BRC's, permit tests, new bikes and a death.... :(

[rad]

Back to the training for a minute

No course, existing or soon to be here, is going to produce a student ready to be out in traffic. It really is just like learning any sport. Pick golf, you can learn the basics in a few hours, but you will suck at it when your training is complete, and you may suck at it for years and you may be the type of person that my suck at it for life! The difference between learning golf and learning to ride a motorcycle is that when you shank that drive on the golf course a Buick does not run over the top of you….Well, unless it’s the Buick Open

My point is, no matter how complete we make our instruction the ultimate responsibility will always fall on the novice rider to make proper decisions as it relates to their level of riding skill.

My take on the high fatality rate in this country, after having ridden for many decades and taught for one decade, it is not just a weakness in the instruction, even though that can be improved, the weakness is in the rider’s mentality. I think more in this country than any other comes a sense of entitlement and the simplistic notion that motorcycle riding, and driving cars in general, is like a big ride at Disneyland, just all fun and no real risk. Americans fail to process and understand that motor vehicles are the number one cause of accidental death in this country!

We are not a very bright lot!

If you want to improve motorcycle safety, start by producing better car drivers. Not just because they will keep us safer, rather, they are the future motorcycle riders.

 

[rocketman]

While I agree that we seem to have a sense of entitlement about driving and that it may well appear we have a greater death rate from traffic related deaths one also has to consider that we, as a country, have more vehicle owners and miles driven than many others and records are kept differently here than in other modern countries. To quote a study on comparative death rates from accidents. linked here...http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html

"The reported death rates per 100,000 due to motor vehicle accidents can be especially misleading, even if the reporting is assumed to be uniform because the percentage of people driving varies widely between the countries listed. Fifteen countries reported deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles driven in 1996. For most of these countries the numbers indicate death within 30 days after the accident, but for the United States it is one year (making it a safer place to drive than the statistic might indicate) whereas in Japan it is 24 hours (making it less safe than indicated). "

While I don' know anything specific about this report the above strikes me as sounding like a pretty sensible cautionary statement.

I think if we placed more value on the right to drive i.e. made it harder/more costly to obtain and easier to loose that might have a positive effect. I think that is part of the reason for the success seen in European countries, make something more ÔÇ£dearÔÇØ and an individual might well work harder to maintain/keep said object/possession. Just human nature.

RM

 

[LENRT1200ST]

I think if we placed more value on the right to drive i.e. made it harder/more costly to obtain and easier to loose that might have a positive effect. I think that is part of the reason for the success seen in European countries, make something more ÔÇ£dearÔÇØ and an individual might well work harder to maintain/keep said object/possession. Just human nature.

RM

I agree w/ RM and the previous poster, but I'd cahnge one word in the above quote; right to privilege to drive. Far too many consider it a right, if you ask me.

Len

 

[pmdave]

Actually, there is a more sinister side to this. One of the more popular bikes used in training is the Honda 250 Rebel. New riders like it because it has a low saddle height, so even a rider with short legs can flat foot it at a stop.

But it happens that the Rebel has a bit more rake for style. The problem for newbies is that the steering geometry causes the Rebel to fall into turns. For instance, you can momentarily countersteer to the left to cause it to roll right, but as soon as it leans, it wants to keep on leaning. So, the rider quickly learns to pull on the low grip to keep it from leaning too far.

OK, you're a new rider. The instructor/coach is telling you to push on the right grip to turn right, but you KNOW you're pulling on the right grip during most of a right turn. So, "countersteering" doesn't make sense to you. You think maybe you're just too dense to understand, and some day you'll figure it out. But subconsciously, you learn to steer the front wheel toward corners. Yes, you have to throw the grips toward the curve to initiate the roll, but that's just a second or so. The rest of the turn you're steering the front wheel toward the curve.

What's really happening is that the Rebel is leaning itself too far, and the rider is actually countersteering to hold the lean angle. The concept of rolling on the throttle when leaning makes sense to the newbie, because that helps stabilize the lean.

This works OK in class, since the exercises are all slow speed. The big crisis comes later on when the novice has bought a bigger machine, and one day finds the bike drifting wider. The subconscious response (learned in training) is to steer the front wheel more toward the curve. Suddenly, the bike straightens up, which is a huge shock for the novice. Actually, that's the first time he or she really focused on countersteering, but of course the results can be fatal before they make use of this new knowledge.

Sadly, too few instructors/coaches comprehend what's happening with such machines, and all they are trained to do is repeat the "press right to turn right" mantra. I base the above on my experiences as an instructor back in the "good old days", and I haven't tried a late model Rebel to see if Honda has changed the geometry.

pmdave

 

[pmdave]

Keith Code got tired of the old "countersteering vs. body steering" argument, and built his "No BS" bike, one of his Kawasaki sport bikes with a second pair of handlebars welded to the fairing stays. The fixed upper bar has a parallel throttle to enable controlling speed.

The rider gets the bike up to speed with the lower handlebars and controls, then switches to the upper (fixed) bars.

The idea is that if you think you control direction by body steering with no countersteering input, hop on this thing and show us how to make a circle, or even ride it in a straight line.

I've tried it. I'm convinced that if you can't steer the handlebars you have a devil of a time controlling direction, and I don't think anyone could ride the NO BS bike around a track circuit holding onto the fixed bars.

pmdave

 

[rad]

But it happens that the Rebel has a bit more rake for style. The problem for newbies is that the steering geometry causes the Rebel to fall into turns. For instance, you can momentarily countersteer to the left to cause it to roll right, but as soon as it leans, it wants to keep on leaning. So, the rider quickly learns to pull on the low grip to keep it from leaning too far.pmdave

Never thought of that. We use, like most ranges, a couple of Rebels.

I have never felt that novice riders ever feel the press or feel the countersteer in any of the MSF turning exercises. Hell, I can hardly feel it when I demo at student speeds. The exercise where you see the "light come on" and the new rider sometimes grasp the countersteer for the first time is late in day two as they do the last exercise before practicing for the eval, the swerve.

I have always felt that the swerve was/is the number one survival skill, not counting any mental ones, for any rider. This is really true for the new rider for any numskull can stop a motorcycle. They may not stop it well, or fast, or they may lock up the rear, but intuitively they know how to stop a bike. They need to learn how to do it right and they need to practice it, but most students can stop their bikes with little help from us and understand how they did it. This is not true of swerving or changing direction. It is truly a counter intuitive skill. One that must be taught, and learned, for every rider.

I even had a woman come take the class again after she passed with an almost perfect score and went out on her new 883, as her boyfriend watched in horror from behind she ran over the double yellow in a right hander at just a moderate speed, bounced off a car and crashed because as she told me, "I did not know how to stop the bike from running wide". She did great the second time in the class and really came to terms with the countersteer process and left us as a pretty darn good rider. She was one of the lucky ones, she got a second chance, many of us don't get that, that first blown corner at speed can be our last.

 

[xp8103]

I even had a woman come take the class again after she passed with an almost perfect score and went out on her new 883, as her boyfriend watched in horror from behind she ran over the double yellow in a right hander at just a moderate speed, bounced off a car and crashed because as she told me, "I did not know how to stop the bike from running wide". She did great the second time in the class and really came to terms with the countersteer process and left us as a pretty darn good rider. She was one of the lucky ones, she got a second chance, many of us don't get that, that first blown corner at speed can be our last.

Not surprised if this were the reason for the OP accident.

"I did not know how to stop to bike from running wide..."

 

[LENRT1200ST]

Keith Code got tired of the old "countersteering vs. body steering" argument, and built his "No BS" bike, one of his Kawasaki sport bikes with a second pair of handlebars welded to the fairing stays. The fixed upper bar has a parallel throttle to enable controlling speed.

The rider gets the bike up to speed with the lower handlebars and controls, then switches to the upper (fixed) bars.

The idea is that if you think you control direction by body steering with no countersteering input, hop on this thing and show us how to make a circle, or even ride it in a straight line.

I've tried it. I'm convinced that if you can't steer the handlebars you have a devil of a time controlling direction, and I don't think anyone could ride the NO BS bike around a track circuit holding onto the fixed bars.

pmdave

pmdave,

Admittedly, it's been a while since I read Keith's article about this modified bike, but my understanding was somewhat different from yours. I think the idea was to create a "all body steering" bike vs a conventional front hub streering bike.

The bike was modified to test if "leaning" the bike could steer it through a corner, or as you suggest in a straight line. The added bars cannot initiate a counter steer, in my thinking, because they are not physically connected to the front axle. They can only initiate a lean or continuea lean already initiated through the bike's chassis.

Keith kept hearing about riders using their knees and shoulders to pull a bike back up after leaning it into a corner. He suspected that what was really happening is that the rider was actually doing most of that heavy lifting by an input to the bars or a very slight, almost unconscious counter-steer.

His drill was to have riders try to negotiate a race track using only the bars in their modified position. Or to initiate a turn using the normal bar mounts, and then swith to the "lean only" bar when exiting a corner. I think most riders quickly abandoned the “lean only” bars for the OEM stock bars as soon as they realized they were about to crash!

I remember that some steering could be accomplished using only the modified bar position, but far less than was necessary to negotiate a simple controlled weave.

The article was in Motorcyclist, Code Break a few month back. A re-read may shed some light on my position or prove that my mindalong w/ sundry other attributes... is also going.

Len

 

[rocketman]

I agree w/ RM and the previous poster, but I'd cahnge one word in the above quote; right to privilege to drive. Far too many consider it a right, if you ask me.

Len

yeah, I concur, I used right only in the sense of something granted as a reward for obtaining a certain level of acomplishment, i.e. "you have to right to This reward as promised, for having Done That task well" and agree it is NOT a right in the greater sense.

RM

 

[ANDYVH]

An earlier reply said, "I take issue with those who suggest that countersteering is only an emergency swerving technique. Yes, you must countersteer aggressively to make the two quick back-to-back corners, but you also countersteer when making a gentle turn." What riders have to learn is how much, how little, how subtle, how assertive, they must be with CS to make it effective for daily use. I am CONVINCED that many, many riders get in trouble, loose control, crash, simply because they had no grasp on CS skills and cornering skills. Oh, they may talk about it to sound legit with other riders, but do they really understand it and use it?

CS is used every day on every ride! I do demo rides for Nick's BMW in Depere, WI. Even watching in my mirrors I can tell when a rider behind me has no cornering confidence and ability. In some cases these are riders that come in on x-brand sport-bikes and high powered BMWs, like a K1200R. My bike is well worn 94R1100RS, and I regularly scrub the tires to the edges in full confidence. But CS skills are first taught, learned, observed, practiced and used. CS skills are not intuitive by any measure, as it is an active process.

 

[ANDYVH]

That's because a trials rider on the rear wheel is riding a one-wheeled vehicle that now responds to body weighting through the footbegs. Entirely different than two wheels inline on the road and at riding speed. The single wheel bike is steered as much by reaction to very low gyroscopic force of the single tire, and the gyroscopic force of the spinning flywheel in the engine. Many trials bikes, even for the small engine size, have significant weight in the engine flywheel which helps to keep the bike upright.

 

[NavyCWO]

The BRC is a very basic course. It qualifies a rider to tour a parking lot at about 20mph! I took it as a refresher course after laying off riding for several years. My wife asked me a couple of years ago to teach her to ride. I declined and suggested she take the BRC and after that if she was still interested I would find her a bike and work with her to prepare her to ride on our local roads. After the two day course she still was interested and after a search, I found her a Honda Rebel 250cc bike. She spent the next 150 miles learning to start-off and turn, shift, swerve and brake in a high school parking lot. After that we rode the two-lane back roads around our home for another 200 miles before we started riding further afield and at higher speeds. We also used a communications system so we could talk over paths, and lines thru curves, etc. as we rode. She's turned into a good rider and now has a couple of thousand miles under her belt and graduated to a 650cc machine. She, so far, has been able to avoid many of the dumb things I did while learning (the hard way) to ride. When I started riding in 1962 there were no training courses and no books on the subject, not to mention, no real safety gear, other than boots, leather jacket and a helmet with gloves.