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Motorcycle Cornering - Positioning for Safety - Part One

Saturday, 22 August, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 6 minutes.

If you’ve been following along with my blog posts, you will have seen Positioning – Part One, Positioning – Part Two and Positioning – Part Three. These posts were mainly discussing positioning your motorcycle for maximum view and visibility while riding in a straight line. I purposely did not cover positioning on corners because it is a subject which deservers a post of its own. In fact, it deserves three! This is part one of that series on motorcycle cornering. Remember, to be informed as new posts are made, you can subscribe here!

What I’m about to relate here truly was a “Eureka!” moment for me when I first started my advanced motorcycle training back in the 90′s. I could not believe that I had been riding all those years — completely unaware of how much view and visibility was “there for the taking” — yet I was not taking it.

Passing/Overtaking on a Motorcycle

Monday, 29 June, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 9 minutes.

Overtaking and passing. These are both terms meaning the same thing — depending on your local lexicon, but they both refer to the act of getting past a vehicle that is going slower than you intend to ride yourself.

For consistency, I will use the term “passing” in this chapter.

Passing is arguably one of the most dangerous things we do while riding, yet, executed with care and planning, it is not something to be feared or unnecessarily avoided. Indeed, sometimes we find that the safest place to be is in front of some hazards.

So, with that said, let’s take a look at how we can make passing the safest activity we can.

Scanning and Hazard Fixation

Monday, 8 June, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 4 minutes.

I’d like now to talk about a very important skill that the safe rider practises continually — Vigilant Scanning.

On the other side of the coin is a phenomenon that strangely seems to affect those of us on two wheels more than it does drivers of “regular” vehicles – Hazard Fixation.

Scanning

Less experienced, or less vigilant riders may approach the scene below with the kind of concentration shown here:

They are largely concentrating on what appears to be the immediate hazard, and not really taking in the whole environment. This may be due to sheer lack of experience on the road (a few close-calls is sometimes a very effective, but harsh, teacher). Or it may be because, as a less experienced rider, too much of their concentration is being taken up with controlling the machine.

Positioning - Part Three

Monday, 18 May, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 3 minutes.

This is the third part of a series of posts on positioning. I would encourage you to read Positioning – Part One and Positioning – Part Two before coming back to this post.

I will wrap up this series of three posts on positioning with a couple of places you don’t want to occupy in the road. But! We will not have finished with the subject of positioning! Later in the blog, I will cover the large subject of positioning when it comes to cornering on a motorcycle. This is a large, but tremendously useful subject which deserves its own set of posts.

So, let’s wrap this series up with those places we don’t wish to be when on the road:

Deer - It's a Four Letter Word

Tuesday, 12 May, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 6 minutes.

Deer Strikes. Lessening the Odds

Would you like to know the two things that make me most uncomfortable as a motorcyclist? They’re both four-letter words: Deer and Text. Sadly, they’re both things that we—as motorcycle riders—know only too well. Today, I’d like to talk a little about the former.

As I sit here, looking out over the trees, I see the first signs of fall here in the North Georgia Mountains. Glorious summer is preparing to give way to spectacular fall. It’s a bittersweet sight for me. There are still plenty of good riding days ahead, and mother nature is preparing to give us her yearly swan-song of glorious colour to further enhance our rides. Along with that, though, comes the knowledge that colder weather is on its way, leaves are on the ground, and that we need to be even more watchful for the enhanced danger from our wood-dwelling fauna—most notably the deer.

Positioning - Part Two

Wednesday, 6 May, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 5 minutes.

Greetings, fellow riders! This post is a continuation of the topics introduced in my last post: Positioning – Part One. I would encourage you to read that post, if you haven’t previously, before returning to continue.

You may remember that in my previous post on positioning, we had established a “default” position to maintain in the road unless external influences force us to consider deviating from it. I had outlined three things that may cause use to deviate from our default position:

1. When doing so would give us a better view of the road, and traffic/hazards ahead.
2. When doing so would give another road user a better view of us. I call this “presenting” to a potential hazard.
3. When doing so would give us a greater “buffer zone” between a perceived hazard and us.

Let’s ease back into things with a couple of simple examples of the above:

Positioning - Part One

Monday, 30 March, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 7 minutes.

Today, I’d like to talk about a subject that truly transformed my riding.

I am almost ashamed to admit that, early in my motorcycle “career”, I rode daily for twenty years without having any concept of what positioning was.

It was only when I embarked on my advanced training that the subject was introduced to me, and it is no exaggeration to say that it completely transformed my riding.

After having received some excellent training from my instructors, and putting the principles into practice, I was amazed at just how much I could now see, and how much sooner I was seeing it. And, conversely, I was amazed at just how much information I had been missing through all those years of riding before. Information that was there for the taking if only I knew where to find it!

It also made riding a much less stressful experience because I was seeing things so much earlier than I previously had — and people were seeing me much sooner as well.

I hope you’ll forgive my enthusiasm about this subject, but it truly was an “eye-opening” experience for me. I hope it can do the same for you.

As the subject of positioning is a large one, and it is of so much importance, I have split the subject into multiple posts. This post introduces part one.

So, after that enthusiastic preamble, let me explain just what positioning is:

Signalling and Signal Reinforcement

Thursday, 19 February, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 6 minutes.

You may remember from my last post, that it was left on a bit of a cliffhanger. I ended by posing the following question: What do you do if you have just made a left turn into a street, with following traffic, but you’re going to immediately turn left again into, say, a garage/gas station forecourt? The signal from your left turn won’t do you any good now, because you haven’t had time to cancel it, and start a new one.

This brings us to the subject of this week’s post: Signal Reinforcement.

Signalling on a Motorcycle

Tuesday, 3 February, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 5 minutes.

It would seem that there would not be much to write about turn signals, would there? It turns out that there is so much to write that I’m going to split the subject into two posts! In this post, I’m going to talk about the use of your turn signals. More precisely, the intelligent use of your turn signals. In the following post, I’m going to cover the subjects of Signal Reinforcement and False Signals.

So, let’s get started!

Visibility on a Motorcycle. X-Motion, Z-Motion, and Why Cars Pull Out in Front of Us

Tuesday, 20 January, 2015 by Alan Hearnshaw

Reading time: 5 minutes.

Anybody who has ridden a motorcycle for any appreciable amount of time knows the all-too-familiar feeling that we seem to be invisible on the road.

When the umpteenth person pulls across our path or pushes us out of our lane, it’s tempting (and quite natural) to get very annoyed at the distracted and inattentive driver.

In this post, I hope to provide an insight into the psychology of visibility, and offer some tips which can help.