Any Safe Riding Tips?

They include an emergency stop in the test, with a minimum speed of 30mph, a braking start point, finish line and any skidding or locking up is a fail.

 

I may have mentioned before but an old colleague of mine said the best tip he had was to always practice emergency stopping, he made a point of slowing when entering his home village as quick as he could (with nothing behind obviously) from national speed limit (which I think is around 150 mph from memory ) to 30 mph so he had 'muscle memory' for slamming on the anchors without locking up if required. I do this at times and find it does help when the lights go red at that point it's just too late to blast through
I don't have ABS (it's for ladies apparently, like park assist and reversing sensors )

 

If your mates are ring like twats, make sure you steer clear by riding like more of a twat and leave them behind. Safety tip; don’t check mirrors to gloat, you’ll end up in a field

 

From 30mph? Not very long at all. Get some training from i2imca and you'll be stopping from 50mph in the wet in 18 metres.

 

Read 'Mind Driving' by Stephen Haley. The number one biggest factor in safety is the biker's attitude to it. When you're riding safely, you should be able to 100% predict (at any given point) what's going to happen in the next 5 seconds within a 360 degree radius around your bike.

 

Change your exhaust for a loud one, before you ride the bike for the first time.

I commute 3 or 4 times a week into London, from Hertfordshire. Have done for 20 years. I have worked out from doing this that the general public are shit drivers. If every one of them did a CBT i believe the driving standard would improve immeasurably.

Part of the reason is the cars now are quiet, warm, comfortable concealed bubbles to the outside world; no one has comprehension they are behind the wheel of a killing machine.

 

I was just about to post something similar to this. You should do the same if you happen to roll up behind another biker. I always try to stay on the RH side where I know I am visible in the mirror.

 

Building on this, look to the exit point... if you look in the right place then the bike will try to go to the right place. Physically pushing your nose toward the exit point at road level will lead your upper body to follow your face, typically causing your inside shoulder to dip to the approximately correct place. If you also try to point your inner knee toward the exit (so that your thigh follows the knee pointing to the exit) then your lower body will also be approximately in the right position, without hanging off in an extreme way. As well as counter-steering, be aware of how your feet can steer the bike (pressing inner peg to steer more, or outer peg to counter-balance your counter-steering and moderate steering input) and use the information you're gathering from looking to the exit point to make decisions about gear / revs ahead of corner entry... plan to have all that sorted and have completed road positioning / braking / gear selection / rev-matching before entering the corner and making the turn... typically targeting the apex as the point where you stop rolling off and start rolling on, preparing for slow in (maximising optionality, should new information present itself - like a car on your side of the road or an animal appearing) / fast out (you set the bike up ready for a quick getaway with your road positioning / gear selection and if the situation is all good and no new information changes your plan then you fire out of the corner like a hero).

This might feel initially very contrived BTW, small movements can feel massively exaggerated for you as the rider and very unnatural at first, there's a lot of signal processing and many tasks to carry out in the right order at the right moment. Try to keep an awareness of any tension you're holding in your shoulders (grinding your jaw is a telltale)... keep shoulders (and jaw) relaxed, keep a light grip on the bars (rather than holding onto the bike with your hands - hands are just for steering) and use your body with some fluidity and movement proportionate to the unfolding road ahead. You'll be looking deeper into the corner, to the exit point, anticipating better and readying your body by allowing your nose and knee to guide you and it'll only feel more natural with practice.

 

This. Sounds dull and boring but well worth doing. A lot of it is common sense but putting it into practice and using a system to analyse other road users, your riding as well as environmental factors has got to be beneficial to our chances of survival. Training and gaining a qualification is just the start, you never stop honing your skills.

 

Were you following your observer? Usually the other way around with observer following you but might have been demonstrating and wanting you following in their tyre tracks?

 

Lots of good advice from various folks above ^^

Especially on total observation and learning to read the danger signs ,
quickly !

Here's just a couple of signs that always put me on max alert .....
Drivers who hunch forwards , and almost have their face touching the windscreen , anyone with their tongue out , or mouth open , or any other type of gurning .

To me it indicates someone who is in a situation which is far beyond their natural capabilities .

Check the eyes of drivers at side-roads , and see if they've spotted you ..... good point , whoever said that .

But I still caught some agony , 30 years ago , when a driver looked right at me ( with my headlight on ) , then the old tool pulled out anyway .....
.... BANG !

@bradders yes , they are all potential killers ..... not intentionally
( most of them anyway ) ,
but through ignorance , thoughtlessness , or stupidity there are countless thousands milling about on the roads every day .

I don't even want to get started on old people ..... the ones that can't see past the end of the bonnet , and whose reflex times can be measured in hours , or days .

But it starts me wondering about their families .
Does it have to wait until a crash before somebody takes away the keys ?

BTW - I had three Rant-o-bix for breakfast ...... before anyone asks

 

Are you talking about a certain gent of Greek origin perchance?

 

So working on the theme of this thread that it is someone else fault, tell me about the message of this poster?

 

I wonder if because if they are going to go down it is either to the left or right, so you being in the middle should potentially miss them? Maybe.

 

Unlikely that an IAM rider is going down when riding in a group. As Chas said, most likely that they wanted him to follow in their tyre tracks to see what good road positioning should be like (which is not often in the middle of the road). That said, the thinking rider doesn't adhere to a prescribed road position and adapts as necessary to the safest one at any given time. Also, riding with a 2 second gap to the vehicle in front (in the dry - 4 sec in the wet) should mean that one would have plenty of time to avoid it in the event of a problem.

 

Track days, esp wet ones give you a better idea of the limits of your bike, esp grip. One of the best things I ever did was still going out on track when most other riders were skulking in their pit garages during drizzle, downpours and even once, hail. That wasn’t intentional though. I just got caught out on track when the weather suddenly changed.

Apart from seeing just how far/hard you can lean, brake etc, you also get a better idea about what the bike feels like near the limit and as loss of traction is more progressive it’s easier to explore that twilight zone.