ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Proficient Motorcycling. David L. Hough
Читать онлайн.Название Proficient Motorcycling
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781935484677
Автор произведения David L. Hough
Жанр Сделай Сам
Издательство Ingram
Consider Wandering Willie, who doesn’t understand the importance of entering corners from the outside. Halfway around, Willie suddenly realizes the road is turning tighter than the truck, but by then it’s too late to prevent an excursion into the opposing lane.
Imagine yourself approaching from the opposite direction, and note that Wandering Willie drifts into your lane about two-thirds of the way around. Drivers also tend to cut corners near the apex of their lane, not realizing the rear wheels track inside of their front wheels.
Emergency Reactions Follow Habits
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that emergency actions follow habits. Riding through the high desert of eastern Oregon one night, my headlight beam suddenly picked up the reflection of two eyes alongside the road. I rolled off the throttle and squeezed the brake lever gently. This is deer country, and the reliable tactic for avoiding a deer strike is to stop short of a collision. Those shining eyes were too low to the ground to be a deer, but whether a deer, raccoon, or skunk, I didn’t want to hit it.
When the reflecting eyes suddenly darted toward the pavement, my hand squeezed the brake lever progressively harder, the machine transferred its weight onto the front tire, and my hand squeezed just hard enough to brake the front wheel to the maximum just short of a skid. Twenty feet from impact, the headlight beam illuminated a very large porcupine bobbling out toward the centerline, then changing its mind, making a U-turn, and scrambling back toward the verge. As Porky ambled off the pavement, my fingers eased off the brake, the suspension stabilized, and my hand rolled back on the throttle.
On a twisty road, it’s not uncommon for a driver with a wide vehicle to borrow the other side of the road in curves.
What amazes me still is that I don’t recall any decision to brake hard. My right hand just produced a classic quick stop, as if it had been controlled by some animal-sensing device programmed to make a stop in the shortest distance without crashing. Of course, we all carry such a device. It’s located on the bike somewhere between your ears. In an emergency, the brain follows whatever programs have been learned through practice. If you always favor the front brake for normal stops, and you have experienced enough power stops to know what an impending skid feels like, your brain has a quick-stop program available for emergencies.
The moral of that story is that if you expect to have the right skills for an emergency, you must constantly practice the right skills every time you ride. If you expect to be able to handle the loose gravel or the wandering motorist you discover as you round a blind turn, you must practice control skills such as countersteering, smooth throttle-to-brake transitions, and aggressive braking while leaned over.
To put this another way, there really aren’t any emergency maneuvers you can pull out of your bag of tricks when something goes wrong. You can practice special maneuvers, but the only ones that count are the control skills you practice every day as you ride along. And if we assume there are physical habits to be practiced, then there must also be proficient mental skills that we must practice so that they become habits as well.
The View
The farther you are toward the outside as you enter a turn, the more you can see of what’s coming, whether that’s Wandering Willie, a wild bull elk, or a patch of loose gravel. It’s important to maximize your view, regardless of your preferred traveling speed. The more you can see of the curve ahead, the easier it will be to set up your cornering line.
One common factor in motorcycle crashes on twisty roads is that the riders couldn’t see the entire situation ahead. Out in the country, those right-hand turns present some special problems. The view is more limited than in a left-hander of the same curvature. The smart tactic is to enter a right turn from closer to the road centerline. That provides the best view around the corner, which increases sight distance and puts the bike on a better line to exit without sneaking over the centerline.
Avoiding the bite is not just a matter of motoring slowly down the center of your lane and waiting nervously to take evasive action. The best bite remedy is to practice good habits. If you think about all the points I’ve mentioned, you’ll see a pattern emerge. You need to be in control of the situation as well as in control of your bike. Next time you’re out on the back roads, evaluate your speed habits with a quick sight-distance time check. Practice good habits every time you ride. Position yourself to see and be seen. And don’t be timid about using those big brakes to scrub off speed RIGHT NOW when sight distance suddenly closes up or about swerving away from the centerline when you see an oncoming driver cutting the corner.
If you expect to be able to stop short of the truck that’s stopped in the road just around the blind turn, you must practice control skills such as braking while leaned over in a curve.
Entering a right turn from the right
Entering a right turn from closer to the centerline gives you a better view of what’s ahead.
Body Armor
Even with the best of licensing, training, and skills practice, some crashes are simply unavoidable. For example, a moose suddenly emerges from the shadows and knocks you off the bike, or an oncoming coal truck swerves over the centerline in a blind corner, forcing you off the road. When you get your chance to crash one of these days, you’ll be hitting the landscape in whatever gear you decided to put on before the ride.
If today is going to be your day to crash, what do you want between your body and the pavement?
But even if you don’t get to crash, your riding gear has a lot to do with your ability to control the bike. I’ll leave it up to your imagination how I know this, but a couple of wasps dropping into your boot takes a lot of attention away from the task of keeping the motorcycle pointed between the lines. A sunburned neck can make it too painful to turn your head to find that car hidden in your blind spot. A bouncing stone cracking into your shin can distract you from the slippery manhole cover ahead.
So riding gear is more than just uncomfortable body armor worn reluctantly day after day just in case today happens to be your turn to crash. Good riding gear protects against wind, sun, heat, cold, rain, and flying debris. A shatterproof face shield not only protects your eyes from grit but also keeps your face from getting wind chapped. Leather gloves not only protect your palms from road rash during a spill but also keep your knuckles from getting burned by wind and sun and help your fingers avoid blisters. Tall leather boots provide ankle support as well as protection from a hot exhaust pipe or from nasty biting insects.
But if today does happen to be your turn to crash, it would be handy if your gear also provides impact and abrasion protection. Competition-weight leather will slide for something like 80 to 100 feet on rough concrete before it grinds through to your underwear. Cotton denim will rip to shreds in about five feet. Fabric riding suits with armored patches can be almost as abrasion resistant as leather and a lot easier to clean after a few days of high-humidity travel. Of course, we can adjust our gear to the riding conditions. The more hazardous the situation, the greater the need for good stuff. When I’m making a nighttime transit through deer country on my two-wheeled rocket, I’m inclined to wear my