RIDING TIPS - Dont panic

Everything about riding a motorcycle is counterintuitive.

A. Your natural instincts serve you well in ordinary situations, but the physics of motorcycles is anything but ordinary.
1. As a result, your natural instinct is almost always wrong.
a. If you do what comes naturally, you will probably make a bad situation worse.

B. When you panic, even the tiniest bit, you automatically react by instinct, without thinking.
1. For example, while going around a curve, you feel an unexpected bump or slide, and automatically cut back on the throttle and stiffen your body. It only happened in a split-second, but you just made things worse.

C. So to prevent yourself from reacting instinctively, the best thing to do is to not let yourself get in a panic situation to begin with.

1. How can you prevent panic? It’s a reaction to the unforeseen, right?
a. Actually, no.
b. Panic is what you do when your mind is already completely occupied, and you can’t give any extra attention to a new situation.

i If you are riding near (or beyond) the limit of your abilities, then your attention is completely used up.
• ANYTHING new is going to make you panic a little.

ii If you are riding faster than you can see (i.e., your roadspeed is such that you cannot react to unexpected road conditions in time, once you see them), then your attention is completely used up by things happening faster than you can react to them.
• ANYTHING new is going to make you panic at this point.

2. The solution is to never ride at more than 75% of your ability.
a. Less is even better.
b. When you’re surprised, you have plenty of attention in reserve to give to the new situation, and you will react properly instead of instinctively.
c. When conditions suddenly require additional skill — such as a car cutting you off, or a curve in the road that suddenly gets even tighter — you will have that ability available to you, and you won’t panic.

3. When riding with others, still don’t ride past your limits.
a. Riding faster than you’re comfortable going is exciting, but stupid. You give up your safety margin by riding close to or past your limits.
i You can learn a lot from keeping up with a better rider, but make sure you’re really following someone who you can learn from.
ii Don’t try to keep up if you can’t do it comfortably. Catch up later.
iii Likewise, keep an eye out for less-experienced riders you might be outpacing.
b. Maybe you don’t want to lose face, maybe you don’t want to get lost, but there is a strong temptation to keep up with riders who go faster than you can comfortably go. Don’t give in to the temptation.
D. Now that you can overcome your natural instincts, you need to know what the proper responses actually are.