Modern Vespa

Recently read from an article ( a Finnish one, sorry...), that for many MC riders it's more difficult to steer away from an object on the road using counter steering when riding straight than it is when already cornering.

This is based on some study, but the simple reasoning behind this is, that when cornering, you already actively use counter steering. When riding straight and suddenly seeing an object on the road, you easily try something else than fast counter steering.

I tried this myself - a man hole cover as a target in a straight, empty road. Yep, quilty, it felt strange to actively "push" the right bar forward to make a sudden move to the right in a straight road.

Since that, I've made a habbit of going round man hole covers with exaccerated counter steering moves, traffic permitting. You'll never know when it's a squirrel (or something) and the scoot needs to change direction fast.

Yeah, if you take the Basic Rider's Course here in the USA it's a basic principle, the mantra being "push left, turn left, push right, turn right".

After driving for a lot of years, it's a little hard to remember to do things differently on a scooter....

I have taken statements from several riders who suffered collisions while attempting to swerve around an object. They claimed that the bike simply "would not" steer around the object, forcing them to contact it. I believe this happens because, when confronted with a panic situation, the rider instinctively attempts to navigate around the hazard as one would do when driving an automobile; they lean correctly for a swerve in one direction but actually steer the bike in the opposite direction, resulting in a neutral path directly into the object and a sensation of "it just wouldn't turn!"

I used to teach counter-steering as an emergency lane-change manoeuvre to avoid stuff.

It's entirely possible to move a 400kg Hoggley from the middle of one lane to the middle of the adjacent lane, while travelling at about 80kph, in a distance of about 2 car lengths.

It is violent, the Hoggley mentioned will sometimes get airborne mid-jump.
It takes a LOT of practice, be VERY careful, and start out at slow speeds.

Pushing on the bars will become instinctive before you know it.

Sometime in the very early 80s, I read an article in Motorcyclist (when the title was just one word) about using countersteer in an emergency. Since it had been a few years since I'd been on anything with an engine, I thought I hadn't there means to test out this new-to-me idea, and (literally) get a handle on how it worked.

Fast-forward about four years: I'm riding a rather unique bicycle in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour in NYC, the last leg of which takes riders across the Verazzano Bridge (whose lower lanes are closed to motor traffic for the event - it's one of the few city bridges with no bike/pedestrian access). By the time you make it to the other side of the bridge, you're building up a god bit of speed...I clocked myself on the not-so-low side of 40mph. From behind me, on my left, a guy is hammering past me, ass hovering well above his saddle while the bike is holding a very sloppy line, which worries me. Then, about 20 yards directly in front of me, he loses it and hits the blacktop hard. I went white-knuckle when I saw that...but what I did next amazes me to this day: I somehow instinctively pushed hard on the right side of the handlebar, and the bike almost violently jumped to the right, missing the fallen rider by barely one foot. (I don't even want to think about the alternative outcome.)

Somehow, I remembered that article, or at least the essence of it. So, yes, It Really Works. I've even used it riding Melody avoiding particularly nasty potholes in the area.

Something similar happened to me a few years back. I was in the middle of a group of bicycle racers and a rider up ahead went down hard on a (for us, downhill) fast state highway. He was splayed out and on his back directly in front of me and I was pretty much surrounded by other riders. I considered attempting a hard swerve but just at the last moment....a clear path opened up straight across the guy's adam's apple....

That...is even scarier than my situation. Which is why watching a criterium can be a bit of a nail-biter for me.

Ah, so you did what? And the result was what?

My commute home was on a frontage road. If traffic was light I would practice swerving between the white lines in the road, seeing how fast I could ride before riding over a dash.

I have found myself doing the same manhole cover swerve practice. There is one stretch on my commute where they make a perfect slalom course.

The other factor is target fixation. We strongly tend to go where we look. This just seems to be built into us. So the other thing to do is practice looking at the safe path around the obstacle and not looking at the obstacle. You will go that way almost as if by magic.

So, how do you safely get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice. Practice. Practice.

The counter steering concept is a little counter intuitive. I accidentally discovered enough proof for me that it does exist when I was weaving back and forth down a nice stretch of road. I realized while going back and forth, you do "push left" to go left and you "push right" to go right.

This was a good exercise for me to see in practice what I had always been told about counter steering. Give it a shot if you doubt the concept. It made a believer out of me.

This still gets me once in a while if I haven't ridden in a while.