Stroke of luck or riding acumen? What makes a good rider?

 

Assuming you have some years of riding experience, you ride a minimum
of 5-10K miles year, and you possibly had a wreck or two earlier in
your riding career, but now you:

1. do not experience the "pucker factor" very often, if at all
2. do not lock up the brakes at all
3. rarely if ever have to take evasive action
4. never go down

Does this mean you are either extremely lucky or a good rider? And
while we're at it, what are the qualities of a good rider?

Somebody who can hold their booze without wrecking... too often?
Somebody who wrecks often and lives to tell the tale? Somebody who can
do triple the speed limit while stunting and not wreck? Somebody who
obeys all traffic regs and has a watchful eye? Somebody who knows when
they shouldn't ride?

For me, it's simple. You're a good rider if you don't wreck, don't
cause others to wreck, and don't get into scary jams with your bike.
Still, with people who ride 50k miles per year, is it even possible
not to get into jams and experience the pucker factor fairly often?

Greg

 



You're a "good rider" (in your own head, at least) right
up to the NEXT time one of the above happens, and then
you think to yourself how "extremely lucky" you are that
your abject idiocy didn't get you kilt THIS time.

Only half a :-), there...

Bob M.

 

Bob Myers wrote:

This is very true.  All too frequently we hear about guys with hundreds
of thousands of motorcycling miles under their belt, experienced and
"good" riders by almost any definition, whose number nevertheless comes
up.  Usually we console ourselves by saying they must have made some
sort of mistake which we would NEVER do.

Still, I agree with the practice of counting near misses, and thinking
of each one as 1/4 of a wreck.  A near miss is in itself an "incident"
that should prompt some soul-searching and consideration of whether
anything could have been done to prevent it.

Unless I am riding my V-Strom offroad.  Then I wreck all the time :)

 


You are correct. That guy who was the safety editor of theat MC mag is
an example... died in a collision with a deer. Our local HRCA prez -
longtime rider; got rear-ended in FLA while he was stopped and got
killed.


Yes totally agreed. I intentionally berate myself if I visually miss a
vehicle approaching from the rear or off a side street or if I have to
put down two feet at a stop or worse, put down a foot to make a turn.
I get ticked if I'm the first one into an intersection and didn't have
to be. Even though these aren't accidents, they could well be if
something else in the grand scheme of things went awry.

 


I got an even more extreme approach from a book: everytime you make an
error, count it. An error is everything that upon reflection you'd do
differently if you were in the same situation again. That goes for
missing a street sign, or having your line slightly to closer to
potential traffic than comfortable, or forgetting what gear you're in
and having to count, or maneuvring into a spot that could close on you
by traffic. It doesn't count if you decide to ignore a speed limit or
do something silly that you want to do. It doesn't matter if your error
results in a dangerous situation.

You'll end up with dozens of errors an hour as a fresh rider - none of
whom may instantly endanger you, but some have the potential. Once your
senses sharpen, the error count goes up because you start realizing what
you could've done better. Then if that sets in, it starts coming down
again.

I've noticed that after about two hours riding, my error count goes up.
So I take a break before getting into that zone. If I have a bad day, my
error count is higher from the first minute than if I am calm, relaxed
and feeling comfortable.

cu
  .\arc