Positioning
Because our bike is about the third of the width of a car, we take up a lot less room on the tarmac than most other road users. Is this an advantage to us? It can be - it can be a huge advantage. But if we position ouselves badly on the road it can also be our downfall.
We can use positioning on the road to our advantage in pretty much any environment, and in further threads we'll cover urban riding. There will also be a hundred and one occasions when we may well want to consider our positioning on a relatively straight bit of road, (urban or not) but for now, let's look at positioning, out on the open road, and specifically negotiating corners.
Corner Entry
So what's the big advantage to approaching corners in a nearside / offside position?
There are three good reasons;
It allows us to see
It allows us to be seen
It increases the radius of the bend.
Let's concentrate on those first two to start with, and now is a good time to introduce TUG - Take, Use Give. I'm loathed to talk about 'The System', but it's going to come up soon enough so we might as well introduce that now as well, and see how these two ideas work along side each other.
The first topic on vision, demonstrated that on the road we're constantly approaching hazzards and it helps our riding plan if we can identify those early.
The idea of Take Use Give, is that we acknowledge a hazzard as soon as we see it, use that information to our own advantage, and give information back to other road users. By and large, most of the using and giving will be down to positioning.
The initial phases of The System are Information, Position...(Speed, Gear, Accelerate..). So it makes sense that as soon as we see a hazzard, the first thing we should be thinking is, where's the best place for me on the road as I approach this?
By approaching a left hand bend from the crown of the road, we open up our own view, whilst giving other road users the opportunity to see us early. Hugging the kerb on the left hand bend above with the impending junction would be pretty dumb.
Petrol Stations, junctions, carparks, you name it, if they're part of the approaching hazard, then take that information, use it and give it back. Think about altering your position and showing yourself.
It's not just the junctions and the garage forecourts; on just a simple bend, with no other complications, good positioning allows us to see, and be seen early.
So, when we approach a right hander, we tuck it in tight to the nearside, we use our wide angle vision to 'see' where we are in relation to the kerb whilst looking at the road ahead, and when we approach a left hander, we do the same sort of thing and adopt a position somewhere near the crown of the road.
So what about this third idea of increasing the raduis of a curve? We could wax lyrical at this point and talk about the 'tyre grip trade off', (heard of that?), we could even talk about Keith Code, and the soft science of cornering, but the bottom line is that a motorcycle is at its most stable when it's upright and under slight acceleration.
The wider radius, aside from improving our view, means that we can negotiate the turn with less lean angle, and that in turn means that we can go faster. YeeHar!
*Off on a bit of a tangent here, but worthy of note, is the fact that in the first week of a standard Police, three week driving course, the instructor will conduct you to 'ease and squeeze' as you drive. Ease and squeeze is basically acceleration sense, throttle control and the knack of balancing a car on the approach into, and the exit out of a corner. No coincidence then, that if you book yourself onto the first module of the Californian Superbike school, your morning track session, up until lunchtime, will be spent in one gear only, and you're asked not to touch your brakes...*
So, we now know that nearside for right, offside for left and opening up our view as we approach junctions is the way to go. Right?
Let's roll the dice and see what we get...
Great!! Ok, so what do we do above? Look into the junction or position for the bend? lets roll the dice again and see if we can't get something easier....
Time for another kitchy driving school saying! I give you the four S's; Safety, System, Smoothness Speed.
If there's one thing that all the books, and all the instructors agree on, it's the fact that there are very few black and whites in roadcraft. Things are fluid, they change all the time, even the book Roadcraft uses the word consider (your approach to....), consider (your horn....) in just about every paragraph.
The four S's however, are one of the few things that are not up for negotiation. Your riding plan should always have Safety as its first priority, and this over-rules any System we may be riding to, which in turn over-rules Smoothness and finally Speed.
So lets re-visit the junction above. It's a national speed limit, we've got a right hand bend, hatching on the right for oncoming traffic to use to turn into the garage, and traffic waiting to pull out from the nearside, and its all on a it of a brow of a hill.
This is the perfect scenario for 'The System'! Its TUG, its the four S's, it's 'What can I see, what can't I see, what might I reasonably expect to develop', (car on the forecourt hidden alongside the inside of the lorry waiting to pull out??) Its 'slow in fast out, fast in sh*t out'....
So what's the answer to this scenario? Do you want to use The System? Then 'consider' your position - drift to the crown of your lane? 'Consider' your speed - throttle off? 'Consider' your gear - drop it a cog for a bit of flexibility......?
Want to use TUG? Use that information to protect yourself by putting your self in the best possible place. Look for eye contact, look for wheels still rotating on cars waiting to pull out, and give information back with your own eyes, maybe your horn, where you put yourself in the road for others to see you ...
Want to use the four S's?...... Shall I keep my position but knock off some speed? Shall I maintain my speed but alter my position? Shall I alter my position and reduce my speed? What's safest?
The answer to this scenario, and the next one a hundred yards down the road, and the one after that two hundred yards down the road .... is Think!! And part of that thought process should invlovle thinking about your positioning.
Corner exit.
We're mid corner, we've sorted out our position, our speed, our gear .... now what?
Our corner will very rarely take us to a benign and hazard free stretch of road. Unless you're riding through Nevada you're almost bound to face yet another corner, and one somewhere after that and so on. How can we be cute and link them together in a smooth, seamless flowing ride?
We play a little game with the paint work and the verges. And we're looking for this ..
As I exit, in this example, a right hand bend, I'm looking to perfectly line up the hazard lines, that are the middle ground between the exit of the right and the entrance to the next left.
If I exit a left hand bend thats followed by a right (as pictured below) then my (for want of a better word) turn in point is the point in my vision where the nearside verge lines up in my vision.
If I exit a left into another left, then I use the centre lines, a right into another right, I stick to the verge. Clear as mud?
So is this all a bit too cutesy? Am I in danger of spending too much time trying to look pretty rather than just getting on with it and riding?
Yes!! Try not to fanny about on the road, being obsessed about 'nice' lines, trying not to show a brake light and all that crap!!
But that having been said, there is a real point to this. Can I cut the bend below? My right is heading for a left, do I have to fanny about waiting for the hazard lines to straighten up in my vision?
Cut the corner here and one day you'll pay the price with the surprise of your life..
Ok, A very short video for you! Let me just explain at this point that this was thrown together on a whimsy on a cheap and cheerful camera held by my other half who was pillion, and we are on our way back from a night away. This is a road, I've never been down before, in Essex somewhere !
See how we use the nearside verge and the hazard warning lines as constant reference points to link our bends together, and notice how we put our bike quite deep into the corners to avoid the photo scenario above. At about twenty seconds there is a tight right hand bend with hatching on the off side, there for oncoming to use for a junction on our nearside. See how we deliberately run deep into that corner (bear in mind that Rosy is looking over my right shoulder, the bike is another couple of feet to the cameras left..) it would be easy to run just a tad too quick into that right hand bend and end up having to cut the corner ...
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The video clip nicely shows us lining up left and right handers, all on 'our' side of the road. You'll see that we use the centre paint for our exit out of a right hander. Notice the very first, quite long left hander - on its exit we peel in quite late to our nearside verge, and we don't hit the lined up verge imagery straight on. When the view across a corner is quite limited and we're on a road we don't know, that's often the case. It's a good way of sussing out who's riding a road they know, and who's riding 'blind'!
Lets now look at borrowing the other side of the road, and see if that changes any of our visual aids.
There's nothing wrong in using the offside to improve our view and to straight line stuff, but it's worth mentioning a few things.
First off, I see riders using the off side 'because they can'. It is, the other side of the road, and if it goes bent, you'll be hung out to dry and the courts and the press will be writing, 'at the time of the accident he was on the wrong side of the road...'.
You've got to be asking yourself, (four S's and all that malarky), is this really beneficial to me? Do I need to be this far out? if you can justify it, great - go for it, but it must be safe and relevant to your riding plan. I often see riders hanging out for a left hander, putting themselves in danger, and all for what? A couple of extra yards of vision?
Play the tape, keep it loaded and lets discus a few things..
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8 seconds. See how there is a hint of hidden road ahead, and we can make out a warning sign. 'What can we see, what can't we see' etc etc. So we push the bike deeper into the right hander just to open up that view. Once we're hapy all is well, we come out to open the view up into the left hander. Notice that we use the far right verge / white line as our reference point, just like we have been doing earlier with the centre paintwork.
12 to about 18 seconds, we pass two 'slow's written on the road and two 'road narrows' signs, which lead us into a right hander. 'In like a lamb, out like a lion', 'Safety System Smoothness Speed', IPSGA (system), call it what you like, but we knock our speed down a bit, and we don't hang ourselves out for the left after the right - middle of the road is as far as we go.
26 seconds+. We have a long, long right hander. Wide angle vision (look out for Mr Badger with his Samuri sword in the hedge ..!) keeps us nicely tucked in for the entire bend, whilst looking ahead, which opens up into a left hander ahead. We use the offside lane to open our view.
Ok, Pause for thought and lets talk about an off side view and oncoming traffic.
If you're using the offside of the road on a left hander, when oncoming traffic first sees you, their first view of you must be, you already on your way back in to 'your' lane. Lets write that another way; When and if, you're out on the offside, you can not just hang out there waiting for a reason (ie an oncoming car) to come back in. There comes a point when you must, regardless of whether the road ahead is clear of oncoming, give it up and come back in.
The faster you're going, the earlier that process must start.
41 Seconds, this is not too far removed from the photo of the petrol station scenario. There's something on the nearside, a right hand bend and oncoming traffic. I've decided here, to stay put on the nearside but reduce my speed. As we approach the car parked on the nearside we see the road is going round to the left. It all works out nicely and we come away from the hazard and combine our position for the impending left-hander.
Look at the books available on the market about motorcycle riding techniques. In a couple of pages we've barely scratched the surface on the subject of positioning on country lanes and relax a little (a lot!) in the speedlimits - riders in built up areas are often back and forth from kerb to centre-line probably gaining really very little, and probably confusing the hell out of the car driver behind!
Because our bike is about the third of the width of a car, we take up a lot less room on the tarmac than most other road users. Is this an advantage to us? It can be - it can be a huge advantage. But if we position ouselves badly on the road it can also be our downfall.
We can use positioning on the road to our advantage in pretty much any environment, and in further threads we'll cover urban riding. There will also be a hundred and one occasions when we may well want to consider our positioning on a relatively straight bit of road, (urban or not) but for now, let's look at positioning, out on the open road, and specifically negotiating corners.
Corner Entry
So what's the big advantage to approaching corners in a nearside / offside position?
There are three good reasons;
It allows us to see
It allows us to be seen
It increases the radius of the bend.
Let's concentrate on those first two to start with, and now is a good time to introduce TUG - Take, Use Give. I'm loathed to talk about 'The System', but it's going to come up soon enough so we might as well introduce that now as well, and see how these two ideas work along side each other.
The first topic on vision, demonstrated that on the road we're constantly approaching hazzards and it helps our riding plan if we can identify those early.
The idea of Take Use Give, is that we acknowledge a hazzard as soon as we see it, use that information to our own advantage, and give information back to other road users. By and large, most of the using and giving will be down to positioning.
The initial phases of The System are Information, Position...(Speed, Gear, Accelerate..). So it makes sense that as soon as we see a hazzard, the first thing we should be thinking is, where's the best place for me on the road as I approach this?
By approaching a left hand bend from the crown of the road, we open up our own view, whilst giving other road users the opportunity to see us early. Hugging the kerb on the left hand bend above with the impending junction would be pretty dumb.
Petrol Stations, junctions, carparks, you name it, if they're part of the approaching hazard, then take that information, use it and give it back. Think about altering your position and showing yourself.
It's not just the junctions and the garage forecourts; on just a simple bend, with no other complications, good positioning allows us to see, and be seen early.
So, when we approach a right hander, we tuck it in tight to the nearside, we use our wide angle vision to 'see' where we are in relation to the kerb whilst looking at the road ahead, and when we approach a left hander, we do the same sort of thing and adopt a position somewhere near the crown of the road.
So what about this third idea of increasing the raduis of a curve? We could wax lyrical at this point and talk about the 'tyre grip trade off', (heard of that?), we could even talk about Keith Code, and the soft science of cornering, but the bottom line is that a motorcycle is at its most stable when it's upright and under slight acceleration.
The wider radius, aside from improving our view, means that we can negotiate the turn with less lean angle, and that in turn means that we can go faster. YeeHar!
*Off on a bit of a tangent here, but worthy of note, is the fact that in the first week of a standard Police, three week driving course, the instructor will conduct you to 'ease and squeeze' as you drive. Ease and squeeze is basically acceleration sense, throttle control and the knack of balancing a car on the approach into, and the exit out of a corner. No coincidence then, that if you book yourself onto the first module of the Californian Superbike school, your morning track session, up until lunchtime, will be spent in one gear only, and you're asked not to touch your brakes...*
So, we now know that nearside for right, offside for left and opening up our view as we approach junctions is the way to go. Right?
Let's roll the dice and see what we get...
Great!! Ok, so what do we do above? Look into the junction or position for the bend? lets roll the dice again and see if we can't get something easier....
Time for another kitchy driving school saying! I give you the four S's; Safety, System, Smoothness Speed.
If there's one thing that all the books, and all the instructors agree on, it's the fact that there are very few black and whites in roadcraft. Things are fluid, they change all the time, even the book Roadcraft uses the word consider (your approach to....), consider (your horn....) in just about every paragraph.
The four S's however, are one of the few things that are not up for negotiation. Your riding plan should always have Safety as its first priority, and this over-rules any System we may be riding to, which in turn over-rules Smoothness and finally Speed.
So lets re-visit the junction above. It's a national speed limit, we've got a right hand bend, hatching on the right for oncoming traffic to use to turn into the garage, and traffic waiting to pull out from the nearside, and its all on a it of a brow of a hill.
This is the perfect scenario for 'The System'! Its TUG, its the four S's, it's 'What can I see, what can't I see, what might I reasonably expect to develop', (car on the forecourt hidden alongside the inside of the lorry waiting to pull out??) Its 'slow in fast out, fast in sh*t out'....
So what's the answer to this scenario? Do you want to use The System? Then 'consider' your position - drift to the crown of your lane? 'Consider' your speed - throttle off? 'Consider' your gear - drop it a cog for a bit of flexibility......?
Want to use TUG? Use that information to protect yourself by putting your self in the best possible place. Look for eye contact, look for wheels still rotating on cars waiting to pull out, and give information back with your own eyes, maybe your horn, where you put yourself in the road for others to see you ...
Want to use the four S's?...... Shall I keep my position but knock off some speed? Shall I maintain my speed but alter my position? Shall I alter my position and reduce my speed? What's safest?
The answer to this scenario, and the next one a hundred yards down the road, and the one after that two hundred yards down the road .... is Think!! And part of that thought process should invlovle thinking about your positioning.
Corner exit.
We're mid corner, we've sorted out our position, our speed, our gear .... now what?
Our corner will very rarely take us to a benign and hazard free stretch of road. Unless you're riding through Nevada you're almost bound to face yet another corner, and one somewhere after that and so on. How can we be cute and link them together in a smooth, seamless flowing ride?
We play a little game with the paint work and the verges. And we're looking for this ..
As I exit, in this example, a right hand bend, I'm looking to perfectly line up the hazard lines, that are the middle ground between the exit of the right and the entrance to the next left.
If I exit a left hand bend thats followed by a right (as pictured below) then my (for want of a better word) turn in point is the point in my vision where the nearside verge lines up in my vision.
If I exit a left into another left, then I use the centre lines, a right into another right, I stick to the verge. Clear as mud?
So is this all a bit too cutesy? Am I in danger of spending too much time trying to look pretty rather than just getting on with it and riding?
Yes!! Try not to fanny about on the road, being obsessed about 'nice' lines, trying not to show a brake light and all that crap!!
But that having been said, there is a real point to this. Can I cut the bend below? My right is heading for a left, do I have to fanny about waiting for the hazard lines to straighten up in my vision?
Cut the corner here and one day you'll pay the price with the surprise of your life..
Ok, A very short video for you! Let me just explain at this point that this was thrown together on a whimsy on a cheap and cheerful camera held by my other half who was pillion, and we are on our way back from a night away. This is a road, I've never been down before, in Essex somewhere !
See how we use the nearside verge and the hazard warning lines as constant reference points to link our bends together, and notice how we put our bike quite deep into the corners to avoid the photo scenario above. At about twenty seconds there is a tight right hand bend with hatching on the off side, there for oncoming to use for a junction on our nearside. See how we deliberately run deep into that corner (bear in mind that Rosy is looking over my right shoulder, the bike is another couple of feet to the cameras left..) it would be easy to run just a tad too quick into that right hand bend and end up having to cut the corner ...
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The video clip nicely shows us lining up left and right handers, all on 'our' side of the road. You'll see that we use the centre paint for our exit out of a right hander. Notice the very first, quite long left hander - on its exit we peel in quite late to our nearside verge, and we don't hit the lined up verge imagery straight on. When the view across a corner is quite limited and we're on a road we don't know, that's often the case. It's a good way of sussing out who's riding a road they know, and who's riding 'blind'!
Lets now look at borrowing the other side of the road, and see if that changes any of our visual aids.
There's nothing wrong in using the offside to improve our view and to straight line stuff, but it's worth mentioning a few things.
First off, I see riders using the off side 'because they can'. It is, the other side of the road, and if it goes bent, you'll be hung out to dry and the courts and the press will be writing, 'at the time of the accident he was on the wrong side of the road...'.
You've got to be asking yourself, (four S's and all that malarky), is this really beneficial to me? Do I need to be this far out? if you can justify it, great - go for it, but it must be safe and relevant to your riding plan. I often see riders hanging out for a left hander, putting themselves in danger, and all for what? A couple of extra yards of vision?
Play the tape, keep it loaded and lets discus a few things..
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8 seconds. See how there is a hint of hidden road ahead, and we can make out a warning sign. 'What can we see, what can't we see' etc etc. So we push the bike deeper into the right hander just to open up that view. Once we're hapy all is well, we come out to open the view up into the left hander. Notice that we use the far right verge / white line as our reference point, just like we have been doing earlier with the centre paintwork.
12 to about 18 seconds, we pass two 'slow's written on the road and two 'road narrows' signs, which lead us into a right hander. 'In like a lamb, out like a lion', 'Safety System Smoothness Speed', IPSGA (system), call it what you like, but we knock our speed down a bit, and we don't hang ourselves out for the left after the right - middle of the road is as far as we go.
26 seconds+. We have a long, long right hander. Wide angle vision (look out for Mr Badger with his Samuri sword in the hedge ..!) keeps us nicely tucked in for the entire bend, whilst looking ahead, which opens up into a left hander ahead. We use the offside lane to open our view.
Ok, Pause for thought and lets talk about an off side view and oncoming traffic.
If you're using the offside of the road on a left hander, when oncoming traffic first sees you, their first view of you must be, you already on your way back in to 'your' lane. Lets write that another way; When and if, you're out on the offside, you can not just hang out there waiting for a reason (ie an oncoming car) to come back in. There comes a point when you must, regardless of whether the road ahead is clear of oncoming, give it up and come back in.
The faster you're going, the earlier that process must start.
41 Seconds, this is not too far removed from the photo of the petrol station scenario. There's something on the nearside, a right hand bend and oncoming traffic. I've decided here, to stay put on the nearside but reduce my speed. As we approach the car parked on the nearside we see the road is going round to the left. It all works out nicely and we come away from the hazard and combine our position for the impending left-hander.
Look at the books available on the market about motorcycle riding techniques. In a couple of pages we've barely scratched the surface on the subject of positioning on country lanes and relax a little (a lot!) in the speedlimits - riders in built up areas are often back and forth from kerb to centre-line probably gaining really very little, and probably confusing the hell out of the car driver behind!