DaveLX wrote:
My instructor advised that I shouldn't filter on my test. So I asked the examiner before I started - filtering or not? She said "don't filter".
I asked why, she said "less chance of getting it wrong and failing!"
As I said, it's up to the individual. If you're not confident with it, then you don't do it (but if you're not confident with it, then should you do it at all, regardless of whether you're taking a test? I don't know.....).
My take on it is that I ride better (i.e. have better chance of passing the test) when I ride more naturally. Also, my *aim* is that I don't do illegal/unsafe/daft things on the road. That applies whether I'm on my test, or riding to work. I treated the test as a normal ride.
Filtering's fine, and legal, if done properly, as I said. I checked it with the examiner beforehand. I'm no examiner, but if I see a bike waiting in a long line of traffic on a wide road, with bags of room to filter, my first thought is that they're not confident or not paying attention.
But I've got no axe to grind. I was just sharing a tip that may or may not be useful.
DaveLX wrote:
Regarding left foot down - of course you don't need to use your feet to ride a twist and go, but why is it cobblers?
I think the left foot down is called the "safety position", so I guess that's what examiners are looking for - what they're trained to look for
The safety position is VERY relevant to a geared bike, with foot brake and foot-operated gears. i.e. it's NOT safe to put your right foot down, so the correct procedure is left foot down. And you have to do the shuffly Come Dancing thing with feet and gears. Examiners know that this is often a tricky thing to learn for first time riders, so they pay close attention to it.
With a modern scooter, the only thing you need to worry about for safety is having a good purchase on the road so that you can support the bike if you need to. I'm a tall bloke, so I use left foot down almost all of the time (if I'm stopped and there are strong cross-winds, the safest thing for me is often to brace with two feet down, but of course this is rare). I do this because I can easily flat-foot my scooter, and because if I ever want to learn to ride geared then it will be my one less thing to learn.
What I'm saying is cobblers is that anyone should insist that left foot down is necessary for a scooter. GTs and GTSs have quite high seats if you're not much over 5ft tall. You can't flat foot them, and when you drive on the left and have to stop on a road with a steep camber will mean that your right foot is the safest foot to use. As I said, examiners might not come across scooters that often, and their default reaction is that right foot down is wrong and unsafe. So, if you're not tall and are riding a high-seated scoot, it's a good idea to point out to your examiner beforehand that you might choose to use your right foot at times because this is safer.
DaveLX wrote:
Why was your examiner in a car anyway? That's a bit mad!
Not all test centres have examiners on bikes. And even if they do, the one examiner who's on a bike might be ill, or their bike might be out of service. So from time to time you get an examiner in a car. It happens.