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Tips for Safety for Motorcycle Riders
Your motorcycle riding gear probably has been made to enhance your safety, you always ride with a helmet, and maybe your motorcycle has ABS. You would almost forget that those measures can only make a small difference in how safe you are, compared with the influence of your own riding behaviour.
Motorcycle riding means that you take full responsibility for your own safety, for instance by learning to anticipate on mistakes of other people on the road. Anticipating mistakes of other people and reacting with the right behaviour is totally different from only thinking that you were right and the other was wrong...
On ths page about safety with respect to motorcycle riding, we try to give some advice on how to enhance your own safety.
When talking about ways to enhance your safety on a motorcycle, most people think of helmets, knee or elbow protectors, or leather suits.
True, all these things are meant to make you safer. But don't forget that there is a more direct way to enhance your own safety.
You can enhance your safety by doing everything to avoid an accident (primary or active safety), or by making sure that the damage, in case of an accident, is as minimal as possible (secondary or passive safety).
In fact, the big difference between driving a car and riding a motorcycle, is that in cars, the secondary safety is enormous (the car is a sort of safety cocoon around you), while on a motorcycle, the safety is almost entirely in your own hands (which means primary safety).
We will discuss both forms of safety on this page, but first we will have a look at some figures.
In Europe, researchers have looked in detail at motorcycle crashes, and figures have been compared to figures of "average" motorcyclists (it should be noted that they included scooters and "light" motorcycles as well). This MAIDS-rapport is on-line.
Some of the findings (we will relate to some of these figures in the items below):
1.- In 37% of cases, the primary accident contributing factor was a human error on the part of the motorcycle rider. The human error could be lack of attention or lack of skill. The researchers note that often, the amount of skill needed exceeded the amount of skill that is needed to pass exams.
2.- Among the secondary contributing factors, motorcycle riders failed to see the other vehicle and they also made a large number of faulty decisions, i.e., they chose a poor or incorrect collision avoidance strategy. In 13% of all cases, there was a decision failure on the part of the motorcycle rider.
3.- In 50% of cases, the primary accident contributing factor was a human error on the part of a car driver.
4.- In about 1/3 of accidents motorcycle riders and car drivers failed to account for visual obstructions and engaged in faulty traffic strategies.
5.- 90% of all risks to the motorcycle rider, both vehicular and environmental, were in front of the motorcycle rider prior to the accident.
6.- Among the primary contributing factors, over 70% of the car driver errors were due to the failure to perceive the motorcycle.
7.- The roadway and cars were the most frequently reported collision partner. In 60% of accidents, the collision partner was a passenger car.
8.- There were motorcycle technical problems in less than 1% of the accidents. Most of these were related to the tyres
9.- In 18% of all cases, motorcyclist's traveling speeds were greater than or less than the surrounding traffic and this speed difference was considered to be a contributing factor.
10.- 24.2% of accidents involved riders with less than six months experience.
11.- In general riders with more experience are less likely to be the primary contributory factor of an accident.
12.- 29% of riders with less than 6 months experience had a skills deficiency and this percentage went down to 6.4% for riders with over 98 months of experience.
For motorcyclists, their primary safety is by far the most important: when in a crash, a motorcycle rider can never be as "safe" as in a car. You'll have to work for that kind of safety!
How important it is to practise is shown by the figures in the items
10,
11 and
12.
As is illustrated by the percentage of 6.4% that still hasn't enough riding skills after
8 years of experience, you can see that you won't come there without working for it.
Probably, the "soft" side of riding skills, looking, anticipating and paying attention, are not included in these figures. All in all, it is clear that your safety is almost entirely in you own hands!
There is an additional bonus as well: other people joining the traffic will benefit from your ability to avoid crashes, while pedestrians who are hit by a car don't benefit from the secondary saftey that keeps the driver safe while the pedestrian dies.
The extra attention that a motorcyclist is used to pay to the situation will probably keep these chickens alive as well.
Enhancing your primary safety means:
Of course, you make sure your motorcycle is working properly: it shouldn't give you nasty surprises when you are underway, the brake pads shouldn't be worn out, the lights should be working, the tire pressure should be right, etc.
But accidents caused by motorcycle defects hardly occur (see item
8
of the crash statistics).
Items 1
and 2
of the statistics show that attention failure is an important ingredient in many accidents. And when you consider
3 and
4,
and realize that motorcyclists should foresee what can happen and anticipate, you will realize that
your attention is of great value.
That means that it is very important that you:
This might seem superfluous to say, but many people forget how important these issues are.
Especially the last item is often overlooked!
Think about the reward when you keep that item in mind: it gives you the bonus of being there,
in a Zen-like way, of being a motorcycle rider and nothing else.
It is clear from the statistics (especially item 3) that it is very important to anticipate on errors of others.
An extra point of attention is to be very conscious of what you don't see (see item 4).
So be very alert when you see a truck at the side of the road (which can block your view on
playing children or on a side street), on trucks that you pass (in stop 'n go traffic for instance)
and of course when passing before a corner.
Be also alert for "dips", stretches of the road that are below your point of view.
Try to build a sort of list of those kind of situations, where something may be hided.
When anticipation didn't succeed, or you didn't notice a hidden danger, you sometimes come
into a situation where an accident would happen when you wouldn't act.
In many cases, braking may save you.
Most people cannot, by far, brake as hard as their motorcycle could.
Practise, practise, practise!
Braking has to do with grip, and grip has to do with your tires and the weight
that presses on the tires.
The more weight on a tire, and the stickier the tire, the harder you can brake.
Therefore, the weight of the motorcycle itself doesn't matter: on a lighter motorcycle, the
tires have to do less work to bring the motorcycle to a stand-still, but at the same time,
the lesser weight makes that the tires *cannot* work as hard as on a heavier motorcycle.
So, the weight of the motorcycle itself doesn't matter, but the distribution of the weight does.
On a downward slope you only have to touch the rear brake slightly before the rear wheel locks:
there is so little weight on the rear wheel that a little bit of braking stops it completely.
During braking, you sort of have the same situation: the weight "travels" to the front wheel.
For most motorcycles (except for cruisers and long touring machines), the technique is therefore as follows:
1.- pull the clutch (so your rear wheel is no longer engagaed, and can't "push" the motorcycle anymore)
2.- stay away from the rear brake (when you brake hard, all the weight is on the front wheel; that means that trying to brake with the rear brake will inevitably result in a locked rearwheel, and you don't want that)
3.- start with using the front brake, to "prepare" your motorcycle for braking, and then Pull. Practise and pull harder, until you hear a tiny whining noise from your front tire. Then, you brake at the maximum. You really can pull hard!
4.- In case of a light (sports-) bike, take care for stoppies. In case of an unwanted stoppie, gently loosen the front brake (so don't let go abruptly).
Cruisers and long touring machines should use their rear brake as well: they don't get all the weight on the front wheel during braking, so the rear brake really helps there.
You might consider to practise using the rear brake slightly when you start braking.
It helps preparing the motorcycle for hard braking. After the start of the braking,
you let go of the rear brake.
The problem is that using the rear brake then becomes a habit which you will also do in an emergency
situation, and in such a situation it is very hard to let that brake go.
Definitely practise braking in a corner!
The procedure is the same, but you also have to push your motorcycle into the curve while braking
(with your knee, and by pushing with your left hand in a corner to the left, or
your right hand in a corner to the right, to the handlebar; you can read more
about it on the page about cornering). Of course, you can't
brake as hard as on a straight, but you still can brake harder than you would think if you never practised.
And what about ABS?
The idea of ABS is that you are ensured not to get a locked wheel during braking.
It seems ideal, but there are disadvantages as well:
- Some tests show that ABS performs better, but some tests have other results, and the experience of some people is also different: some ABSses engage before the point of maximum braking.
- When the surface is bumpy, ABS will sometimes engage too soon: it gets disturbed. That means scary moments on roads with bad surfaces (in the mountains for instance), because you suddenly have no brakes.
- In loose gravel, sand, grass, or any of such surfaces, ABS prevents you from braking at all. You can switch off the ABS of a BMW GS, but you have to stop, switch off the contact, and switch it on again. On other motorcycles, you can't switch off ABS at all.
- Some ABSses have stoppie-intelligence. When they notice that the rear wheel gets too light, the ABS looses the front brake. That means that your front wheel suddenly seems to slide forward while it wasn't near locking at all. Especially going down in the mountains, braking before a corner, it happens regularly, and I can tell, from personal experience, that it feels terrible.
- Most people have a tendency to increase their speed (especially in rainy conditions) when they have ABS (the "I do have ABS, don't I?"-syndrome).
You will have to think about how often you find yourself in a situation where the ABS is in your way, and how often you find yourself in a situation where it could save you.
It also depends on how you use your motorcycle: if you often go "into the wild", you might be worse off with ABS.
When you choose ABS, don't forget to practise braking (it's very easy to forget practising then!). When you can switch it off, also practise with the ABS switched off.
And never forget that ABS only has advantages for your safety when you ride as though you don't have it!
If you have this tendency of increasing your speed, it only succeeds in diminishing your safety!
To brake is not the adequate strategy in every situation. Sometimes it is better to swerve
around the obstacle.
It's important to do one thing at a time: either brake or swerve. If you have to do both,
first brake to loose speed, let go of the brakes, and then swerve.
Most advanced rider courses make you practise on this.
You swerve by far the most quickly and efficiently by countersteering.
That means, very simply:
- When you want to swerve to the right, push against your right handlebar.
- When you want to swerve to the left, push against your left handlebar.
Practise this, especially when you are not familiar with that way of initiating a turn.
It's also very important that you know, from experience, how far you can lean your motorcycle
into a turn. That you know exactly how far you can go in a given situation.
Like in the case of braking, there are not only accidents that could have been prevented by braking
harder or by leaning more, but also accidents that are caused by braking too hard or leaning too far.
To get a feeling for your motorcycle in curves, a vacation in the mountains is an ideal training, as is, of course, an advanced riding course on a circuit.
Another way to increase your own safety is to realise that you are responsible
to maintain space around you.
You may use that space to have room to brake, to swerve, or just as extra time
to decide what to do.
Keeping space around you is something that is easily forgotten, especially when you are trying to pass a truck. But even then, passing is done more easily when you maintain distance between you and the truck, until the point that you can accelerate to pass.
It's *your* space, and you can use it in an emergency, so look well after it...
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Nice and useful tips there.
When i make U-turns, either in a traffic or in not-so-heavy traffic, i find doing the turn on left easy
then doing the U turn in right direction. And the situation is we have left hand drive here in Nepal and
often i have to make right U turns.
So is it hard for everyone to make right U-turns than left or is it just for me?
waiting for the answer...
From:Subeg from Nepal
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************************ Answer ***************
It is hard for most people who write with the right hand; it is a brain-anomaly in processing all kind of
hand-eye co-ordination.
But one thing that can help, is to really concentrate on a point where you want to be *after* the U-turn.
Good things to fix your attention on is a traffic-sign or lamp-post.
From:Ernst and Sylvia
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There are some great tips on this site, but I don't agree with one description -
in your section on braking in corners, you say the handlebars should be pushed in
the direction of the curve. If the brakes are applied (or the throttle closed)
in a corner, the bike wants to stand up and will try to travel straight on.
To keep it leant over it is necessary to apply more pressure to push away the
inside bar (against the curve) - to give more countersteering, not less.
Counter steering is intuitive - everyone does it above about 25kph, even if they
don't realise it consciously. What is very useful to learn is to counter steer
with deliberate (conscious) intent, to make the bike lay down (lean) into a corner.
Try it first on a bicycle if you like, to explore the effect, then try it out on
your motorcycle.
From:jeremy
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************************ Answer ***************
The sentence was meant to mean what you explain (pushing the handlebar in the direction
of the turn; not the front wheel), but obviously, our phrasing proved confusing.
We rephrased it into:
Definitely practise braking in a corner!
The procedure is the same, but you also have to push your motorcycle into the curve while braking (with your knee, and by pushing with your left hand in a corner to the left, or your right hand in a corner to the right, to the handlebar; you can read more about it on the
page about cornering).
From:Ernst and Sylvia
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I have read your article's all in it. I'm thank full to, who are organizing it.
It may really help to all new riders as me.
Please make a article on which gear we have to go in bumps(speed breakers),C,90 degree and U turns also.
From:M.Sivashankar
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************************ Answer ***************
Okay, is a good idea to set up a practial tips page about certain
tricky situations, like speedbumps.
Essentially you need to keep the bike in slight acceleration, so
brake, or close throttle and adjust your gear to 3rd or 2nd to get the
speed out of your bike, enough so you can take the bump with a slight
pulling engine, speed being dictated by the height and steepness of
the bump.
Like with corners always keep the engine churning away at the tarmac a little.
At speedbumps there is another little trick to smooth them out, a little backbrake to keep the suspension from bobbing out, you essentially prevent the suspension to bottom out, by feeding a little of your engine power into the backbrake, and so into the suspension, especcially at leaving the bump it helps to prevent bobbing of the bike, it feels much more solid with the backbrake trailing a little.
Don't apply the frontbrake when climbing over the bump, you'll need everey inch of suspension travel, using the front brake will deminish a lot of the suspension travel, so that's a no go situation.
So plan ahead (as allways) get your speed adjusted forehand, and take the obstacle with a little bit of throttle and a slight trailing backbrake (just a feathery toe of pressure!) until you have left the bump completely.
The same slight trailing back brake helps with the U turn too, that mostly being done in second gear, again first check your speed, plan ahead, look where you want to go (do not focus on obstacles, you go to where your focus of attention goes...) and keep the engine purring nicely and control speed in the u-turn with a little bit of back pressure, and keep your fingers off of the clutch !
Succes with getting to know the bike, and don't forget to keep your distance of the holy cows, and other unpredictable road users, and be aware of their surprising and seemingly uncontroled direction changes ;-)
From:Ernst and Sylvia
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