the ERS (thanks to the connection with the DVSA) – has its roots in UK police practice – the police handbook ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’ is recommended background reading and they all apply the ‘Police System of Motorcycle Control’ as a core component of their training.

However, whilst I make USE of ‘Roadcraft’ as well as the IAM’s offerings and various books from the DVSA, my training certain ISN’T ‘Roadcraft-based’.

Looking further afield than the UK, there are other training schemes around the world and many writers with valuable things to say about riding, so I have drawn heavily on outside sources. I’ve looked at the work of US rider coach Keith Code (of the California Superbike School) and his concept of cornering reference points. There’s David Hough’s huge amount of work, the laid-back approach of Nick Ianetsch, as well as ideas from Lee Parks (Total Control) and Reg Pridmore (CLASS) all to be found in my courses. I’ve obtained training material from contacts with the US-based MSF which have influneced my thinking. I’ve incorporated techniques from the Australian ‘Ride On’ programme. Even more recently, the internet has allowed me to swap ideas with and ride with trainers and other motorcyclists from all over the world. And I also have my not-insignificant time as a courier to draw on, something that taught me how easily things can go wrong on the road.

Survival Skills cornering courses have always focused on three aspects of cornering:

  1. hazard awareness, risk assessment and risk management

  2. a system of ‘reference points’ that allows any rider to navigate around any corner

  3. a method of mapping machine inputs – braking, steering, throttle control – to the reference points

Put together, Survival Skills has delivered the unique ‘Point and Squirt’ approach to cornering since 1997. So, is my Point and Squirt approach to corners “Roadcraft with lipstick and blusher” as that critic claimed? Not in my opinion.

Almost as soon as I bought a bike – a lovely little Honda CB125S – and set off on L plates (no compulsory basic training back then) I wanted to find out more about cornering. Just a few months into my riding career, I got hold of the old ‘Blue Book’ police manual. I soon added an IAM book, and progressively added more – who remembers ‘Superbiking’ by Blackett Ditchburn? No? I thought not!

Unfortunately, despite learning about the ‘Police System of Motorcycle Control’, trying to apply it to corners didn’t help much when nobody had told me how to steer – it wasn’t in ‘Roadcraft’ back then. I actually discovered counter-steering thanks to a magazine article whilst I was at college. Turn the bars the wrong way? Madness! But it worked. I taught myself to ‘push right, go right’ and ‘push left, go left’. Even though it wasn’t in ‘Roadcraft’, it got me round corner and also I realised it could help me swerve out of trouble – something that saved me a number of times when I became a courier.

I also learned about how I should use “acceleration sense”, matching the throttle opening (and thus speed) to the radius of a corner as judged by changes to the ‘Limit Point’. Opening and closing the throttle as the radius of the bend changed worked OK on a 12hp 125, and reasonably well a couple of years later on a 37hp 400-F with stiff suspension when I passed my test. But when I added a CX500 to my collection of bikes in 1982, a bike with 50-odd horsepower and a shaft drive, I found any on-off throttle round corners destabilised the soft and relatively long-travel suspension. By trial and error, I found the best way to keep the bike going where I wanted was to slow down a bit earlier, then to keep the throttle steady all the way through the corner from entry to exit. If the bend changed radius, rather than try to change speed with the throttle, I changed lean angle instead. It also worked better on my 400-F, and the technique I’ve continued to use successfully on every bike from a Husqvarna 610TE enduro to a GSX-R sports bike. In short, it works on anything.

Another learning experience was that using a ‘maximum radius’ line that “works the tyres less hard” (that’s a quotation from an early 2000s West Midlands BikeSafe video, one I have in my collection) could have its downsides. When I started riding, the advice in the Highway Code was that riders should still ride three feet (just under a metre) out from the kerb. But more and more riders were rejecting that. So what to use instead? Well, there were lots of magazine articles about the ‘maximum radius line’ where we exploit the width of our lane by riding a ‘wide in, clip the apex, wide out’ racing line. Even if not explicitly suggested, it was definitely hinted at in Roadcraft – just to check my memory was correct, I recently dug out my old ‘Blue Book’ edition of Roadcraft and it does indeed show near-symetrical maximum radius lines worked into the full width of the lane.

So I started using it. There’s another article which goes into more detail but suffice to say, I discovered its drawbacks on the road when I nearly had my head removed by an oncoming police car in the middle of a right-hand bend. In retrospect I suppose ‘racing line’ should have been a clue. The driver didn’t seem too impressed with it either. I’d also discovered that if I got it a bit wrong on a left-hander, I would (and did) end up in a field, I started to use less-aggressive lines that avoided both grass and oncoming police cars. Nevertheless, it’s still being talked about in that much later BikeSafe video.

Although I was still reading anything I could lay my hands on, my cornering skills stagnated through the 80s, mostly because nearly all my riding was as a courier mostly in and around London. But then in 1990 I moved back to Kent. And now I was doing a lot of cross-country courier runs and clocking up a LOT of miles on twisty roads. By coincidence, a series called ‘Survival Arts’ began appearing in the old ‘Motorcycle Sport’ magazine.

In April 1990, the article on cornering jumped out at me. The diagrams showed the rider going much deeper into a corner, then turning tighter later in the bend keeping well away from the centre line (right-hander) or the kerb (left-hander) before exiting on a far less extreme line. It was very different line to the line I’d seen before. And yes, I still have that source too, to double-check.

I remember the day I tried out the Survival Arts line. I was on a run out to Wales on a nice sunny day, and finding it difficult to pass a tractor on a twisty road. I suddenly realised that taking a line on right-handers which went a little deeper in to the turn gave me a good view on the way up to the bend, kept me away from oncoming traffic mid-corner whilst using a quicker, more positive counter-steering input to square off the corners helped me get upright and lined up with the straights sooner. Coming out of a right-hander, I turned the bike tighter onto a straight long enough to pass the tractor. Having got past, I kept trying it, and found it made riding the twisty road a lot easier on left-handers too. It was an absolute revelation. I’ve got some notes dating from 1992 when I actually started to write up the ‘on the road’ benefits of what would become ‘Point and Squirt’. Why Point and Squirt? Because that’s exactly what we do. We wait till we see where the road is going next, then turn sharper, ‘point’ the bike at the exit and turn the throttle harder to ‘squirt’ the bike out down the road to the next hazard.

Soon after, I borrowed a buddy’s copy of Keith Code’s ‘Twist of the Wrist 2’ because I was about to do my first track day. Although a lot of the book was irrelevant to the road (and some almost incomprehensible on first reading), I did take away some postives. Code confirmed my ‘open the throttle all the way through the corner’ approach was right, and his thinking on stability issues and the need to keep the bike upright as much as possible, also confirmed the benefit of the Survival Arts deep in, quick steer approach. He also said “turn only when you see the exit” which I realised is what I was doing with my Survival Arts line. Code’s “steer once” advice and his definition of the exit (“where you can do anything you want with the throttle – pull a wheelie if you want to”) all made immediate sense given what I was already doing.

Code supplied a crucial missing link with his concept of ‘reference markers’ (repeating and easy-to-recognise points in bends). You won’t find this in ‘Roadcraft’ or any of the books based on it. Yet Code’s ‘Two Step’ technique (in short, an approach which gets us to search for one reference point, then when we see it, move our eyes further forward to look for the next) explained when to look, where to look, and what we are looking for. Code provided some crucial missing links and by putting Code’s quick-steer approach, the ‘Two Step’ and the reference marker concept altogether, we have a way of timing braking, steering and acceleration inputs consistently.

By combining what I’d learned from Code with my Survival Arts cornering line, I developed a consistent style that used positively-timed (but NOT ‘harder’) braking to slow whilst upright, a slower, squared-off turning point late in the corner that gets the bike upright earlier, allowing early, positive and upright acceleration out of the bend. My cornering technique took another big step forward – rather than carrying corner speed using the ‘maximum radius’ line as I had on the 125, I was positively sacrificing it.

I got plenty of chance to polish Point and Squirt on long rural courier runs, so let’s fast-forward to 1994 when I got online and began to discuss riding, including my Point and Squirt cornering approach with riders from all over the world. MSF instructor Don Kime sent me some training material which showed how to break down corners using the ‘Slow, Look, Lean, Roll’ approach (quite a few years before Thames Valley Advanced Motorcyclists hi-jacked the technique, incidentally). Now I’d added a way to break the corner down into easily-defined chunks which matched Code’s machine inputs. I also got useful feedback from US riders who’d done Code’s California Superbike School as well as Reg Pridmore’s CLASS in the United States, where the ex-pat British former racer seemed to be teaching a road line not-dissimilar to my Point and Squirt.

By 1996 I was working down in Lydd as a CBT instructor, and I joined a local IAM group. Boy, Point and Squirt did not go down well with my observer. Braking, squaring off, then accelerating upright out of corners; nope, that was all wrong. Instead, I was told how the ‘proper’ approach to cornering was to “vary throttle and speed with radius” and to “smooth out the radius of the corner”. OK, maybe not quite so close to the white paint as my old approach to right-handers, but essentially I was being shown the throttle control that hadn’t worked on my old CX and a near-identical line to the one I’d discarded after the near-decapitation by the police car.

Just a few month later, I ran my own advanced course for one of our trainees who’d recently passed his bike test and turned up with a new machine. I got a day’s warning from the boss, spent the previous evening roughing out a syllabus, and rather than the IAM line it was my own Point and Squirt approach that I showed him. When launched Survival Skills Rider Training in 1997, this reference point-based, slow in on the gas, quick steer and late-turn line was a key part of the two-day Survival: SKILLS course. I’ve continued to develop Point and Squirt, but the essentials were in place.

In early 2000, I was invited to run an advanced riding section on a national motorcycle forum. It rapidly gained members, and questions soon popped up about cornering. When riders had issues cornering, I’d describe the benefits of the Point and Squirt approach. And suddenly, I was being told that this was “the line you’d take if you’d followed the advice in Motorcycle Roadcraft” or that I’d “misunderstood Roadcraft and that if I’d taken IAM training, I’d have been shown how to ‘interpret’ it correctly”.

I checked over my extensive collision of books, articles and videos which date from the early ’70s to see if my memory really was failing but, nope. The Survival Arts line is quite obviously different from diagrams in the ‘Blue Book’ edition of Roadcraft. And there’s that 2000s West Midlands BikeSafe video too (even if the footage clearly shows the rider demonstrating what I’d call Point and Squirt. With hindsight, I’ll concede that there IS a written warning to “tuck in tighter and not to exit too close to the white line on left-handers” in the Blue Book, and the “turn only when you see the exit” advice IS in the mid-90s editions of Roadcraft. But in neither book is the message given any great prominence, possibly because – as is also regularly pointed out – the book was intended to be read alongside the police practical training. However, my response to that is “why write a book with half the story?”

A less charitable suggestion was that I was trying to “score points over other trainers”, or wanted to be the “sole Guardian of the Truth” – if that were true, I’d hardly be explaining how Point and Squirt worked, would I now?

For what it’s worth, a few years after the first “Point and Squirt is just Roadcraft properly explained” bun fight, I met a very nice bloke on a group trip in Europe. He’d had his IAM pass for 20 years but was active in his group. At the end of one of our rides, he quizzed me on the lines I was taking. I explained Point & Squirt. “Nah”, he said, “I don’t like that… it’s all stop/start and sudden jinks… I like match the throttle to the bend mid-corner… and I like to lean the bike and use wide sweeping lines because the bike’s more stable… it’s how my two mates who are both ex-police riders ride too”. Next day I followed him. He was rolling the throttle on and off mid-corner and taking the maximum radius line round bends.

So if Point and Squirt really isn’t ‘Roadcraft-revisited’, does anyone else teach something similar? Some years AFTER I’d talked about Point and Squirt online, Andy Ibbott – then director of the UK outlet of Code’s California Superbike school – wrote about Code’s cornering in ‘Motor Cycle News’. Without calling it Point and Squirt, Andy Morrison of Rapid Training explained it very well indeed in a series in ‘Bike’ magazine between 2005 and 2006, more than ten years after I first started writing about Point and Squirt online, and almost as long after I started teaching it.

So I think I’ve shown that there is a significant difference between the Point and Squirt approach to cornering and what’s covered by Roadcraft-based training. If you’re still struggling to accept that after reading my explanation, maybe book up a course and see for yourself.

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56. Wide lines, tight lines, right lines – the law of Diminishing Returns

This article challenges the idea that “positioning for view” is ‘necessary’ to be seen as an advanced rider. Whilst it’s accepted that “positioning for safety” should always be first in the hierarchy of ‘safety — stability — view’, as an absolute rather than a trade-off. As I’ve said elsewhere, “safety” is an abstract goal, as in “more view must be safer”, but risk is a trade-off between exposure and benefit. Riders often accept a large increase in exposure (to oncoming traffic or hidden hazards) in exchange for a very small gain in information (measured in metres or fractions of a second), without consciously evaluating whether that trade is favourable. The extra metres of visibility only have real value we intend to act on them, and in practice that usually means carrying more speed through the bend, which magnifies the consequences of any mistake. That’s the paradox; more view doesn’t automatically make us safer if we simply use it to ride faster — and that’s where risk creeps back in. The safest line is not the widest or the tightest, but the one that leaves the greatest margin for error when something goes wrong — including our mistakes as well as the mistakes of others.

Wide lines, tight lines, right lines – the law of Diminishing Returns

Years ago, I went along to one of the very first BikeSafe courses run by the Met Police, and had a good day, picking up a couple of useful tips and generally being impressed with the comments. One of my few negative observations on the day was the way the police rider taking us out held a wide line, right out on the white line, around left-hand bends even when there was traffic coming the other way*. I felt the position was too extreme, and when writing up my day out, I made this comment on my regular bike forum. The ensuing discussion surprised me.

One forum member, a former bike cop himself, took me to task and insisted that if the rider gained an extra half-second view ahead, then the wide position was worth it.

I thought about the cornering crash stats, and just how many riders are killed on left-hand corners. It’s pretty obvious that seeing the spiky thing on the front of the tractor half a second sooner if it’s about to impale us doesn’t really help much. A second trainer :

“There are times when position for view is the last thing (but not ‘final’) to be considered. Narrow lanes, tight blind corners? Forget ‘progress’, hug the left verge.”

Then up popped a third instructor with:

“Seeing something half a second earlier CAN make a difference. What is important is that your speed is right such that you are able to deal with any situations as they occur.

“Very often people are simply carrying too much speed as opposed to being in the wrong position. The two combined are a lethal combination, 2 mph can be too much, just lose it and manage the problem.”

So which is it? Should we hold that wider line and get a slightly better view around a left-hander? Or should we tuck in a little closer to the nearside and sacrifice a bit of view for some extra clearance to oncoming vehicles?

The answer, to my mind, usually lies with the simpler option.

If we hold the wide line out alongside the centre line, and we DO see something we need to avoid, then we need to move – and pretty rapidly too – to the left to get out of the way.

If on the same corner we hold a slightly tighter line, we have slightly less view around the corner, but the chances of meeting a vehicle cutting the corner and requiring some evasive action are lessened. And we’ll probably not have to move so far for that evasive manoeuvre.

But there’s another consideration. The only real reason for holding a wide line around a corner is to carry more speed. Think about it – we need to be able to ‘stop in the distance we can see to be clear on our side of the road’ etc. That’s the instruction from ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’, the police manual. If we move left, we can still apply the rule, just at a slightly slower speed because we can see a little less far.

How much is our view restricted? Well, mid-corner it’s not nearly as much as is generally believed. The diagrams in Roadcraft are massively exaggerated in terms of width of the road, simply to make the point clear. But on real roads which are much narrower, the extra distances we can see by taking up wide positions is just a few metres. If you’re sceptical, you can easily see for yourself. Stop near a left-hand bend, and walk to the centre of the lane – look up the road and see where the limit point is. Now walk out to the centre line, and have a second look. You won’t be seeing much further around the corner. If you don’t fancy getting round down, you can achieve much the same result by using the satellite view on Googlemaps and zooming in on a bend. Lay a straight edge over the screen and move it around to simulate the different lines of sight. I think you’ll be surprised how little extra the view moves forward as you shift from a centre-of-the-lane position to the extreme right.

The real benefit of the wide-right position on a left-hander is not what we can see of the the road ahead, it’s actually an earlier view – and more separation from – the other big threat on any twisty road; blind driveways, entrances to fields, and side turnings on the inside of the corner…

…and if we DO find something pulling out from the left or turning into the entrance across our path, we better be able to stop in short order.

Suddenly, the benefits of carrying more speed around the bend don’t look quite so important as the ability to stop when we find the road blocked.

  • I repeated BikeSafe in 2018 and am happy to report that the police rider was taking up rather less extreme positions!

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53. The five most important things I learned as a courier

I might argue that this article has aged better than a few formal training courses from the same era because it is grounded in exposure to risk rather than theory. These lessons were learned in the days before traction control, cornering ABS and driver-assist systems became commonplace, but the fundamentals have not changed. Modern technology may reduce the consequences of mistakes, yet it does nothing to improve anticipation, judgement or decision-making under pressure. I still see my time as a courier as spent in an informal lab testing theory against real-world hazard management. The common thread running through all five points is not speed, but control of space, attention and stress — the same factors that still separate riders who consistently get home safely from those who rely on luck.

The five most important things I learned as a courier

Some years back, I was challenged to put some tips together based on what I’d learned back in my despatching days. It didn’t take much head-scratching to come up with the following short list:

1) Learn to use the brakes hard, then stay in practice… the last emergency stop that most riders make before they find themselves in the middle of a crisis is the one in front of the examiner. That might be ten years ago, and a very bad time to discover we’ve forgotten how is in the middle of an emergency. Practice practice practice. Practice wet and dry. If you change bike, see how it responds on hard braking. If you change tyres, find out how much grip they have. If you change pads, bed them in, test them out and discover whether they respond the same way as the last lot. There can be surprising variation between batchers.

2) Learn when not to use the brakes… we’ll all experience an “OhmigodImgoingtodie” moment. Instinct is screaming at you “STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP”. But hitting the brakes hard stands the bike upright which may take us straight into the very situation we were trying to avoid.Very often our best route out of trouble is not stopping but changing direction – bikes are pretty small, can change direction quickly and fit thru small gaps, and lean much further than most riders can cope with. But to change direction, we need to understand HOW to steer (counter-steering is the answer), then to practice adding more and more steering input to generate a quicker and quicker change of direction. Practice is the only way we’ll learn this technique and just how much we can trust that front tyre (more than you might expect)

3) Learn to search… most road safety literature – the USA’s MSF course excepted – talks about ‘observation’. The problem is observation is passive. It implies we simply swing our gaze around till something interesting catches our attention. A few moments watching most riders and you’ll see they don’t actually look for anything in particular. They’re hoping their attention is drawn to hazards – the danger is that if they don’t see them until they are a real threat, they’ll suffer SURPRISE! and then survival reactions kick in – see the target fixation tip for more on this. So what we need to do is turn passive observation into a focused and active search. We need to know WHERE to look and WHY we’re looking for it. It’s no good knowing that side turnings are a place that must bike collisions happen but hoping we spot them, we have to search for them – we need to actively seek out road signs, gaps between parked cars, breaks in the lines of house roofs, white paint at the side of the road, dropped kerbs and so on. Searching to either side of our path helps us being taken by SURPRISE!

4) Hang back to make better progress… as a courier, I always wanted to get where I was going with the minimum of delay conversant with keeping the risks down. Most riders follow far too close, and then they don’t look any further ahead than the vehicle in front – next time you’re following another rider look to see when his or her brake lights come on – if it’s a moment after the car ahead, they’re watching that vehicle. Opening up a gap not only gives us a safer following distance and opens up a better view of the road ahead, it also frees our attention to start searching beyond the car ahead. And this is how a good courier will make progress. Rather than simply looking to overtake it, the courier’s planned where they’re going next too. When filtering, the courier will know when to hang back as the impatient riders overtake into a dead end or get stuck outside traffic turning right. Hanging back gets you further ahead mentally and physically.

5) Discover that slow is fast… too many riders think that being on a bike means they should be at the head of the queue. Ever heard anyone say “if I sat in the queue I might as well be in a car”? I have, regularly. But it’s not the right approach. Because they’re in a hurry, they’re stressed and prone to mistakes. And mistakes lead to spills. That’s no good to a courier because a bent bike means no earnings. And no earnings meant no food or rent money. There’s nothing wrong with using gaps where it’s sensible to use them but I would also slip back into the queue when it got too tricky or too risky to overtake or filter. My aim as a courier was always to flow unobtrusively through traffic, neither wedging myself into impossible gaps nor forcing drivers to slow down to let me through. It might have cost me a few seconds, even minutes, but being restrained and patient minimised stress and anxiety and helped me to stay relaxed. Being relaxed meant I could ride for long hours. And that meant the tortoise nearly always overtook the hare in the end.

Summing up: None of these lessons require you to ride for a living, or to ride fast. What courier work teaches is not aggression or risk-taking, but economy: economy of effort, economy of stress, and economy of mistakes. The aim is to arrive unruffled, unhurried and upright, time after time. Riders who chase gaps, sit on bumpers and ride with a constant sense of urgency often believe they are making progress, but in reality they are burning attention and increasing risk. The courier mindset is the opposite. Control your speed, create space, stay relaxed and plan ahead, and you will usually find that you arrive sooner — and far more consistently — than riders who mistake haste for skill.

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41. Getting our retaliation in first – pro-active versus reactive riding

Pro-active riding remains central to modern motorcycle safety. While updates such as advanced rider aids and digital alerts can support our awareness, nothing replaces the skill of anticipating hazards before they develop. By assessing potential conflict points, adjusting lane position, controlling speed, and signalling or alerting other road users early, riders can actively manage risk rather than waiting to react. The earlier we plan and act, the less likely we are to be taken by surprise: No surprise? No accident!

Getting our retaliation in first – pro-active versus reactive riding

Since I launched my Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses back in 1997, the thinking underpinning my approach to riding hasn’t changed at all. I’ve always thought – based on my experience as a motorcycle courier – that whilst we need to plan for things to go wrong, we don’t actually need to wait until people make mistakes around us. We can anticipate problems, then respond in such as way as to cancel out the problem before it develips. Nevertheless, there have been changes in other places, particularly around the motorcycle test itself. The theory test aims to ensure that riders already have a degree of ability to see into the future before they take the practical test, but the first time I saw the hazard perception videos I thought it was a lost opportunity. Despite the latest innovation – the clips are now based on CGI – I still think they are poorly-conceived. Read on and find out why.

One of concepts underpinning ‘advanced’ riding is the idea that we should apply observation, anticipation and concentration to the riding task. The idea is that by avoiding distraction and focusing on the task in hand – riding the bike – we’ll be more able to identify hazards and work out how they might affect us. But there’s another necessary stop – we have to have a plan to deal with those hazard IF things get tricky. It’s no good seeing a car at the side of the road, and knowing it COULD pull out if we don’t have a plan in mind to deal with the situation if it does emerge into our path. That’s the true essence of a riding plan – we know what’s coming next and we know what we’re going to do to deal with it.

But we can go a step further – we may be able to see how a situation could develop and take a course of action which actively minimises or even cancels out the risk.

Back in 1999, I got hold of a copy of the brand-new BikeSafe 2000 video produced by the Thames Valley police. Although it’s now two decades old, it covers some excellent ground. In particular, I noticed the use of the terms reactive and pro-active – two terms I’ve talked about in my training since 1997. At the time, these terms were not in regular use.

Even now, the distinction between them is not so well-known, perhaps because of the way that the DVSA set up their hazard perception videos. The DVSA recognise three levels of hazard, where a hazard is defined as something that poses a threat with a consequent risk of personal harm:

a potential hazard is something that may or may not become a threat

a developing hazard is something that will require an intervention by the rider in the immediate future

an actual hazard needs to be dealt with NOW!

When the DSA (as was) brought their roadshow around the country to show of the new hazard perception videos, one of the clips I was shown revealed a kiddie on a bicycle cycling down a footpath across a playing field to the nearside of the car. The footpath was angled to intersect with the road some distance ahead, and it appeared that the cyclist would arrive at the end of the footpath at about the same time as the camera vehicle.

As you’d probably expect – it’s a hazard perception video after all – I decided that the cyclist was a hazard almost as soon as he appeared, and clicked on him. He carried on down the path, and bunny-hopped off the pavement and into the road just in front of the camera car. Job done, I thought…

…except that I had scored zero for video.

Why? The presenter explained. “You clicked too early”.

Eh? How can you spot a hazard ‘too early’?

The answer is that at the point where I clicked, the situation was still fluid and the outcome could have changed – the cyclist could have veered off the path onto the grass, slowed down or even stopped. He was only a ‘potential’ hazard. So identifying the cyclist as a hazard at this point was too early.

Being slightly bemused by this, the presenter further explained that if I’d left my ‘click’ until he bunny-hopped off the pavement into the road, that would also have scored zero because I would then have identified the hazard too late – in the car, I would have needed to take sudden evasive action to avoid what was now an ‘actual’ hazard.

The ‘sweet spot’ which would score maximum points was a narrow zone where the cyclist had been in sight for several seconds but was still heading for the road and just a couple of seconds from bunny-hopping his bike out into the road. This was where the hazard was ‘developing’ and would leave me time to steer or brake smoothly to avoid the bike rider.

What should be pretty obvious is that if wait until the cyclist puts us into a position where we will have to change speed or direction, then we’re not being pro-active. We’re being reactive. We’re waiting until we don’t have a choice. It may not be an emergency reaction but it’s too late.

Personally, I’m still puzzled as to why the DVSA’s hazard perception clips require such a last-moment response. I’d argue that the earlier we see a hazard, the sooner we can plan our strategy and get into a position where we are able to ‘get our retaliation in first’. Maybe as soon as the cyclist appeared, I could take up a much wider position away from the kerb. Maybe I could accelerate a little to clear the potential zone of conflict before the cyclist gets there. Maybe I could even sound the horn to get him to look round. All these are pro-active responses.

Being pro-active in this way is the next step after anticipation. If working out that the cyclist is on a potential collision course is risk assessment, then being pro-active is risk MANAGEMENT. And the really big plus is that if we’re already taking steps, we’re not going to be taken by SURPRISE! No Surprise? No Accident.

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39. KISS – ‘Keep it simple, Stupid’ because outcomes matter more than choreography

I’m a big fan of ‘Low Effort Biking’ and picking the least-technically difficult course of action to deliver a specific outcome. The reasons are simple — reduced workload, simplifed decision-making, fewer points at which a manoeuvre can break down. Yet, there’s always been a tendency to equate “advanced” riding with technically intricate techniques. The central argument here remains unchanged: what matters is the outcome, not the choreography. Simpler methods generally leave more margin, create fewer failure points, and are easier to recover from when something goes wrong — which, on real roads, it inevitably will.

 

KISS – ‘Keep it simple, Stupid’ because outcomes matter more than choreography

If there are two ways to achieve the same end, which is the best? If the end result is the same, then it’s probably to keep using the method that’s least technically difficult. It’s a general rule that the more complicated a procedure, there more there is to go wrong and thus the more likely things are to go wrong. And guess what? An accusation that can be thrown at advanced motorcycle riding is that we like to make things complicated. Just look at the way positioning gets described; not “left, right or centre of the lane”. Instead, it’s “position one, position two, position three”. There are plenty more examples of how rather than simplifying riding, we seem to want to make it more technically awkward. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning new skills and mastering new techniques – after all, it’s what I’m in the business of developing for riders on my Survival Skills post-test training courses. But shouldn’t we be looking for ways to apply those skills in ways that make life a bit easier, not more tricky?

Let’s start with a simple task – turning the bike round so it faces the other way in the road. How can we achieve that? Most of us would immediately say “by making a U-turn”. But is that the SIMPLEST way? I once got an e-mail from a trainee who’d hospitalised himself just a few weeks after I’d shown him how to make a three-point turn. He’d mistaken his route, found himself facing a gate on a dead-end lane and tried to perform a U-turn. Realising it was going wrong, and that he was about to lose his balance, he stuck out a leg to try to stop the bike toppling. He saved the bike but at the expense of a leg fracture. Ouch.

That may be an extreme injury, but there are plenty of bikes sporting the scars of a ‘dropped it doing a U-turn’ incident.

So are there easier ways? For sure. I can do U-turns – I’ve demo’d enough over the years. But when I’m NOT demonstrating the manoeuvre, I rarely bother. I’ll ride around the block or find a petrol station or car park to reverse direction. I’ll even perform a three-point turn. Why? Because it keeps things simple, and removes some unnecessary risk because as we’ve just seen, U-turns DO go wrong.

I’m not saying that being able to turn the bike accurately in a tight space is not a necessary skill, because it is – the technique is needed for tight turns or junctions where there is restricted space, to move around parked vehicles, to negotiate mini-roundabouts and hairpin bends. But there’s little point in making awkward manoeuvres if we don’t NEED to.

Here’s another example. Have you watched someone riding at walking pace twenty metres back from a red traffic light? Have you ever wondered what possible advantage they are gaining from their maneouvre? I have. That rider is not going to make any ‘better progress’ away from the lights than I am, sat there stationary at the STOP line. Any arguments that it’s easier on the engine or saves fuel are nonsensical. And whilst I am sat stationary and nicely balanced with a foot on the floor, I have all the time in the world to watch the mirrors for vehicles coming up from behind. Balancing at slow speed, where’s our focus – on maintaining our balance, or on the mirrors?

Once again, this isn’t saying I’m advocating rushing up to the lights and banging the brakes on at the last second. I’ll roll off and slow down smoothly, in the hope that red will turn back to green allowing me to roll through without stopping. But the walking pace performance seems to have been taken to a point where it serves no useful function except to make life more complicated for the rider.

Some years ago, I was being given a demo ride by a police rider. His tyres were alongside the white line on left-handers and almost in the gutter on right-handers. After a bit he stopped and asked: “why aren’t you following my lines?” I gave him one reason – his sticky back tyre was picking up stone chips and flinging them at me, so I was riding inside his lines to stay clear of the pebble-dashing treatment. But the real reason was that I simply didn’t need to. We weren’t riding at such as speed that we needed to widen the line to stretch out our stopping distance by extending “the distance we could see to be clear”, even if moving another half-metre left or right would have given me a much better view. Instead, it becomes an exercise in maintaining a very precise path – get it wrong and we’re either over the centre line or off the tarmac.

The general technique of using the width of the lane makes sense. But taking it to extremes doesn’t.

And there’s one area where keeping things as simple and as fool-proof as possibile really should get more airtime. And that’s when overtaking. In terms of risk – the chance of something going wrong multiplied by the impact on us when it does – overtaking is almost certainly the most dangerous manoeuvre we perform on a motorcycle. But we treat overtaking as a ‘skill’, and we even try to demonstrate how ‘skillful’ our overtakes are. I once watched another rider coming up behind me on a busy road. He performed a whole series of overtakes, leapfrogging past HGV after HGV. Each time, he waited for a gap in the oncoming traffic and moved forward one truck. Technically proficient, indeed. After ten minutes of this, he was a couple of HGVs ahead of me.

Then we stopped at a red light, and as the queue formed, I filtered back past him to the front of the queue. Which manoeuvre was easier? Who took less risk? OK, the lights may not have changed but each pass put him a couple of seconds further ahead. Even if I’d trailed him into the next town I’d have been just a couple of minutes behind. If there’s one thing I learned back in my courier days, all overtakes are risky, and complex overtakes have a habit of going wrong. ‘Just because we can’ is not a justification for overtaking. I’ll take the easier option. And if an easier option doesn’t appear? Well, I’m not in that much of a rush.

I’ll conclude with two other observations.

Firstly, the more technically complex our riding, the more we have to focus on what we’re doing. And that’s tiring. I still spend long days in the saddle and reducing stress and staying as fresh as possible has major safety benefits because a knackered rider is a rider at risk. Stopped at a red light, I get a few moments to move around and stretch muscles that haven’t moved for a while, and can mentally switch off (rear observation excepted). Overtaking is physically and mentally tiring, above and beyond any progress benefits that may accrue, so seeking out the low effort overtakes is entirely beneficial.

Secondly, whilst there’s absolutely nothing wrong with gaining new and improved skills and knowledge, that doesn’t mean we have to exploit them. In fact, the deeper we can operate within our own skills ‘comfort zone’, the more margin for adjustment we have. It doesn’t matter whether it’s confidence at outright lean angle, our braking technique or the ability to judge the speed and distance of an oncoming car to a nicety. The more we push towards those limits, the less we have in hand in case things go wrong. And remember, the Survival Skills approach to advanced motorcycle riding is always to remember that things CAN go wrong.

So how do we manage a three-point turn on a bike when we don’t have reverse?

Quite simple. Have a good look round and start your turn just like you were about to perform a U-turn but stop with the front wheel in the centre of the road. Here’s the clever bit. Most roads are cambered, so gravity substitutes for reverse, making it easy to paddle backwards – just remember to turn the front wheel the other way. Back at the kerb, you’re probably angled where you want to go next, so one final check and you’re away. If the road’s really narrow, make it a five point turn. ‘Less-skilled’? Maybe, if our definition of skill is making life difficult for ourselves.

And there’s a safety benefit. When performing a U-turn a motorcycle cannot block the road in the same way that a car performing a three-point turn will. I’ve had cars cut past my learners in mid U-turn just because they can. If it was scary for me, it must have been heart-stopping for the trainees. Now, if you’re performing a three-point turn, as soon as you stop, half the road is free for any impatient driver to pass.

So my take on riding is that eliminating complex techniques makes life easier. Ask yourself – are you doing something because you need to? Or because it’s nice? Remember KISS – Keep it simple, Stupid.

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34. Roundabouts routines – straight lines, wide lines, stability, view, advantage and risk

This is likely one of my most contentious posts as my position is very far from the ‘straight lines are stable lines’ approach to riding roundabout followed by many advanced riders and regularly promoted by advanced trainers. Roundabouts are junctions first and foremost, and the dominant risks are not loss of grip or any other issues caused by steering the bike but the potential for misunderstanding, misjudgement, and conflict with other road users. In that sense, a line that reduces lean angle but potentially hides the approaching bike from turning traffic and makes emerging vehicles harder to see at the same time, then increases ambiguity about the rider’s intent is not inherently safer simply because an upright line feels more stable, particularly if the rider then uses the straight line to carry more speed. In the Survival Skills approach, stability is a secondary benefit; predictability, defence, and escape options come first.

Roundabouts routines – straight lines, wide lines, stability, view, advantage and risk

A recurring topic is how to deal with roundabouts. Essentially, the problem is that there is a head-on collision between the DVSA approach as taught to new riders which follows the advice in the Highway Code, and advice from advanced sources which often talks about ‘straightening out’ roundabouts. I’ve even seen one highly dubious article which advocated turning left from the right-hand side and turning right from the left-hand side race track style. The justification was ‘more progress’ and you can probably guess by now that I thought that was extremely poor advice because roundabouts are junctions. My first (and last) question to anyone advocating a roundabout as a suitable place to be making progress is “would you speed up through a crossroads?” I think you can guess the answer to that. Here’s my own Survival Skills thinking.

Roundabouts are a kind of junction. And anywhere traffic flows cross each other are potentially dangerous places, particularly where the flow – as is the case at most roundabouts – is regulated by ‘Give Way’ markings. Like any other junction, the point of highest risk is where vehicles on conflicting courses merge and separate again.

Drivers have problems with motorcycles at junctions. Sometimes they look and cannot see the motorcycle because something blocks their view. Sometimes they look and fail to see – there are a number of well-defined reasons for this. And sometimes they see the bike, but misjudge its speed and distance, and commit to a potentially dangerous manoeuvre.

And roundabouts are also places where drivers and riders get confused about each others’ intentions. It’s not always immediately obvious where another vehicle is going.

I didn’t learn any of that from a book. I learned it all by bitter experience as a courier. Put it all together, and my experience tells me that manoeuvres that aim for us to get out the other side a second or two earlier really aren’t very sound ones.

The article in question suggested :

“If you wish to turn left or right at the roundabout then (again assuming there is no other traffic about) you will need to maximise the radius of the turn within the constraints of the road-layout”.

The diagram shows a left-turn line with a far right approach, clipping the inside kerb and exiting near the centre white line, and the mirror image for a right-turn line – a far left approach, clipping the island and exiting close to the left hand kerb.

Need? Do we NEED to maximise the radius of the turn? Of course not.

But beyond whether it’s ‘nice’ or ‘necessary’, let’s have a think about some genuine concerns with this approach.

Let’s start by pointing out that it’s entirely the opposite of the ‘keep left to turn left, keep right to turn right’ approach taught to every new driver. The standard approach is taught for a pair of very good reasons. The first is that our position sends a signal to other road users, just as much as the use of an indicator. So if we’re approaching wide left with a right indicator showing, what’s the driver to think? Maybe that we’ve forgotten to cancel the signal. And maybe he or she will believe the position rather than the signal, and pull out. The biggest plus for following the same Highway Code lines around roundabouts as we teach on basic training is that it sends clear and unambiguous signals to other road users – including pedestrians or cyclists who might be crossing the side roads, let us not forget – about our intentions. If everyone stuck to the Highway Code approach, none of us would ever be confused as to what anyone else intended. The moment we start using a non-standard approach, there’s a significant risk of confusion – other drivers won’t anticipate the manoeuvre. That’s when things go pearshaped!

The second reason is defensive. Anyone who’s ever watched a race, car or motorcycle, will know that a wide approach to a corner leaves a big gap that anyone wanting to overtake will attempt to exploit. Turning left or right from a wide position opens up a huge hole. We’re liable to find a following vehicle attempting to fill it, and if that vehicle’s going straight ahead, we have a major problem.

Someone pointed out that the statement about “assuming there is no other traffic about” means we don’t need to factor in these issues. But how often can we be ABSOLUTELY certain the junction is completely clear? Few roundabouts have perfect views to the left or right, and many have the ahead view OVER the top of the island deliberately obscured, precisely to make us more circumspect about zooming around the roundabout just as someone coming the other way turns right across our path. And did YOU think of pedestrians and cyclists?

And how far back does “no other traffic” have to extend? What if another vehicle appears just as we commit ourselves to this confusing path? When I see riders exploiting these kind of lines on roundabouts, it’s often taken to mean “no other traffic already in my path”. Hmm.

But thirdly, I’d have a concern even on a totally deserted roundabout. What should be our biggest concern after conflicts with other traffic? How about the surface? We could find a change of surface, potholes, poorly-finished repairs, gravel and bits of debris just out of sight. And where could any forward-thinking rider reasonably expect to find a diesel or fuel spill? I’d be looking for it on the wide exit to a left turn and a wide exit to a right turn – right where this article suggests we should plan to head.

And my fourth concern would be changing line if a problem emerges. Does this maximum radius line make it easier or more difficult to change direction if we need to take evasive action? If we use the line to carry more speed, the answer’s fairly obvous. And if we slow down in case we encounter a problem, what’s the benefit of maximising the radius of the turn in the first place? None that I can see.

So I would stick to the ‘keep left to turn left, keep right to turn right’ approach. But what about going straight ahead? Isn’t it safe enough to straighten out a roundabout if it’s clear? Isn’t it possible to approach on on the left, then clip the island mid-roundabout, then exit back on the left?

This is sometimes called the kerb-kerb-kerb (KKK) line and the “if it’s clear” statement is the crucial one.

Some years back, I nearly had two riders – judging by the bibs they were a pair from the local advanced group – buried in the side of my people carrier. I was emerging from a junction, the road was clear to my right so I started to pull forward. Fortunately, I was still checking right because this pair were cutting over the cross-hatched zone designed to force vehicles to the right where they can be seen. The road layout was modified precisely because emerging vehicles cannot see around the hedge belonging to a cottage that’s right on the corner to the emerging vehicle’s right. If I had been less cautious, I doubt they would have avoided me as I pulled out. We would never keep tight to the left passing a side turning on the left because it restricts our view, but that’s what this KKK approach implies. And if you think about it, it also restricts our view of traffic coming around the island from the opposite direction, traffic that might be turning across our path.

On another occasion, it was me using the KKK line and I nearly got taken out by a following Kawasaki rider. Having followed me on my KKK line through the previous three roundabouts, for some reason he tried to out-brake me into the fourth. Fortunately for both of us, I was watching my mirrors and was able to give him room, but had I held my line across the island, he would have speared me. So we don’t just need to think about wringing advantage from a roundabout, but to think how we can use our lines to defend our position.

As you can see, I ride with different priorities on roundabouts.

So on Survival: SKILLS two-day course or my one-day Survival: URBAN course?

I look for defensive approaches, not wringing out some marginal ‘advantage’. The Highway Code approach line, keeping left when we intend to turn left, or keeping right when we plan on turning right, is a ‘blocking’ line with respect to following vehicles, and also helps confirm our indicators by sending a clear signal to other road users about where we want to go. The slower, tighter turn may mean less speed around the corner itself, but keeps us away from the likely location of a diesel spill or gravel accumulations, and also makes it easier to change direction – or even stop – if needed. Avoiding a maximum radius line means less speed mid-corner but gets us upright sooner, just like the Survival Skills ‘Point and Squirt’ – that means we’re back on the throttle sooner, and quicker away from the roundabout.

But I have created a variation on the KKK approach – and it works within the Highway Code instructions.

Let’s start with self-defence. I’ll take the usual Survival Skills approach by analysing what can go wrong. Although we tend to worry about traffic coming round the island from our right, that’s not actually the biggest threat because WE choose whether or not to pull out. What we CANNOT control is the driver of a vehicle emerging from our LEFT once we’re on the roundabout. It’s not a problem if we turning left at the first exit, and it’s not too much of an issue when turning right, because we’re over by the island and relatively far away. But the recommended Highway Code approach to going straight on – keeping left all the way around the outside of the island – puts us at considerable risk from drivers pulling out in front of us. There’s are secondary risk that vehicles may try to overtake or cut the corner on the way off the island. To monitor BOTH threats, we’re looking left and over our right shoulder. And finally, if a vehicle does emerge from the left AND we have another alongside on the right, we’ve no escape route – our only option is an emergency stop.

So here’s the Survival Skills approach. Instead of keeping left to go ahead, keep RIGHT. If there’s a single approach lane, keep right-of-centre. If there are two or more lanes, use the right-hand lane. Arriving at the island, the first thing that does is give us a slightly better view to our RIGHT, to search for oncoming vehicles turning across our path. This makes pulling onto the island slightly easier. But the big benefits happen once we’re on the island. Now ALL the danger is to our LEFT whether a vehicle in the adjacent lane, or a driver who might pull out from the exit ahead of us. That means we only have to look one way until we’re off the roundabout. We’re also further away from the exit to the left – the driver will have to move a long way to get into our path. And there’s one final bonus – if a driver DOES pull out and block our own path, we have an escape route – we can simply do a lap of the island. And if nothing goes wrong, and if our route ahead is clear, we can exit off into the left-hand lane as in the second half of the KKK line. All we have sacrificed is the straightest line onto the island, but if all’s clear we can take the straightest line off. And the right-hand lane approach to go straight ahead IS in the Highway Code so there’s a lowered risk of confusion.

Understanding risk THEN ACTIVELY SEEKING TO REDUCE IT is at the heart of the Survival Skills approach to riding. ‘Progress’ comes as a result of having eliminated risk. We should never seek ‘advantage’ in ways that increase risk. And if we can keep things simple at the same time, then so much the better.

Final point. The impression we make on others matters. If drivers see us ignoring the Highway Code lines, it simply reinforces the negative impressions most other road users hold about motorcyclists, however much we might impress our mates with our lines. Doesn’t advanced riding consider ‘the other fellow’ too?

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30. The Limit (or Vanishing) Point – is it enough?

Years after I wrote this, and even now after I updated it, I still think that the belief that the Limit Point is of prime importance when setting our speed in corners is massively overstated. What I would add now is that there is a distinction between the static Limit Point — where road edges converge at any particular instant — and the dynamic Limit Point — how is our sense of how this point is moving back and forth as our bike moves along the road. And — in my opinion at least — it should never be the sole determinant of speed into a corner. It’s often hard to detect road irregularities on fast sweeping bends until we’re much closer, the gaps in hedges where other vehicles may appear frequently only ‘uncloak’ well after the Limit Point is reached, and there’s no guarantee that any hazard that reveals itself via the forward movement of the Limit Point is actually stationary — if it’s moving towards us, we could easily run out of braking distance. To me, these are blindly obvious limitations. Yet decades after I first wrote about them, they are rarely covered in any discussion of the Limit Point. Treat is as one tool among many; a guide to road direction and potential speed adjustments, rather than a definitive target for acceleration, braking or — most crucially of all — stopping! For riders of all levels, it’s integrating “what we can see” with “what we can’t see” and being ready to deal with the latter, by thinking well beyond the Limit Point that is paramount to safe cornering.

The Limit (or Vanishing) Point – is it enough?

As soon as we take a look at post-test motorcycle training, one of the concepts we’re likely to come across is something called the Limit Point or the Vanishing Point (or Convergence Point or Visual Point – call it what you like, it’s the same thing). It gets particular focus in UK-based post-test training because it appears in the police handbook ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’. And because the police manual discusses it, it’s a feature of the IAM’s own RoadSmart ‘Advanced Rider Course’ and in the training delivered by RoSPA instructors and virtually anyone else who bases their training on UK police practice. Not surprisingly, it also regularly pops up on advanced riding videos and guides in magazines and on the internet. It’s also been adopted abroad. So just how useful is it? And just how do we set our speed for a bend? Is it ONLY based on ‘limit point analysis’?

Because the Limit Point has been explained so many times and done to a crispy turn on the internet, I left it the topic alone for many years – why add another article to an already-sizeable pile that say much the same?

So what changed my mind?

Have a read of this. It’s a post made on the bike forum I used to moderate by another advanced instructor with impressive ex-police credentials:

“The main thing you have to learn about safe riding is the visual point or vanishing point. I teach this to clients all the time. Some tell me in detail how or what they look at at and when I take them out on the road it seems no one understands it too well. All police riding is based on this because if you know how to use it, it gives you everything you want. Position on the road, speed on the approach to any bend, how fast you can enter the bend, how much power to apply to the throttle, where to move the bike from the corner for the next position. In my experience it is not the technique that is hard but the believing what you see and having confidence to use it anywhere in the world. It is very exciting once you know how it works.”

The writer continued by explaining the ‘stop in the distance we can see to be clear’ rule, and explained that as the limit point is as far as we can see, that’s where we need to be able to stop.

“Everything you want”?

Really? Not in my book it doesn’t.

Firstly, it’s assuming that any obstacle in our lane revealed by the receding Limit Point will be stationary. Of course there’s no guarantee that’s the case as any biker who has ever misjudged an overtake approaching a corner and gone into it on the wrong side of the road will know. The narrower the road and the tighter the corner, the more likely we are to encounter a vehicle crossing into our lane, and in the worst case, driving towards us in it. It’s important that we add the extra words that are actually clearly stated within ‘Roadcraft’ – and that is that we must actually be able to “stop WELL WITHIN in the distance we can EXPECT TO REMAIN clear”. That’s a significant difference.

Secondly – and this is not mentioned explicitly in ‘Roadcraft’ – there’s always the possibility of an oncoming car turning across our path. Now, if we’re rounding a left-hander, we’ll see that car appear a few moments before we can see the junction it’s aiming for on the inside of the corner – our line of sight always unveils the outside of the bend before we see the corresponding point on the inside of the corner. What that should tell us is that we won’t know if there’s an emerging car on the inside of the bend, even though our formal Limit Point is already beyond it. The reverse applies on a right-hander. We’ll see the junction to the inside of the bend, but the oncoming vehicle about to cross our path into it will be out of sight. Just as ‘Roadcraft’ says – without explaining why – we MUST be able to stop well before we reach the Limit Point.

Here’s a third issue that isn’t mentioned either. Let me introduce you to what are sometimes called ‘Surprise Horizons’. A Surprise Horizon is any point which lies between us and the Limit Point, from which another vehicle (or cyclist, pedestrian or even an animal) MIGHT EMERGE and BLOCK OUR PATH. And that means we actually need to do is be able to STOP at that point, NOT at the Limit Point. And that is a very different concept. The term Surprise Horizon comes from a book called ‘Mind Driving’ by Stephen Haley, a car trainer.
Even though we might have a clear view of the Limit Point itself, a Surprise Horizon can lurk unseen in any blind area. Even on a near-straight road, a slight kink in the hedge, the narrow gap between two buildings, an opening between parked cars, or a blind crest all have the potential to conceal anything from a tractor tugging a trailer to a sheep.

So what’s my conclusion? That used sensibly it works well with other observation links but that it should be considered just one tool in your box of tricks to read corners, not the “be all and end all” of your cornering technique.

Anyway, I posted something to this effect on the forum and two wags read it and replied…

“So isn’t the “Vanishing point” simply the farthest you can see down the road? Or is that too simple?”

“Way, Way too simple. This is technical stuff we’re talking about here. The vanishing point is the point where the left and right verges appear to converge, or in other words, the farthest you can see down the road. Does that make it clear?”

I had to laugh… sometimes a simple, useful technique that should be obvious and straightforward can be elevated to semi-mystical status!

The Surprise Horizon concept is one that really should be added to ‘Roadcraft’ and to any explanation of how to apply the Limit point concept to judge speed. If we simply see the road as guaranteed to stay empty between ourselves and the Limit Point, we really are risking a nasty SURPRISE! And remember…

No Surprise? No Accident!

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29. Avoiding diesel and other slippery spills

Unusually this is an area where things genuinely have improved for motorcyclists. Improvements in commercial vehicle design, tighter fleet maintenance standards, and just possibly a faster clean-up of reported spills mean that streaks of diesel on roundabouts and bends are now far less common than they were in my courier days, even in the early part of my instructing career. Police collision data has long suggested that fuel spills are blamed for more crashes than they actually cause, and reduced exposure has only reinforced that trend. However, this does not mean slippery contaminants have disappeared altogether. We still need the same level of anticipation, observation, and margin — if anything, newer riders are likely to be less aware of the issue than those of us with a long backstory of dodging diesel. And it’s always worth remembering that ANY liquid will have less traction that the dry or uncontaminated tarmac.

Avoiding diesel and other slippery spills

My first introduction to the slippery nature of fuels spilled on the road came soon after I’d taken my 125 up to London. I stopped at a pedestrian crossing, three bikes came flying past me, turned right and promptly formation-crashed. As I pulled away, the 125 span the back wheel. Even that early on in my riding career I knew that wasn’t quite right and took the corner rather more slowly than the other bikes. A truck was parked halfway up the hill with a split tank and some fireman throwing bags of sand around it. The slick reached right down the hill to where the bikes had crashed. That was a while ago, and on purely observational evidence, it seems to me that fuel spills are much less common than when I was a courier. Moreover, evidence from police accident investigations suggests that despite the popular belief that oil and diesel cause bike crashes, the real crash numbers are low. That might be why in a long discussion on the problems of diesel on one of my favourite forums most of the correspondents had mates “who have crashed on diesel”, yet surprisingly few actually put up their hands and said “I’ve crashed on it myself”.

Nevertheless, it’s as well to be on the alert. As with all hazards, the first thing to consider is where we might find it, secondly how to spot it, and thirdly and to have some idea of what to do if we do spot ANY oil, diesel or petrol spill – they are ALL slippery.

Where might we find diesel and petrol (it’s slippery too) spilled on the road? The obvious answer is where vans, trucks and buses start with full tanks. And that means ports, industrial estates and bus depots, particularly in the morning. Leaving aside the random spills from a split tank, or from the van that had taken off its sump on high kerb round a traffic-calming ‘pinch point’ (it didn’t get far but left quite a slick for half a mile), keep an eye open where vehicles change direction – corners, junctions and particularly roundabouts are likely problem areas.

Combine a roundabout with exits marked INDUSTRIAL ESTATE and we should be on alert. Back when I was a trainer in Lydd, my homeward route took me round the Ashford ring road, which has a dozen industrial estates round it. Just as I was slowing for a right turn at one of the roundabouts, a guy on an R1 flew past signalling right as well. Knee out, he vanished around the back of the island but never reappeared. Going round rather more cautiously, I avoided the big streak of diesel and stopped to lend a hand. Rider unhurt but bike rather sad, having flipped over after sliding into the kerb. I left him arranging a van ride home. If we’re apply the ‘stop in the distance we can see to be clear’ rule, don’t forget it applies to road surface too.

Another good rule-of-thumb is that diesel spotted on one corner will probably reappear on the next. Another courier followed me carefully round one left-hander leading out of one London square as we both avoided the diesel. He overtook me, and promptly crashed on the left-hander leading into the next square just few hundred metres further on. As I stopped to help him untangle the bike from the railings, he said: “I didn’t expect diesel on that bend too”.

Err, right. So where did you expect it?

Most spills either come from overflows on over-filled tanks (much rarer now) or when drivers forget to put the filler cap on. Don’t laugh – I forgot to put the bike filler cap on once, because the tank bag covered it. A lapful of fuel reminded me, but the driver won’t know. The fuel is likely to be be spilled outwards so look for it on the outside of the lane – near the centre line on a left-hander or the kerb on a right-hander. But don’t forget a oncoming vehicle could slosh it our side of the centre line on a right-hander too.

Watching the surface is one reason for not trailing a vehicle ahead too close. If we see temporary slippery road signs or even police SLOW triangles, take care – it could be a spillage or even accident ahead, and there may well be a slippery cocktail of detergent, diesel, engine oil and antifreeze on the road.

See if you can spot the spill. In the rain, oil produces the familiar rainbow effect. It looks scary because the rain washes the oil right over the road, but in fact the rainbow effect is produced by a layer just one molecule thick. A single drop of oil can produce a big circular rainbow patch. It’s slippery but not lethal – the tyres will cut down to the surface. But if we see the rainbow right across the road, then it’s a bigger spill. Try to see which way the rainbow’s being washed – the source is probably in the other direction and that’s the area to keep clear of.

Unfortunately, in the dry, there’s no warning rainbow. The best advice I can give you is that fresh oil and diesel is very wet-looking and very shiny. It’s looks like ‘very wet water’ for want of a better description. A big diesel spill in the dry can often be smelled. So use your nose. A dulled black streak is almost certainly an old spill, and unlikely to be particularly slippery. But it’s worth knowing that if it rains, old spills can be ‘reactivated’, particularly by a short shower after a long dry spell.

Don’t forget petrol can also be spilled. It’s just as slippery as diesel but harder to see – it looks like water. Whenever possible, keep clear of any unusual wet-looking patches.

Interestingly, in that forum discussion, there was little useful advice, beyond declarations that “it’ll will have you off if you hit it” statements.

Ideally, we do want to stay off it if possible. It’s just a matter of having the speed and lean angle in hand to change line and direction. But sometimes we simply have cross a spill. It’s straightforward enough if we can avoid leaning and braking (the usual instinct) as we cross it, and instead keep the bike as upright as possible. For that reason if I find a spill mid-corner, I tend to steer INSIDE it, even if that means sacrificing my view round the bend. Why? I may have to cross it. If I’m on the inside, I can pick the machine up and cross it upright, before leaning over again back on clean tarmac. But if I’m on the outside and need to cross it, I actually need to increase my lean angle. Not a good plan. And don’t forget that the tyres will take a moment to clean off – don’t bang the bike straight over on its side, but ease it over.

Look ahead, think ahead, plan ahead, and oil and diesel should be no more than a minor – if potentially dangerous – irritant.