Braking on a Motorcycle - Part Two

Braking, Engine Braking and Throttle Sense

Welcome back! In the last post, I talked about the basics of braking on a motorcycle. This week, I’d like to continue, and go into detail about the three main types of braking, or slowing, that we do. So, let’s get straight into it!

In this section, I’d like to examine the processes we go through during the course of our regular riding when we need to adjust our speed downwards, or stop our machine.

It used to be accepted wisdom that engine braking was a recommended method for slowing your bike. Now, many organisations recommend the mantra: “Engine for accelerating — brakes for slowing.” Which is correct? I think the confusion arises around the issue that both have their place.

To examine this further, we will consider the three main circumstances in which you will wish to slow your bike, but first we need to add another element into the equation: being in the right gear.

Later in this blog, you will be introduced to the system for safe motorcycle riding. One of the elements of that system is ensuring you are in the right gear at all times. It is just as important while slowing to ensure that you are in a gear so that you could then accelerate if needed. Imagine coming to a halt — or nearly to a halt — and then seeing that a following vehicle is bearing down on you at a great rate of speed. Clearly, it will not help you if you are in fifth gear!

With that in mind, let’s examine those three circumstances under which you would wish to slow your machine. They are:

1. Emergency Stop

This one is quite clear. No engine braking. When performing an emergency stop, the process outlined in the previous post for normal braking is followed – except, of course, that it is followed a lot quicker, and the braking pressure is much more — possibly until just short of the point in which you begin to lose traction. However, with our added consideration that we need to make sure we are in the correct gear at all times to be able to smartly accelerate if needed, we need also to be down-shifting.

In this scenario, no engine braking is used. We use the front and rear brakes to effect maximum braking. We pull in the clutch, and keep it in. At the same time (or at the latest, as we are coming to a stop), we click down through the gears until we can go no lower. We don’t have time to think about counting the gears. We just keep clicking until we can go no more. This leaves us in first gear, with the clutch pulled in ready to smartly accelerate should we need to.

Incidentally, remember our 70/30 and 50/50 rule for braking mentioned earlier? This still applies in an emergency situation. However, upon heavy braking, your front wheel will be loaded even more than in a regular braking situation, and your rear will be carrying even less weight. For this reason, we have to be very careful that the rear does not lock up. This ratio of front-to-rear braking could shift to as much as 90/10 or greater. However, for as long as that rear tyre is in touch with the ground, it will be providing some braking force. For that reason, we still use both brakes in an emergency situation. There is another important reason for this: When acting in an emergency, we don’t want to be doing something markedly different from that which we do in a non-emergency situation. We don’t want to have to sort out: “Well, I use both brakes for normal riding, but just one for emergency.”

Although leaving the clutch engaged during an emergency stop would, theoretically, add some engine braking, I consider that the amount it provides is negligible, and is too unpredictable for an already unstable rear wheel.

To reiterate: For an emergency stop, clutch goes in and stays in, and both brakes are used to stop the machine. As soon as is possible, we down shift as much as necessary to get into a gear in which we could sharply accelerate should we need to.

2 Non-Emergency Stop

This is the situation in which you are coming to a controlled, non-emergency stop, such as when coming to a stop at traffic lights, or a junction. It is also the scenario where a grey area exists. There are quite a few questions regarding this kind of stopping — especially when you consider the requirement that you should be in a gear that allows you to smartly accelerate again should you need to:

That’s quite a few variables. Let’s try to simplify. I hope you will find that each conclusion logically leads us to the next:

Remembering that you always want to be in a gear with which you have usable engine power should you need to accelerate again at any point as we are slowing, it stands to reason that it would be useful to sequentially go down through the gearbox as our speed decreases, (as opposed to stopping, and then “block-shifting” down to first gear).

Personally, I consider that trying to guess the suitable gear for the current speed as you decelerate without any feedback from the engine is asking too much of the rider. The answer to this is to connect the gearbox to the engine as we go through the gears (by releasing the clutch). Now, this in essence means that we are using some engine braking. How much engine braking we use depends solely on how much we are using our brakes at the same time.

This only leaves the question of how we release the clutch between down-shifts. Our options are to simply “drag” the clutch until the engine comes up to speed, or we can use the throttle to momentarily match the engine speed before (or as) we release the clutch.

Let’s answer this final question by considering what happens if we get it wrong: If we misjudge the timing when simply dragging the clutch, and release it when we are going too fast for the currently selected gear, there is a real possibility of locking up the rear wheel. We are adding an unpredictable braking force to the rear wheel when we are already braking with the brake. This is not an ideal scenario. We are also putting extra wear on our clutch components. Alternatively, if we “blip” the throttle to match the required engine speed when releasing the clutch, two things could happen: If we don’t apply enough throttle, then the engine will apply more braking to the rear wheel than is ideal. However, it will not be as much as if we simply didn’t use the throttle at all. There will be far less chance of locking the rear wheel. If we apply too much throttle, then we will experience a slight “lurch”. However, this is highly unlikely to be enough to cause any issues with traction. In short, I believe that using the throttle to bring the engine up to speed as we release the clutch provides the best balance between the two scenarios.

Of course, if we get it right the majority of the time (as we will), then we will effect a smooth transition down through the gears, with no undue braking or acceleration forces being applied to the rear wheel by the engine, and we will always be in a suitable gear should we need to accelerate again.

So sum up, the method I advocate — when coming to a non-emergency, controlled stop — is to use the brakes to do most of your braking, but to sequentially shift down through the gears as you do, and to effect this down-shift by matching the required engine speed to the gear by momentary “blips” of the throttle as you release the clutch.

Now, should you find that at some time all of your braking is being done by the engine, be aware that you are not showing a brake light! If you have following traffic, consider touching a brake just for this purpose.

3. Adjusting your speed without coming to a stop (such as when entering a slower speed limit area).

This third scenario is much simpler than the last. It is purely the domain of engine braking. Slight and gradual drops in speed can, and should, be effected by simply modulating the throttle. Indeed it is precisely this efficient use of throttle modulation which introduces: Throttle sense.

Throttle Sense

Throttle sense could be defined as the intelligent use of our throttle to better time our progress and avoid greater control inputs. Having a well-developed throttle sense brings many advantages, some of which I will outline here:

You will remember from the previous post that a motorcycle is at its most stable when travelling in a straight line at a constant speed. In many ways, our aim in keeping our machine at its most stable is to stay as near to that ideal as possible. Clearly, braking takes us further away from that ideal than merely decelerating with the throttle. Therefore, any time we can use slight adjustments of the throttle to alter our speed, rather than braking, we are staying nearer to that ideal. We are also putting less wear on our machine, bettering our fuel economy and generally making things easier for ourselves because we are having to brake, accelerate and change gears less.

This is, perhaps, best demonstrated with a couple of examples:

When approaching a red traffic light, how many people do you see racing up to the light, and then harshly applying their brakes to come to a stop? Not only is that wasting fuel, but it is putting undue wear on their vehicle and making their machine unnecessarily unstable.

When approaching that traffic light, careful observation will allow us to simply ease off the throttle and coast towards the lights – only applying the brakes momentarily before we come to a complete halt. Even more careful observation and application of throttle sense will many times allow us to time our approach to the junction so that we don’t even have to stop.

Here is another example which ably demonstrates using throttle sense to increase safety:

In this scenario, if both vehicles are travelling at roughly the same speed, then they are going to meet at the junction.

This, clearly, is a potential hazard. It is a simple matter to either ease on the throttle, or back off to make sure you don’t converge on the junction at the same time. Personally, in this situation, and if I see the vehicle while it is still a good way off, I would gently ease on the throttle to get ahead of the junction before the car arrives. This is throttle sense.

A similar situation arises when approaching curves in the road. If you find yourself braking to set yourself up for the corner, you are likely going too fast into that corner for regular street riding. Well-developed throttle sense would allow you to ease off the throttle in time to arrive at the curve at exactly the right speed to negotiate it. This is something that comes with practice and experience.

When I was in initial training, my observer would sometimes take me out to a country road and tell me: “OK, I want you to ride from here to (some point three to five miles away), and I don’t want to see your brake light once.” Of course, the point wasn’t simply to avoid the brakes at all costs, but to cultivate good, reasoned throttle sense. If they didn’t see the brake lights, then I was clearly reading the road far ahead, and was demonstrating good throttle sense.

Here are just a few more examples where throttle sense comes in to play – enabling us to avoid taking more “immediate” measures:

See if you can come up with some others of your own.

As your riding improves, and particularly as you begin to apply some of the more advanced techniques forthcoming in this blog (or in the book), you should begin to see much more of the road ahead, and around you, as you ride. This enhanced view will allow you to apply more throttle sense in your riding, as you will begin to see hazards much earlier. The end result will be that your riding will become much smoother, and smooth riding is safe riding!

So, that pretty much covers braking in detail! I hope that you have found it useful.

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