5 Life-Saving Habits for Motorcycle Riders

oh hi i didn't see you there so canadians are told to cover their levers in traffic also near the timmy's drive-through and in moose country the idea is that when bullwinkle charges which he always will as far as a rider is concerned we're ready to brake fast but that can also backfire see better than covering your levers is pre-loading them take up the free play hold it on the cusp of pads touching rotors and you can save a crash but how ah funny you should ask i was just passing time by listing the waze rubber grips adhesion hysteresis viscosity and cohesion this is mostly relevant for long-term tire wear this is mostly irrelevant unless there's a thick intermediary on the road oil maple syrup etc so let's focus on the first two adhesion is the friction we know and love more grip when the tires in asphalt are sticky more again when your vehicle is heavy hence wanting weight transfer to the front wheel heavier normal force more adhesion more grip the kicker is that your suspension is damped it takes a while for the spring to compress and allow the weight transfer so when i brake fast i'm asking for adhesion that my tire doesn't yet have the normal force to achieve put simply of course most gents find it not impossible to resist jerking their lever panic breaking is by definition panicked but every reaction starts at zero if you merely cover the break your hand will be moving too fast by the time it hits the engagement point whereas if you preload to the engagement point your initial braking is physically bound to be progressive even a hand jerk reaction has to build up to its force but we haven't mentioned hysteresis and a wiser writer wouldn't because it's complex and redundant now i can't resist that let's do it rubber compresses and rebounds as it rolls over stuff like an elastic like a spring but the force you put into a tire making all the energy below this line comes back kinda sluggish like a deflated sex doll you get less out than you put in because we lose all this heat to the internal friction of the tire yay imagine rolling over the road we force compression at contact then sometime later we get the weaker rebound more goes into slowing the tire then kicking it off again which a fuel economist would call rolling resistance eraser would call it friction or grip and a physicist calls this laggy system hysteretic you see the problem when you slam the brakes we're stacking up stress faster than the rubber can shed it there's a term for when an elastic system can't get itself back to equilibrium it's it's called the glass transition your tire physically becomes glassy that's why our bikes can handle a load of braking force but not so much rate of force so we ease into full braking power and preloading your levers is a hacky way to do it or at least to help you do it now most of us scan left first then center then right the rationale being that if both tick-tock failed to notice a red light the one on the left would hit first fine though not if you drive on the wrong side of the road and recent scholarships suggest it's even more complicated see we always thought humans acquire targets faster in their left field of view and are more likely to miss observations on the right it's called pseudoneglect but typical scientists they only ran a few experiments in the western world before pronouncing this is how people are okay [Music] um i don't i don't i'm not it turns out that readers of right to left languages arabic hebrew have the opposite bias the university of saskatchewan ryder pride found that bilingual bi-directional readers can scan right to left as fast as they scan left to right and on top of lower search times they rarely miss anything in either field of view so the habit to make is this scan left center right then right center left first we're giving ourselves twice as long to find threats on the right as left to right readers we need that and second we're training our brains to scan in both directions thus building faster and more effective perception just like bi-directional readers and how much difference can that make well search times in that study were up to 200 milliseconds faster for bi-directional folks highway speed you're covering 33 meters per second so we're talking about stopping over six meters shorter over 20 feet over two lane widths could definitely save a crash or two now the habit for cold weather is so counter-intuitive i never thought of it this was told to me by an old motorcycle messenger in london a guy who rode all night all weather the trick when it's cold is to get colder see in wind and rain we naturally close up hunch back tighten shoulders to guard our warmth from the elements that works great for homo erectus huddling in a cave less so for homo motor cyclists the truth is that wind has little effect on modern aerodynamic bikes but when it blows the rider whose tense body translates that gus to the bars you get motorcyclists blowing off the road similarly your tires have sufficient grip on rain even snow i've written plenty and it does not immediately chuck a motorcycle to the ground only when a rider makes tight jerky inputs does a bike start sliding so in wind and rain and cold sit up loose open your chest and get colder the safest riding stance is come hither monivare so habituate that and stop frequently for hot tea how to spot a new rider watch them stop [Music] this looks shakier than alex mark has his future but this has all the false stability of jada smith's marriage and this is a whole other entanglement the habit is to bias your head leftward so you always fall onto the left foot the correct foot it keeps our brake light on via the rear brake which is safer if we get rear ended for fast collisions it makes dick all difference but consider a slow one no brake means i'm shunting forward into traffic bad front brake means the bike will immediately tuck my grip on the bar is dragging me down in front of the car very bad when a second crash is looming holding the rear gives you the best chance of the best outcome staying on your bike a bonus is that stable stops and hill starts just look smoother when dragging the rear your left foot also plants outside the car track go right foot down and you're landing in oil drip slip drop central okay the accordion effect and i saved this habit for last because its flip side is so often fatal say you and a buddy are out for a ride buddy decides to pick up the pace but it'll take you a half second to see that and follow suit so you'll need to reach a higher speed than your friend did just to catch him and if buddy then breaks you will again be breaking a half second later and from that higher velocity to those that study traffic jams it's the accordion effect unfortunately to motorcyclists here it's deadly two drivers driving pretty fast that's according to the driver that captured all of this you can see that the two bikes they bump each other tough to quantify just how dangerous this is but i tried and say rider a is doing 15 meters per second he accelerates to 30 meters per second in three seconds then sees a corner so decelerates as fast as he can from 30 back to 15 in two seconds those are reasonable accelerations for a sport bike and about 50 and 100 kph respectively so it's all very plausible and do the kinematics it works out the rider a is going to need 45 meters breaking distance before he's ready to take that corner but rider b remember his acceleration times are t not minus 0.5 since he takes a half second to see what his friend does and follows suit so he's going to hit 39 meters per second or 140 kilometers an hour just to catch up and assuming his bike can't break any faster it'll be 86 meters before he's ready to take that corner almost double almost definitely rider b is sliding through that turn this is why group riding can be incredibly dangerous those struggling to keep up are those that physics is working against i'd tell everyone to ride their own ride but we're competitive bastards so that's easier said than done a more practical habit is this when forming a group put faster riders at the back it sounds odd but the accordion effect means we can protect new motorcyclists by letting them lead thanks this is tom tom has a friend who was always inclined to be reckless as they grew up their mode of transport changed but the careless driving of tom's friend didn't improve if anything it seemed to get worse

Channel: FortNine

Views: 1,668,866

Rating: 4.9493198 out of 5

Keywords: best motorcycle riding tricks for beginners, hacks, tips, tricks, motorcycle safety, motorcycle riding tips for beginners, newbies, amateurs, motorcycle crashes, fortnine, f9, motorcycle safety test, road test, motorcycle driving license, how to

Id: HiOGAYOXN8U

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ghostinthesky]

Always love the science behind their statements. Also, that Alberta drivers joke

[u/[deleted]]

This is exactly what happened when I saw a fatal crash. My friend’s boyfriend introduced me to his best friend from the marine corps. They leave the bar (don’t drink and ride people) and his friend clipped his front tire on the rear of the lead rider. Immediately went down and the car coming up behind them couldn’t stop fast enough and hit his bike which crushed him caving in his chest. Why I’ve always favored safe following distance over keeping up.

[u/HolidayMoose]

Heh, I like the Alberta plates at 5:10.

For those who don't know, there is a bit of a rivalry between drivers from BC, where F9 videos are filmed, and Alberta, the next province over. Both provinces claim that drivers from the other province are terrible.

[u/kenderss]

Love this guy

[u/static__void]

I’m not sure if I understood the first point correctly. Is he advocating that I always keep my hand brake half held, so if I need to emergency brake, I can do it quicker?

[u/ehaas6703]

I’m pretty brand new with all of this, still 17 so It would be roughly a year at least before I’d want to get my license for it, but this video made a lot of sense, thanks for sharing it!

[u/Z0mbiejay]

Fantastic video as always

[u/nigelh]

Love that guy's material

[u/Mantioch1]

Like the video, but not the way he brakes. Braking with two fingers and keeping the rest back is asking to get them cut off if you go down and land on the brake actuator. MSC coach drilled that into our heads, said he'd seen it happen more than once.