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Riding safely in the Alps: Prudence, Vorsicht, Prudenza….
Tips for Safety for motorcycle riders
Comments on the Lazymotorbike
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
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.
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
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).
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
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 😉