Hello!
I’m Nacho Vidal from Moto-Control, and today we’ll talk about why self-taught riders
usually tend to crash 12 times more.
By self-taught riders I mean not only people who, well, taught themselves to ride a bike,
but also people who were taught not by trained instructor but by friend, family member or
any other guy who were supposed to know how to ride.
I already can see the comments like:” My uncle taught me how to ride a dirtbike in
1992, and I rode since without an issue”.
That’s ok, that’s why I said self-taught riders usually tend to crash.
Not always crash.
That’s not something I just made up – one of the conclusions to famous Hurt Report says:
The motorcycle riders involved in accidents are essentially without training; 92% were
self-taught or learned from family or friends.
Motorcycle rider training experience reduces accident involvement and is known to reduce
injuries in the event of accidents.
Now, the Hurt Report study was published in 1981.
Of course, a lot has changed since then, but still almost 12 to 1 ratio looks impressive.
Proper training really significantly reduces the chances of crashing the bike.
But why?
What’s so difficult about riding bikes?
After all there are 4-year old children riding them.
It can’t be that hard.
Yes, indeed, riding a motorcycle is not a rocket science, but still it requires at least
some level of training.
On car, for example, you sort of can start driving as a complete noob, cars are relatively
forgiving.
Cars won’t do backflips if you give them too much throttle, and won’t make a nose-dive
if you brake too fast.
And if you crash in a car – you have a whole metal cage around you for protection, on bike
you have only your protective gear, which can only do so much.
To make matters worse, a lot of riding techniques can be pretty counterintuitive and confusing
at first.
Just take steering process for example.
Steering on motorcycles is so confusing that it’s even called countersteering.
On a car steering is pretty simple.
We turn the wheel right - car goes right.
We turn the wheel left – our car goes left.
The more we turn the wheel – the tighter the turning radius is.
Very simple.
Steering on a bike is more complicated.
For example, to turn left – we have to initiate the turn by temporarily turning the front
wheel right.
It upsets the balance of our bike and makes it lean left.
Only then we release the pressure from the handlebars and let the front wheel turn itself
back left.
For a self-taught rider this whole process can be very confusing.
Eventually every rider starts to use countersteering to a degree, because really it’s the only
fast way to turn a motorcycle.
But many riders proceed to do this unconsciously.
They THINK they turn the bike by leaning or counterleaning their body, by pressing the
knee into the tank, by loading outer or inner footpeg, by turning their head or butt etc.
All this only leads to a ton on wasted energy and not very effective turning of the bike.
And while very perceptive and self-aware person certainly can learn countersteering all by
himself – unfortunately it is not always the case and usually it takes much less time
to learn countersteering with a good instructor.
Countersteering is just one example, there are a lot of other very useful techniques
which can massively improve your riding experience.
Like for example, proper use of your vision, proper riding position and use of your body
weight, trailbraking, throttle control, front and rear brake, clutch control with friction
zone, braking mid-corner etc.
A lot of this stuff can be very counter-intuitive and very hard to practice on the road from
zero level.
But for each of these techniques there is a certain set of exercises which brakes it
down on simple components and lets to learn this technique easily and safely, without
putting yourself at risk.
Now let’s quickly skim through some statements about motorcycle training, which can look
rather convincing, but in fact are wrong.
1) Just ride, put on some miles.
Riding a bike is not a rocket science, you’ll learn it eventually.
As we already discussed – there are a lot of aspects of riding which can be pretty counter-intuitive
for a new rider.
And while you can eventually learn everything by yourself – you’ll probably spend much
more time doing it than if you get proper training right away.
Plus, when you are riding the streets unprepared – it’s a bit of a gamble really.
Just putting on some miles might end up pretty expensive venture at the end of the day.
2) Just ride safe and you’ll be ok.
It would be a great advice if it wouldn’t be so unspecific.
It’s really equal to just ride and don’t crash, ok?
Hardly anyone intentionally rides down the road unsafely with intention to crash.
But how can I really ride “safely” if I don’t know, for example, how fast my bike
can brake?
Maybe it’ll brake in 10 meters, maybe in a 100, so how much space between me and a
car in front of me is safe?
That’s also something a good training course will teach you.
So, you’ll know exactly how to “Just ride safe”
3) All your training is useless, because in a stressful situation you’ll panic and crash.
True, in extreme road situation a rider can panic.
But for different riders there will be a different panic threshold.
For a guy with no training and no experience if a car suddenly turns in front of him – that
will be horrifying.
He will not know what to do – he doesn’t know how to brake fast, he doesn’t know
how to swerve.
These situations usually produce stories about “I had no other choice.
I had to lay her down”.
But if you are well trained – first you’ll probably know where to look for turning cars
on intersections, so it won’t be surprise for you.
Second – you’ll probably be prepared to brake since you know that you are about to
cross the intersection.
And at last you know how to brake fast.
So, you’ll deal with this situation with ease why should you panic?
4) But not everything on the road depends on us, there are a lot of other idiots.
Yes, that’s why a big part of good motorcycle training is a road strategy, which teaches
us how to avoid most of the idiots on the road.
Yes, nobody’s perfectly 100% safe on the road, it’s a sad part of reality.
But by applying good road strategy we can avoid problems probably 9 times out of 10,
because vast majority of road situations are pretty typical.
Once you learn how to avoid them – we significantly reduce our chances to be strucked by some
idiot on the road.
5) You don’t need all these fancy riding techniques, they are for track only.
All you need is to ride by the rules.
Yes, but remember the previous topic?
Not everyone on the road drive by the rules all the time.
Plus people, and not only people nowadays, make mistakes all the time.
So even if we ride by the rules with speed limit and so – sooner or later, we’ll
have to face some emergency scenario, where our riding skills will play a critical role.
6) You don’t need all the fancy riding technique, all you need to do – is to be aware and
watch the road situation.
Well, first of all, the road strategy is a big part of any good motorcycle training course.
But also remember that to be able to monitor the road situation you need some computing
power to spare.
If the tasks like braking, turning or accelerating take all your attention – you won’t have
anything to spare on the road situation.
That’s why we actually need to feel very confident and relaxed on our bike, which again
is achieved by training.
All right, I think that’s enough for today.
I’ll leave the links to important videos down in the description in case you are a
new rider and watch my channel for the first time.
If you found this video useful – please put a like under it and hit the subscribe
button.
Thank you for watching, and have a great day.
Bye!