Adventure.gs

Too high a gear! A very common fault is that people tend to ride their motorcycles in too high a gear! We were told back in the seventies "Third gear, 3000rpm, 30mph!" We must be in a gear whereby when we open the throttle the 'bike picks up and goes and we can accelerate briskly out of trouble, or when we close it we have engine braking and retardation. We can 'fine tune' our speed without constantly being on the brakes! When I tell people that after a days training they will have been in a lower gear than they normally would have been, they'll be going faster, riding smoother, and at the end of the day they will have used less fuel... they don't believe me. They are surprised and delighted when it turns out to be true. One guy took on a very nice overtake, but to fit in between the cars, he snicked it down a gear to ease in without showing a brake light! I reminded him that the gear he used to slow down with should have been the gear he started the overtake in!
A rigid insistence not to overtake at or near a junction. OK we know what the book says, and any doubt whatsoever don’t, BUT junction ahead totally clear, NOTHING can emerge, and many is the time we can be past the car ahead before the junction. So why not? OK sorry, I know what the book says! But what speed is the car doing, could he possibly turn into that junction? If he’s doing fifty mph five yards before that narrow drive we can see into, he couldn’t possibly turn into it...now could he! I was a sixteen year old police cadet in the old West Riding of Yorkshire when I went to my first fatal road accident. Two lads on a motorcycle had ridden up to a ‘T’ junction and turned left on the major road without stopping, without looking to the left. A Mini Cooper S was overtaking a Vauxhall, the ‘bike turned left directly into the path of the Mini… rider and passenger were both dead at the scene!

An important one this one - Do not analyse (Oxford again...examine methodically and in detail!) their own riding, the riding of others, the last series of bends, the entry, negotiation and exit of that last roundabout, the last overtake! It’s only by analysing ones riding, oneself, that we can improve. It matters not a jot that someone is teaching us if we don’t analyse for ourselves. No-one can kneel and be touched on the shoulder by the magic sword and be pronounced ‘an advanced rider’ “Arise Sir BOF, you can now wear The Badge!”

I often see riders negotiating a bend on the ‘correct line’ in the wet, but there’s a dry line a foot or a couple of feet off the ‘ideal’ line. Let’s be in the dry! On the straight they move abruptly to miss a metal cover! If you don’t want to ride over the damn thing see it when it’s in the far distance and get the correct line early. Never sacrifice safety for position!

Don’t suffer the duffer, create a buffer! Having settled down to a nice speed in a built up area, following other vehicles, and not looking to glide past because our speed is OK, then let’s back off the vehicle in front and allow a much larger gap, I call it a ‘buffer zone!’ Think ‘Two second rule’ then think ‘even more’! We can move into it when traffic ahead is slowing and the driver behind is on the mobile, or eating his chips...or both. (6% of serious motorcycle injury accidents are rear end shunts!) We can see what’s happening ahead much better, we don’t have to brake half as much, because we’re in that lower gear... aren’t we! If anything happens in front of us we’re going be a witness.... not involved… right!

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