Proficient Motorcycling. David L. Hough
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Название: Proficient Motorcycling
Автор: David L. Hough
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Сделай Сам
isbn: 9781935484677
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You’ll have to decide for yourself when and where you are willing to risk passing over the double yellow. My advice is to never, ever be out in the wrong lane while crossing a bridge, approaching the crest of a hill, rounding a blind curve, or riding through an intersection. But what about a long uphill sweeper where you can see the road eight or ten seconds ahead? And when you come up behind a vehicle waiting to turn left from a busy two-laner, is it smart to come to a sitting-duck stop, or should you swerve over onto the shoulder, pass on the right, and keep moving?
Regardless of the law, before you decide to zip around any slow-moving or stopped vehicle, take a good look at the situation, and try to figure out what’s happening and what’s about to happen. Is there a side road or driveway into which the other vehicle could turn? Is there a tree-shaded intersection ahead from which another vehicle could suddenly materialize? Is the other vehicle going slowly because the driver is about to make a left turn? It’s unwise to pass in any areas where there are roads or driveways along the highway, even if it isn’t a no-passing zone. And before you pass a stopped vehicle on the right, take a good look behind you to ensure that someone else isn’t in the process of zooming around you.
Wandering Drivers
While around half of all fatal motorcycle crashes are the result of the rider losing control, the other half are collisions. So a big part of managing the situation is to be aware of what the drivers around you are doing. The other day, a mini-van driver who had been tailgating me for several miles finally zoomed on by straddling the centerline. Even though I was maintaining 60 in a 55, I think the close pass was a message, perhaps “you’ve been holding me up long enough,” or “motorcycles don’t belong on the highway,” or maybe just “move it or lose it, biker boy, I got places to be.” While such aggressive actions tend to anger me, they don’t scare me quite as much as drivers who wander over the centerline or halfway onto the shoulder or who change speed for no apparent reason. I can only assume that wandering drivers don’t have their brains fully engaged in DRIVE, or their brains are fogged with chemicals, or they are distracted by a conversation on their cell phones. Whatever the reason, it’s a scary situation for vehicles hurtling toward each other at closing speeds of 130 mph, separated only by a pair of four-inch yellow lines painted on the pavement.
It’s not uncommon for motorists to misjudge the radius of a turn and drift over the centerline halfway around a corner.
Entering a corner from the outside of the turn helps you avoid those Wandering Willies who drift over the centerline.
Whether it’s an act of aggression or a disengaged brain on their part, drivers who wander over the centerline can pick you off if you don’t take action to stay out of the way. If there’s a collision between a motorcycle and a heavier vehicle, you know who’s going to get hurt. On curving roads, there are specific locations where motorists tend to wander out of their lane, whatever the vehicle. You can adjust your line to avoid these areas.
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.
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