Tag: traction

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59. Straight line -vs- trail braking

The next article was written well over twenty years ago, well before the current influencer-fuelled fad for trail braking as the ‘right way’ to enter corners became popularised on social media, usually without any cautions as to what happens if the level of grip under the tyres changes whilst the rider is braking and leaning simultaneously. Traction is not just finite, it’s unpredictably variable. There lies the risk on the road.

What I could have made clearer is that I believed then (and still do now) that trail braking is an entirely valid ‘get out of trouble’ technique. When we realise we’re running into a corner too rapidly, and leaning the bike alone is not going to avoid an off-road excursion, then using both front and rear brakes to bleed off some speed and tighten the radius of the turn is likely to be our way out of trouble. I taught it on my first Performance: BENDS courses in the late ’90s and I still cover it now, so I’m not ‘anti-trail braking’ as I have sometimes been labelled. To my mind, it’s a technique to be used when needed and not as a default approach to slowing for corners..

Straight line -vs- trail braking

One of the questions that I seem to get fairly frequently is what do I think about trail braking into bends. And when I do discuss it, it’s often a bit of a biking hot potato, with supporters on the one hand and others who say it’s a dangerous race track technique with no place on the road. First of all, it’s important that we understand the difference beween the two techniques, but also how they are linked. And we also need to be aware of what is sometimes called the ‘Traction Pie’. Essentially, is explains how it’s possible that we can divide up the grip that’s needed BETWEEN braking AND cornering at the same time.

The classic braking technique on the approach to a corner is to complete all braking before we start to steer the bike. The big advantage of this technique is that it separates traction management into two phases, FIRST braking THEN cornering. By keeping them apart we allow the tyres to use ALL their grip for one task OR the other. As a result, we significantly reduce the risk of losing traction at either end of the bike.

By contrast, when using the trail-braking technique the rider carries the brakes from the upright approach into the corner, gradually reducing the pressure on the brakes while adding lean angle until the brakes are off and the bike is at the chosen lean angle.

So what’s the problem?

Essentially, because the braking forces are using up traction AT THE SAME TIME AS the leaning forces, it’s possible to exceed the total amount of traction they tyres can deliver. And if that happens, we’re in trouble.

It’s that potential for loss of grip that’s always been used to promote the traditional upright braking approach to bends – if a wheel does lock under braking, upright it’s controllable even on a bike without ABS.

Separating braking and steering is by far and away the simplest way of dealing with a bend, and there’s far less to go wrong. Not least, if we’re off the brakes, we free ourselves up mentally to look around the corner to see what comes next. If we’re on the brakes, we’re actually mentally focused on the road surface itself (think about it) and what we might hit if it all goes wrong – cars, walls and other hard objects – and that in turn leads us in the direction of target fixation.

So why bother with trail braking at all? Two reasons.

The first is simply ‘advantage’ – since we carry the brakes into the first part of the corner, it’s possible to brake a little later, which means we carry speed a little further down the preceding straight. You’ve probably realised where this would be an advantage – on the track.

You may also have heard that “the bike steers better with the forks compressed”. It’s actually written on Freddie Spencer’s site and it’s hard to argue with a racer as talented as Freddie. But I can honestly say that every road bike I’ve ridden has, to a greater or a less extent, sat up and headed for the ditch on the brakes. Maybe a race bike set up on race tyres and race geometry does steer OK on the brakes, but my thinking is that this is a misunderstanding of what’s happening – as the bike slows on the brakes, it turns on a progressively tighter line simply because the speed is dropping.

Anyway, we’re not riding on the track, we’re on the road. We’re not out-braking other riders, nor trying to squeeze half a second off our point-to-point time. In fact, attempting trail braking as a regular approach to getting round bends risks all the things that goes wrong in bends:

  • running in too fast

  • turning in too early

  • running wide later in the corner

But with an added problem – because we’re braking and steering at the same time, we’ll be edging closer to the limit of traction. And of course, we’re assuming that the surface can deliver the grip we’re asking for – but surface grip can very from metre to metre. When we deliberately trail brake into a bend and get it wrong or the surface fails to deliver, the bend will bite back – hard! Which brings us right back to the benefits of braking upright to sort out speed before we reach the bend itself. On the road, braking hard and late is rarely the key to riding quickly – it just unsettles the bike and unsettles the rider!

As it happens, Nick Ienatsch – another US racer and writer for the US mag Sport Rider who is a big fan of trail braking on the track – says in his ‘The Pace’ articles that trail braking makes steering more difficult and is out of place on the road.

So if we’re not simply trying to use trail braking to ride faster, what’s the other potential benefit?

The simple answer is that we’re not on a track, and that means the road ahead is essentially unpredictable. Not only do we misjudge corners – the bend that looked easy a moment ago suddenly starts tightening up – or we may find the road blocked just out of sight. Even if we approach the bend ‘at a speed that allows us to stop in the distance we can see to be clear’, if our forward progress reveals a couple of cows wandering around mid-corner, we’re going to have to lose some speed. We cannot throw our hands up and say “but I can only brake in a straight line”, we are almost certainly going to have to carry those brakes into the corner itself.

So now we really are talking about a technique that is of genuine use on the road. So long as we weren’t planning on enter the corner at knee-down speeds, then our modest lean angle allows for those brakes to be carried into turn.

And then we have two further options. We can keep the brakes on, and maintain our lean angle – and then, as I just mentioned, our reduction in speed will automatically make the bike turn tighter. That will deal with decreasing radius corner. Or we can use the reduction in speed to reduce our lean angle, and now as the lean angle comes up we can use the second option – brake progressively harder until the bike is upright and we’re braking at emergency levels. That will get us stopped if the road is blocked.

But in both cases we have to understand that if we haven’t already locked up the front wheel by braking in a straight line, there is ALWAYS grip to begin to steer and add some lean. It may not be much if we’re braking hard, but it’s there all the same.

We just have to lean the machine gently to start with, and remember that as we feed lean in, we feed the brakes out.

Mix and match. Slice that pie between the leaning and braking.

One final tip. Having got the speed where we want it, release the brakes smoothly and progressively – don’t suddenly ping them off. If we do, that will unload the front suspension equally suddenly, and that will give us a very nasty surprise indeed. Because we’ve added a little extra counter-steering input to fight the bike’s ‘sit-up on the brakes’ tendency, removing the braking force means that extra steering input makes it fall into the corner rather abruptly.

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57. Surface Attraction

Modern tyres and suspension systems give riders more confidence, but the fundamental principle hasn’t changed: traction is limited not by the rubber, but by the surface; no tyre grips on ice.

Surface Attraction

A while back I read a research paper that examined just where road users actually look. Guess what? Motorcyclists looked at the road surface more than drivers. That surprised the researchers but was predictable because it’s the friction between tyres and road surface keeping bikes shiny side up. The level of grip we have impacts on our ability to accelerate, brake, steer and lean so it’s not surprising that we pay the surface a lot of attention. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand why some surfaces are barely ridable in the dry whilst others give near race track levels of grip in the wet.

Perfect surfaces are the exception rather than the rule, but still riders are caught out and panic when they see a dubious surface mid-turn. Why? Because we need time to react – spotting a problem already under the front wheel is too late.

Scan ahead then anticipate if the surface gets better or worse – a change of colour or visible line across the road often warns of a change, and though they look the same, two surfaces may have very different grip. Anything shiny is probably slippery. It makes sense to follow the Survival Skills advanced rider training approach by planning for the worst before we discover the hard way.

Slippery access covers are found around bends and junctions – don’t brake on them, aim to steer round rather than over. A shiny line could be a tar seam – like glass in the wet. Bumps and slippery surfaces together spell caution – beware cats-eyes when overtaking and paint markings that don’t follow an ideal line.

Discoloured patches could be wet patches, gravel, potholes or polished surfaces. Mud and gravel will wash downhill after rain and accumulate at the bottom of hills. Loose chippings will be pushed to the centre and sides of the cars’ tyre tracks – do we want to brake on those?

Irregular streaks are often fuel spills. Petrol is as slippery as diesel but evaporates quickly. If you smell diesel slow down and search! Guess where you’ll find it – near filling stations, bus depots and industrial estates, on roundabouts and long fast bends.

Watch out for shellgrip – it’s a high friction surface laid near pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, and sometimes on bends too, but rarely far enough round to get the bike upright again. Take advantage of the extra grip mid-corner and we’ll hit the less grippy surface still banked over – a recipe for a slide.

Don’t forget rain! After a prolonged dry spell, all surfaces will be extra-slippery.

Things we can change are tyres, suspension settings and – attitude! Super-soft track compounds just don’t work on the road. They don’t warm up and don’t like rain. Hard track suspension settings don’t allow the bike to follow road irregularities. Stick to road set-ups and road compounds, but even then we need to take some care. Modern tyres have excellent grip but can fool us into pushing too hard – our tyres can only deliver the amount of grip that the surface offers. A super-grippy tyre will have more more traction over wet metal access covers or on diesel. And once the bike starts sliding, it may well panic us into grabbing the brakes and having a crash that shouldn’t have happened!

So beware overconfidence. Don’t ride too fast for the conditions, keep back and don’t follow the vehicle in front. Just because the Land Rover made it round doesn’t mean we will too!

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45. Eleven Essential Tips for riding in the rain

The advice is still very relevant, especially the emphasis on spotting slippery surfaces, progressive braking, careful cornering, and anticipating changes in grip. Modern bikes, tyres, and safety aids have slightly shifted the context, but the fundamentals of wet-weather remain the same, with the emphasis on spotting slippery surfaces (manhole covers, white lines, tar seams, leaves) and anticipating how those surface changes will affect traction, remaining critical.

Eleven Essential Tips for riding in the rain

Rain means wet roads, and wet surfaces means less grip than in the dry, and so we’ll have to reduce our throttle openings, lean angles and increase our braking distances accordingly. The question is “how much?”. Unless we have some idea of how much grip there is, we don’t really know how hard we can accelerate or brake, or how much lean we can use. And we can end up being excessively cautious and then we’ll be harrassed by other drivers. There is nothing wrong with taking care in the wet, but too much caution and we start causing ourselves even more problems. So let’s have a think about the issues.

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN RAINING – this should be our first question. Prolonged rain flushes surface contaminants away and given a decent surface, wet roads usually have plenty of grip. . But if it’s only just started raining, particularly after a prolonged dry spell, expect the surface to be super-slippery. Oil dripped onto the road mixes with the worn rubber on the surface, creating a slick.

KNOW WHERE TO FIND GRIP – a wet surface that is in good repair and clean, modern tyres should have good grip – it’s a bit hard to put a figure on it, but at least 70% of dry grip should be available. And high grip ‘Shellgrip’ style surfaces give near race track levels of grip even in the rain.

AND KNOW WHAT’S SLIPPERY – but what about the road that’s not in good condition or is contaminated? Some surfaces which are fine in the dry are appallingly slippery in the wet. Now the problem is that no matter how good our tyres, they won’t grip if the road surface cannot deliver its half of the deal. And the quality of the surface has been steadily deteriorating for the last three decades and right now finding a perfect surface is now the exception rather than the rule. So be on the alert for surfaces which are slippery when wet:

metal manhole covers
cats-eyes
white lines and road markings
bitumen tar seams where tarmac is sealed
polished and worn road surfaces
oily surfaces
leaves

Here’s a clue. Most things that are shiny when wet – even leaves – are slippery! So treat any shiny patch on the road as potentially slippery and something to be avoided if possible.

KNOW WHERE IT’S SLIPPERY – and then avoid or take care in those places. A big fear for bikers is spilled diesel. Although figures published by FEMA (the European rider rights organisation) claimed that 10% of all motorcycle accidents were caused by diesel, UK figures suggest it’s less than 3%. Whatever the truth, there’s no need for us to become one of the statistics by being cautious where spills of fuel and oil are most common:

roundabouts
near industrial estates
by garages
on bends and at junctions
between the wheel tracks at traffic lights or stop signs

Treat dark shiny streaks or rainbow patterns with care, and use your nose – you will often smell diesel before you spot it. And remember petrol is JUST as slippery as diesel.

SPOT SURFACE CHANGES – as I mentioned, we may ride from a grippy surface onto a less-grippy one, so we need to spot that as early as possible. Look up the road and try to spot a change of colour. It’s almost always a change of surface. We won’t know whether it gets better or worse, but at least we’re on the alert. A visible line often warns of a change. Oblong shapes are usually road repairs. Irregular areas of a different colour could be a damp patch, a pothole or loose gravel. Streaks are often a fuel spill.

BE ALERT FOR SURFACE WATER – there aren’t too many around but on minor roads, we could come across a ford. Take it cautiously and upright and don’t brake or accelerate hard – they are often slippery with algae under the water.

After a thunderstorm, watch out for surface water beyond the norm! After prolonged or heavy rain, expect flooded surfaces. Avoid riding through puddles as a matter of course – they may conceal a pothole or debris. There’s a minor risk of aquaplaning on standing surface water but watch out deeper water which can cause a loss of control if hit at speed. Any depression is likely to be filled with deep water. Underpasses often flood to surprising depths. Look to see where the kerb disappears to get an indication of how deep it might be.

Watch out for mud, gravel or debris carried into the road. I’ve had to dodge a sizeable log before now. Streams may burst their banks and flow into the road, and we not only have to be careful about the depth of water – look at fence posts or the hedge – but there could well be a strong current. It might be wiser to find an alternative route than attempt to ford it.

KNOW WHEN TO SLOW – in wet weather, many riders will slow down unnecessarily, even when it’s safe to maintain a decent rate of progress. It’s stopping distance we mostly need to worry about, and whilst it increases with speed, if we stretch our planning and open up our following distances, then it should be OK to maintain speed to go with the flow to avoid being tailgated by impatient drivers.

AND WHEN IT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO KEEP A GAP – one of the biggest wet-weather faults I see is following the vehicle ahead too close, too fast. Braking distances increase in the wet, but it’s not just stopping distances we need to worry about. We need to understand how changes of surface affect our ability to stop and maintain control. We really don’t want to find we’re braking over a wet metal access cover that just popped out from under the car ahead.

AIM TO BE SMOOTH – what breaks traction in the wet is often a sudden application of brakes or throttle. Whilst modern bikes have ABS and traction control is becoming common too, kicking either in is not a good idea as it’s disconcerting. And without these aids, there’s a risk of a loss-of-control. Aim to be smooth, but also to be minimalist – the fewer control inputs that achieve a particular result, the better.

Aim for progressive braking. Once the suspension has compressed we can build the pressure – most riders are surprised how much grip is available if we don’t grab a big handful of brake.

Don’t make the common mistake of trying to stay off the brakes then finding you need them at the last moment. Brake early and positively rather than late and harshly – it not only improves stability but gives us options. If we brake earlier than necessary, it means we can release the brakes again if we are unable to avoid crossing a wet metal cover or a painted arrow. That takes away the fear of locking a wheel as we ride over it, and we can reapply the brakes on the other side. It’s not very difficult IF we look ahead and think about what we are doing.

Know how to corner in the wet – there’s no real difference in technique, but it’s more important we get it right. Don’t try to turn in on a closed throttle or on the brakes – if we do, we’re loading the front tyre with deceleration forces just as you want all the grip for steering and it’s easy to lose the front if we hit a slippery patch. Instead, get the braking done upright, get off the brakes in a straight line to let the suspension settle THEN turn in smoothly.

Just as in the dry, the best way to enter a corner on a wet road is back on the throttle, keeping steady power on through the turn, which means using the Point and Squirt late apex approach I teach on Survival Skills Performance Courses through the corner. The biggest steering errors are to turn in too early which guarantees we’ll run wide on the exit, then probably touch the brakes mid-corner to try to lose speed – in the wet this is even more a recipe for disaster than in the dry. In fact, mid-corner, we can probably lean over further than we might expect, which is the way to deal with a tightening bend, but try to avoid sudden or jerky motions. We don’t need to corner at walking pace but just a modest reduction in speed means we can make our direction changes a little more gentle, and use a little less lean angle mid-turn. open out your lines a little and make them smoother. Err on the side of ‘slow and smooth in, and faster out’ – it’s not that important to ride fast in the wet.

Don’t try to open out the exit to the turn by taking a wide, sweeping line. We may need to change line to keep off tar seams, access covers or white paint mid-corner. If we’re on a line that gives us no way of changing position should we need to, then we’re potentially in trouble. If we’re on a sweeping line and aiming for the extreme edge of the lane, and we do experience a slide, we’ve no room to recover. In the wet, I avoid extreme cornering lines – so I can compromise my perfect line to avoid slippery areas. I usually ride in the middle third of the lane, so I have some room for error.

If we must brake in a corner – perhaps because the road ahead is blocked – then use BOTH brakes lightly. Remember – if you’ve not already crashed, there is SOME grip at the front. As the speed comes down, our lean angle usually comes up, and so we can brake progressively harder. The important thing is not to grab at the front brake. With no ABS we’ll probably crash (I’ve bought that tee-shirt), with ABS we’ll have a moment to recover. Although it may be easier to catch a rear wheel lock-up, the rear brake alone won’t offer much braking.

Don’t try to accelerate mid-corner when the bike is still leaned over. A surprising number of crashes in autumn, when the roads are first wet and cold, happen when riders accelerate whilst still leaned over, often when turning right at a junction or a roundabout. The combination of lean and throttle breaks grip and the rear. The answer is to get the bike turned completely THEN open the throttle. Even with traction control, it’ll still make for a smoother turn.

UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE THE GEARS – don’t make the mistake of believing the old advice to ride in a high gear on a slippery surface either. Whilst that might have been effective on a low and slow-revving 50s and 60s Triumph, modern sports bikes will spin up the rear wheel the moment it breaks traction. Wheelspin in a straight line is controllable, just a gentle wag from the rear of the bike. If we’ve not got traction control and we wheelspin in the wet whilst leaned over, we may not get the throttle shut again in time to prevent a crash. Let the engine rev, but accelerate gently – don’t open the throttle so far as in the dry.

And one final piece of advice – KNOW YOUR TYRES – if you intend to ride all year round, fit sport-touring tyres for the colder months of the year. The soft compound sporty tyres really only work in warm weather, and will never get hot enough to grip effectively in cold rain. Sport-touring tyres may not have the ultimate level of grip but they’ll work better on wet roads at any time of the year, and they generally slide more predictably than the grippier tyres that just let go suddenly.

Having just listed all the problems of riding in the wet, you may be surprised to know, I actually enjoy riding in the rain. It can be a lot of fun!

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38. Staying upright on icy roads

This article remains fundamentally sound. The core message — avoid ice if at all possible; if you cannot, prioritise stability, smoothness, and planning — is still exactly right, and the last update which mentioned less-predictable winter weather continues to be a factor.

That said, a few areas benefit from clarification or modest updating, mainly around modern tyres, electronics, and rider aids, and one or two points where rider folklore still needs firmly nailing down. Many modern motorcycles are fitted with ABS, traction control and sophisticated engine management, and while these systems can reduce the consequences of rider error, they do not change the basic physics of ice. ABS may prevent an immediate front-wheel lock, but it cannot shorten stopping distances on ice and may actually destabilise the bike if it intervenes abruptly. Traction control reacts only once slip has already occurred, and on ice a sideways slip may be unrecoverable. Likewise, modern tyres offer excellent wet-road performance but still provide virtually no usable grip on ice, regardless of compound or tread pattern. Riders should regard electronic aids as a last line of defence, not a licence to continue riding in conditions where grip is fundamentally unavailable.

Staying upright on icy roads

This is another article which has needed a bit of a rewrite, because global warming seems to have spun off some seriously cold winters with snow and ice hanging around for months even in the south east of England. However, just as I wrote when I first put this tip together, the best solution to dealing with ice is to try to avoid it in the first place! I have a ‘bad weather’ clause in my training courses so it’s usually possible two or three days out to get early warning of approaching bad weather – the weather forecasts have improved significantly in the last decade or so. Failing that, take a look out of the window and have a look at car windscreens and the lawn. If it looks grim, take the car, the bus or leave the ride for another day. I was a ‘real biker’ for many years and learned the hard way that two-wheelers and ice don’t mix.

The best advice for riding on icy roads is “don’t”. But if there’s no choice, then do a bit of thinking ahead. Although it can stay frozen all day, it’s usually freezing mornings after a clear night that are likely to be the biggest issue, although the roads can freeze again if cloud clears after dark.

Plan the route to take roads that are more likely to have been treated. Back lanes are far less likely to have seen a gritting truck than main roads, and residential roads roads are more likely to be icy than motorways. Where cars have been running over the road, heat from the tyres will usually melt the ice in the wheel tracks, but if all the surface is icy, the least-polished and grippiest bit of the road is generally in the middle of the lane. A good indicator of a slippery bit of road is that it is shiny.

Remember too, that built-up areas are nearly always significantly warmer than country roads and just because the roads in town have been clear, that’s no guarantee there will be no ice on rural roads. Even if the road appears clear, there may be colder frost hollows or exposed areas where it isn’t – this is the ‘microclimate’ effect talked about in the police handbook, ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’.

We should also look for ice in shaded patches, behind buildings and under trees, even behind parked high-hided vehicles. If water can pool, such as in dips in the road and at bottoms of hills, we should keep our eyes open. Watch out for run-off from springs and fields – a good clue is an anti-skid surface! Car washes in towns can overspill and burst water mains nearly always accompany really cold weather. Be cautious on bridges – they cool from both sides – and metal access covers can be icy when the road surface is still just damp.

One particularly unpleasant riding condition is ‘black ice’. It’s hard to spot because it looks like a wet road but is actually a sheet of ice. The only clue is that it looks ‘wetter’ than usual, if that makes sense. It usually follows a late evening shower and clearing skies and a frost. Years ago, returning from a blood run at 4am on a January morning, I was passing through the town centre thinking it would be warmer than the country lane route home, when I hit a patch. Fortunately I was upright at the time, because what I thought was a missed gear turned out to be wheelspin. If I’d been accelerating coming out of the corner, I’d have been on my ear. As it was, I was able to roll off the ice and back onto some grippy tarmac.

So if we suspect ice, aim to get any braking and gear changing done upright, and get the bike upright before getting back on the throttle. Make brake, throttle and clutch movements slow and smooth. Keep speeds down so as to reduce steering input and lean angle. Posture is important and we need to try to keep weight off the handlebars. This isn’t easy on a sportsbike but sit forward on the seat, grip the tank with the knees, brace the back and keep shoulders, elbows and wrists loose.

If the bike does twitch, don’t try to fight it. There’s a reasonable chance the bike will regain grip but trying to fight the wobble just makes things worse in my experience. If we do hit ice, the most important thing is NOT to touch the brakes. It’s an incredibly strong instinct to overcome, but touch the front on a non-ABS bike and we’ll be on our ear before we know what’s happened. The rear brake will probably lock the back wheel, but we may be able to save the slide if we’re upright. Even with ABS the bike will be destabilised. I’ve been told to “steer into a slide”, but on the couple of times I’ve hit ice mid-corner, I’ve crashed so quickly I’ve had no time even to think about it.

Which gear should we ride in? The old advice was to ride in a higher gear than normal, but I suspect it works best on old bikes. It applies to 1960’s Bonnies and BMWs with low-revving, slow-revving engines. It’s entirely debatable if it should be applied to modern high-revving, fast-spinning bikes. If we ride in an artificially high gear to keep the revs low, we’ll be using more throttle than usual for the speed. Some years back on my GSX-R750, I was in too high a gear when I hit a slippery surface and the rear wheel lost traction. The bigger-than-usual throttle opening caused the engine to rev, that spun up the rear wheel, the rear back end stepped out sideways and I just avoided a high-side… at about 10mph! Counter-intuitively, a lower gear would have needed less throttle to drive the bike forward at the same speed, and so the wheelspin would have been less violent. And even if you have traction control, it’ll kick in and you’ll almost certainly shut the throttle. If you are riding an older machine that’s not so equipped, then the answer is to make your own traction control – drag the rear brake lightly right through the manoeuvre until the machine is upright again. It’s crude but it stops wheelspin… and it works. I’m not saying ride everywhere in first gear but take any advice to ride in a “higher gear than normal” with a pinch of salt if you’re not riding a Royal Enfield.

Take it easy out there, and stay shiny side up!

Staying upright on icy roads

This is another article which has needed a bit of a rewrite, because global warming seems to have spun off some seriously cold winters with snow and ice hanging around for months even in the south east of England. However, just as I wrote when I first put this tip together, the best solution to dealing with ice is to try to avoid it in the first place! I have a ‘bad weather’ clause in my training courses so it’s usually possible two or three days out to get early warning of approaching bad weather – the weather forecasts have improved significantly in the last decade or so. Failing that, take a look out of the window and have a look at car windscreens and the lawn. If it looks grim, take the car, the bus or leave the ride for another day. I was a ‘real biker’ for many years and learned the hard way that two-wheelers and ice don’t mix.

The best advice for riding on icy roads is “don’t”. But if there’s no choice, then do a bit of thinking ahead. Although it can stay frozen all day, it’s usually freezing mornings after a clear night that are likely to be the biggest issue, although the roads can freeze again if cloud clears after dark.

Plan the route to take roads that are more likely to have been treated. Back lanes are far less likely to have seen a gritting truck than main roads, and residential roads roads are more likely to be icy than motorways. Where cars have been running over the road, heat from the tyres will usually melt the ice in the wheel tracks, but if all the surface is icy, the least-polished and grippiest bit of the road is generally in the middle of the lane. A good indicator of a slippery bit of road is that it is shiny.

Remember too, that built-up areas are nearly always significantly warmer than country roads and just because the roads in town have been clear, that’s no guarantee there will be no ice on rural roads. Even if the road appears clear, there may be colder frost hollows or exposed areas where it isn’t – this is the ‘microclimate’ effect talked about in the police handbook, ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’.

We should also look for ice in shaded patches, behind buildings and under trees, even behind parked high-hided vehicles. If water can pool, such as in dips in the road and at bottoms of hills, we should keep our eyes open. Watch out for run-off from springs and fields – a good clue is an anti-skid surface! Car washes in towns can overspill and burst water mains nearly always accompany really cold weather. Be cautious on bridges – they cool from both sides – and metal access covers can be icy when the road surface is still just damp.

One particularly unpleasant riding condition is ‘black ice’. It’s hard to spot because it looks like a wet road but is actually a sheet of ice. The only clue is that it looks ‘wetter’ than usual, if that makes sense. It usually follows a late evening shower and clearing skies and a frost. Years ago, returning from a blood run at 4am on a January morning, I was passing through the town centre thinking it would be warmer than the country lane route home, when I hit a patch. Fortunately I was upright at the time, because what I thought was a missed gear turned out to be wheelspin. If I’d been accelerating coming out of the corner, I’d have been on my ear. As it was, I was able to roll off the ice and back onto some grippy tarmac.

So if we suspect ice, aim to get any braking and gear changing done upright, and get the bike upright before getting back on the throttle. Make brake, throttle and clutch movements slow and smooth. Keep speeds down so as to reduce steering input and lean angle. Posture is important and we need to try to keep weight off the handlebars. This isn’t easy on a sportsbike but sit forward on the seat, grip the tank with the knees, brace the back and keep shoulders, elbows and wrists loose.

If the bike does twitch, don’t try to fight it. There’s a reasonable chance the bike will regain grip but trying to fight the wobble just makes things worse in my experience. If we do hit ice, the most important thing is NOT to touch the brakes. It’s an incredibly strong instinct to overcome, but touch the front on a non-ABS bike and we’ll be on our ear before we know what’s happened. The rear brake will probably lock the back wheel, but we may be able to save the slide if we’re upright. Even with ABS the bike will be destabilised. I’ve been told to “steer into a slide”, but on the couple of times I’ve hit ice mid-corner, I’ve crashed so quickly I’ve had no time even to think about it.

Which gear should we ride in? The old advice was to ride in a higher gear than normal, but I suspect it works best on old bikes. It applies to 1960’s Bonnies and BMWs with low-revving, slow-revving engines. It’s entirely debatable if it should be applied to modern high-revving, fast-spinning bikes. If we ride in an artificially high gear to keep the revs low, we’ll be using more throttle than usual for the speed. Some years back on my GSX-R750, I was in too high a gear when I hit a slippery surface and the rear wheel lost traction. The bigger-than-usual throttle opening caused the engine to rev, that spun up the rear wheel, the rear back end stepped out sideways and I just avoided a high-side… at about 10mph! Counter-intuitively, a lower gear would have needed less throttle to drive the bike forward at the same speed, and so the wheelspin would have been less violent. And even if you have traction control, it’ll kick in and you’ll almost certainly shut the throttle. If you are riding an older machine that’s not so equipped, then the answer is to make your own traction control – drag the rear brake lightly right through the manoeuvre until the machine is upright again. It’s crude but it stops wheelspin… and it works. I’m not saying ride everywhere in first gear but take any advice to ride in a “higher gear than normal” with a pinch of salt if you’re not riding a Royal Enfield.

Take it easy out there, and stay shiny side up!

Staying upright on icy roads

This is another article which has needed a bit of a rewrite, because global warming seems to have spun off some seriously cold winters with snow and ice hanging around for months even in the south east of England. However, just as I wrote when I first put this tip together, the best solution to dealing with ice is to try to avoid it in the first place! I have a ‘bad weather’ clause in my training courses so it’s usually possible two or three days out to get early warning of approaching bad weather – the weather forecasts have improved significantly in the last decade or so. Failing that, take a look out of the window and have a look at car windscreens and the lawn. If it looks grim, take the car, the bus or leave the ride for another day. I was a ‘real biker’ for many years and learned the hard way that two-wheelers and ice don’t mix.

The best advice for riding on icy roads is “don’t”. But if there’s no choice, then do a bit of thinking ahead. Although it can stay frozen all day, it’s usually freezing mornings after a clear night that are likely to be the biggest issue, although the roads can freeze again if cloud clears after dark.

Plan the route to take roads that are more likely to have been treated. Back lanes are far less likely to have seen a gritting truck than main roads, and residential roads roads are more likely to be icy than motorways. Where cars have been running over the road, heat from the tyres will usually melt the ice in the wheel tracks, but if all the surface is icy, the least-polished and grippiest bit of the road is generally in the middle of the lane. A good indicator of a slippery bit of road is that it is shiny.

Remember too, that built-up areas are nearly always significantly warmer than country roads and just because the roads in town have been clear, that’s no guarantee there will be no ice on rural roads. Even if the road appears clear, there may be colder frost hollows or exposed areas where it isn’t – this is the ‘microclimate’ effect talked about in the police handbook, ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’.

We should also look for ice in shaded patches, behind buildings and under trees, even behind parked high-hided vehicles. If water can pool, such as in dips in the road and at bottoms of hills, we should keep our eyes open. Watch out for run-off from springs and fields – a good clue is an anti-skid surface! Car washes in towns can overspill and burst water mains nearly always accompany really cold weather. Be cautious on bridges – they cool from both sides – and metal access covers can be icy when the road surface is still just damp.

One particularly unpleasant riding condition is ‘black ice’. It’s hard to spot because it looks like a wet road but is actually a sheet of ice. The only clue is that it looks ‘wetter’ than usual, if that makes sense. It usually follows a late evening shower and clearing skies and a frost. Years ago, returning from a blood run at 4am on a January morning, I was passing through the town centre thinking it would be warmer than the country lane route home, when I hit a patch. Fortunately I was upright at the time, because what I thought was a missed gear turned out to be wheelspin. If I’d been accelerating coming out of the corner, I’d have been on my ear. As it was, I was able to roll off the ice and back onto some grippy tarmac.

So if we suspect ice, aim to get any braking and gear changing done upright, and get the bike upright before getting back on the throttle. Make brake, throttle and clutch movements slow and smooth. Keep speeds down so as to reduce steering input and lean angle. Posture is important and we need to try to keep weight off the handlebars. This isn’t easy on a sportsbike but sit forward on the seat, grip the tank with the knees, brace the back and keep shoulders, elbows and wrists loose.

If the bike does twitch, don’t try to fight it. There’s a reasonable chance the bike will regain grip but trying to fight the wobble just makes things worse in my experience. If we do hit ice, the most important thing is NOT to touch the brakes. It’s an incredibly strong instinct to overcome, but touch the front on a non-ABS bike and we’ll be on our ear before we know what’s happened. The rear brake will probably lock the back wheel, but we may be able to save the slide if we’re upright. Even with ABS the bike will be destabilised. I’ve been told to “steer into a slide”, but on the couple of times I’ve hit ice mid-corner, I’ve crashed so quickly I’ve had no time even to think about it.

Which gear should we ride in? The old advice was to ride in a higher gear than normal, but I suspect it works best on old bikes. It applies to 1960’s Bonnies and BMWs with low-revving, slow-revving engines. It’s entirely debatable if it should be applied to modern high-revving, fast-spinning bikes. If we ride in an artificially high gear to keep the revs low, we’ll be using more throttle than usual for the speed. Some years back on my GSX-R750, I was in too high a gear when I hit a slippery surface and the rear wheel lost traction. The bigger-than-usual throttle opening caused the engine to rev, that spun up the rear wheel, the rear back end stepped out sideways and I just avoided a high-side… at about 10mph! Counter-intuitively, a lower gear would have needed less throttle to drive the bike forward at the same speed, and so the wheelspin would have been less violent. And even if you have traction control, it’ll kick in and you’ll almost certainly shut the throttle. If you are riding an older machine that’s not so equipped, then the answer is to make your own traction control – drag the rear brake lightly right through the manoeuvre until the machine is upright again. It’s crude but it stops wheelspin… and it works. I’m not saying ride everywhere in first gear but take any advice to ride in a “higher gear than normal” with a pinch of salt if you’re not riding a Royal Enfield.

Take it easy out there, and stay shiny side up!

 

 

Staying upright on icy roads

This is another article which has needed a bit of a rewrite, because global warming seems to have spun off some seriously cold winters with snow and ice hanging around for months even in the south east of England. However, just as I wrote when I first put this tip together, the best solution to dealing with ice is to try to avoid it in the first place! I have a ‘bad weather’ clause in my training courses so it’s usually possible two or three days out to get early warning of approaching bad weather – the weather forecasts have improved significantly in the last decade or so. Failing that, take a look out of the window and have a look at car windscreens and the lawn. If it looks grim, take the car, the bus or leave the ride for another day. I was a ‘real biker’ for many years and learned the hard way that two-wheelers and ice don’t mix.

The best advice for riding on icy roads is “don’t”. But if there’s no choice, then do a bit of thinking ahead. Although it can stay frozen all day, it’s usually freezing mornings after a clear night that are likely to be the biggest issue, although the roads can freeze again if cloud clears after dark.

Plan the route to take roads that are more likely to have been treated. Back lanes are far less likely to have seen a gritting truck than main roads, and residential roads roads are more likely to be icy than motorways. Where cars have been running over the road, heat from the tyres will usually melt the ice in the wheel tracks, but if all the surface is icy, the least-polished and grippiest bit of the road is generally in the middle of the lane. A good indicator of a slippery bit of road is that it is shiny.

Remember too, that built-up areas are nearly always significantly warmer than country roads and just because the roads in town have been clear, that’s no guarantee there will be no ice on rural roads. Even if the road appears clear, there may be colder frost hollows or exposed areas where it isn’t – this is the ‘microclimate’ effect talked about in the police handbook, ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’.

We should also look for ice in shaded patches, behind buildings and under trees, even behind parked high-hided vehicles. If water can pool, such as in dips in the road and at bottoms of hills, we should keep our eyes open. Watch out for run-off from springs and fields – a good clue is an anti-skid surface! Car washes in towns can overspill and burst water mains nearly always accompany really cold weather. Be cautious on bridges – they cool from both sides – and metal access covers can be icy when the road surface is still just damp.

One particularly unpleasant riding condition is ‘black ice’. It’s hard to spot because it looks like a wet road but is actually a sheet of ice. The only clue is that it looks ‘wetter’ than usual, if that makes sense. It usually follows a late evening shower and clearing skies and a frost. Years ago, returning from a blood run at 4am on a January morning, I was passing through the town centre thinking it would be warmer than the country lane route home, when I hit a patch. Fortunately I was upright at the time, because what I thought was a missed gear turned out to be wheelspin. If I’d been accelerating coming out of the corner, I’d have been on my ear. As it was, I was able to roll off the ice and back onto some grippy tarmac.

So if we suspect ice, aim to get any braking and gear changing done upright, and get the bike upright before getting back on the throttle. Make brake, throttle and clutch movements slow and smooth. Keep speeds down so as to reduce steering input and lean angle. Posture is important and we need to try to keep weight off the handlebars. This isn’t easy on a sportsbike but sit forward on the seat, grip the tank with the knees, brace the back and keep shoulders, elbows and wrists loose.

If the bike does twitch, don’t try to fight it. There’s a reasonable chance the bike will regain grip but trying to fight the wobble just makes things worse in my experience. If we do hit ice, the most important thing is NOT to touch the brakes. It’s an incredibly strong instinct to overcome, but touch the front on a non-ABS bike and we’ll be on our ear before we know what’s happened. The rear brake will probably lock the back wheel, but we may be able to save the slide if we’re upright. Even with ABS the bike will be destabilised. I’ve been told to “steer into a slide”, but on the couple of times I’ve hit ice mid-corner, I’ve crashed so quickly I’ve had no time even to think about it.

Which gear should we ride in? The old advice was to ride in a higher gear than normal, but I suspect it works best on old bikes. It applies to 1960’s Bonnies and BMWs with low-revving, slow-revving engines. It’s entirely debatable if it should be applied to modern high-revving, fast-spinning bikes. If we ride in an artificially high gear to keep the revs low, we’ll be using more throttle than usual for the speed. Some years back on my GSX-R750, I was in too high a gear when I hit a slippery surface and the rear wheel lost traction. The bigger-than-usual throttle opening caused the engine to rev, that spun up the rear wheel, the rear back end stepped out sideways and I just avoided a high-side… at about 10mph! Counter-intuitively, a lower gear would have needed less throttle to drive the bike forward at the same speed, and so the wheelspin would have been less violent. And even if you have traction control, it’ll kick in and you’ll almost certainly shut the throttle. If you are riding an older machine that’s not so equipped, then the answer is to make your own traction control – drag the rear brake lightly right through the manoeuvre until the machine is upright again. It’s crude but it stops wheelspin… and it works. I’m not saying ride everywhere in first gear but take any advice to ride in a “higher gear than normal” with a pinch of salt if you’re not riding a Royal Enfield.

Take it easy out there, and stay shiny side up!

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36. Aquaplaning – what it is and how to deal with it

Not much to say about this other than to add that tyre condition matters more than tyre type; worn centre grooves, squared-off profiles and under-inflation all seem to be factors associated with increased aquaplaning risk. far more than most riders realise whilst electronic aids Electronic aids such cannot restore grip when a tyre is floating on water. If you do detect the “light, floaty bars” don’t attempt to counter the movement aggressively; that’s a common instinctive error and will just destabilise the bike.

Aquaplaning – what it is and how to deal with it

When I originally wrote this tip almost twenty years ago, my main worry was winter weather. But in the last few years, torrential rain and standing water on summer roads has become just as common and it can be a real hazard. I don’t mean just ploughing into standing water and having the bike stop almost dead, or even finding that the puddle is actually a pothole, but the problem of aquaplaning. So this article explains “what is aquaplaning, how likely is it to happen, how do we recognise it’s happening and what do we do about it?”

Let’s start by explaining what aquaplaning is. I think the term has probably been borrowed from ship design. A ship has to push water aside in front of it, and when that vessel’s speed is sufficiently high, the water cannot get out of the way fast enough. So the vessel tends to rises up and ulimately ‘rides’ on the wave it’s created. That’s the basic principle behind high speed ferries.

Tyres do pretty much the same. When water is sufficiently deep and speed sufficiently high, the tyre cannot displace the water to the side quickly enough. A wave builds up ahead of the tyre’s contact patch and with just a bit more speed and the tyre rides up and ‘floats’ on its own bow wave. And that means it’s lost contact with the road surface, and the tyre has no braking or steering grip!

Here’s the good news. Whilst aquaplaning is quite common when driving a car – the barrel-shaped profile of a car tyre has a broad contact patch that pushes water ahead of it – a motorcycle tyre is U or V-shaped and the relatively long, thin contact patch cuts more effectively through standing water, much like a ship’s bow.

In my experience, aquaplaning is pretty rare on two wheels compared with four. In fact, if we do much motorway driving in wet weather, aquaplaning is quite common. But I can count the times it’s happened on a bike on one hand.

The danger seems to be a road surface just awash with standing water, where we we wouldn’t normally think twice about riding through it at a modest speed. It happened once near Brands Hatch, where the road is wide and flat – it’s an old concrete surface underneath the tarmac skim and so there’s no camber to clear the water, so there was standing water over a considerable length of road. The speed limit is only 40, so it seems that it’s the distance the standing water stretches that matters, rather than flat-out speed. I had a similar incident in the Ardennes in Belgium on a brand-new road that was ‘super-elevated’ – that is, cambered so that the entire road ‘banks’ for each corner. This seemed to trap the rain from a thunderstorm so that rather than flowing OFF the surface, it acted more like a channel of the water.

Hitting a short stretch of deep water doesn’t seem to create the right circumstances for aquaplaning. I suspect this is because the resistance of the water creates a sudden deceleration so there’s no chance for that wave to build. The impact will try to wrench the steering out of our grip, but it’s not aquaplaning. And, let’s face it, if we see a big puddle, it’d be a good idea to avoid it when possible, or slow down when we can’t as we’ve no idea what’s under it.

So watch out for shallow sheets of water, particularly after a thunderstorm or prolonged heavy rain. Look out for places where run-off from a field or an overflowing drain flows into the road. Motorways and dual carriageways are bad because two lane roads like A roads and country lanes normally have a crown that drains water to either side, but the carriageways on a dual carriageway are usually flat, Watch out too for standing water in truck wheel tracks. At speed, and with spray flying around, we may well not see the problem until the last second. So try to keep a good gap, and don’t go excessively quickly.

In my experience, the warning sign that the bike is aquaplaning is that it keeps going in a straight line, but the bars go light and floaty-feeling. They may even move from side to side. It’s a bit like riding on ice, but with one important difference – on ice, the first warning is often wheelspin but when aquaplaning, the rear wheel continues to drive the bike forward, presumably because the rear is often following in the trough cut by the front tyre. It’s front tyre grip that’s compromised.

If we suspect we might be aquaplaning, the best answer seems to be, as is often the case, to keep a relaxed grip on the bars – hanging on for dear life always makes things worse. Lock onto the tank with the knees to keep the weight off the bars and do nothing harsh or sudden. Once again, in my experience, if we simply roll off the throttle gently, the reduction in speed plus the extra loading at the front gets the front tyre to cut back down through the water to regain grip. But don’t apply the front brake – if it’s floating, it could lock. If it’s necessary to brake, use the rear gently. Don’t try to steer until there’s feedback through the bars telling you that the front tyre is back in contact with the road surface.