The Basic Elements of Riding

As a learner, you'll find out how you ride a motorcycle is very different to how you drive and operate a car. Below are some of the most basic elements to riding.

Traction

The same thing that makes riding a motorcycle so fun on corners is also its Achille's heel. Traction to motorcycles is far more important than it is to cars. If a car loses traction on one or two tyres the car will still be likely to stay on the road and on course. But if your motorcycle loses traction on just one tyre, the rider will be lucky not to come off.

For cars and motorcycles, the more traction the vehicle has with the road (made by the tyres contacting with the road), the easier it is to stay on the road. With correct pressure in the tyres for highway speeds, would you believe that both tyres of a typical bike only have as much contact area with the road as the palm of your hand? Compare this to a car, which has four tyres, wider than a bike tyre. The car's total contact area is far greater than that of a bike.

Think about this next time you're on a wet road approaching a corner. You don't have much traction. So use it wisely!

Balancing

Keeping a bike balanced, upright and in control is one of the fundamental features of learning to ride. Keeping the balance is affected by things such as your speed, type of bike (say a sports bike or a cruiser), turning, road surface, and even where the rider is looking. The slower you travel, the more the rider has to compensate for the weight of the bike. You'll find that once your Learner bike is in motion, it's relatively easy to keep the bike balanced in a straight line. When it gets to slower speeds and in cornering, you'll find keeping the balance of your bike becomes more of a challenge.

Understanding the behaviour of your motorcycle is very important, especially when it comes to correct cornering technique and emergency situations, like having to do an obstacle turn. Knowing how your Learner bike behaves and what actions you can take to control it may be all that matters in an emergency situation. Taking extra training courses at Stay Upright or some time out to practice in a controlled environment can be quite useful.

Turning

The physics and geometry of a motorcycle make it ‘want' to go straight ahead and stay vertical when it's at speed. Forward energy helps to stabilize the bike as well. To get a bike to turn means that the rider has to ‘unbalance it' and lean it over. To turn a car, you simply pull on the steering wheel.

To lean a motorcycle, things like road camber (the curvature of a road), crosswind and the position of the rider on the bike have an effect. But arguably, one of the most significant methods is by counter-steering. The simplest way to describe this is that the rider pushes on the right grip to turn the bike right and pushes on the left grip to go left. Strangely, pushing on the right grip to go right means the wheel points slightly to the left. This happens even when we don't notice we are doing it.

Because a bike becomes unbalanced and uses up traction when cornering, using the brakes should be done safely before a bike enters the corner. Limit the braking when turning, as the bike can lose traction very quickly.

Remember, you're on two wheels, not four. Traction and balance become significant factors in keeping control of your bike. A lot of accidents occur on corners and are single-vehicle accidents. Staying within the confines of physics on your bike is important.