Trail braking - on the road?

[Wossname]

This method allows you to brake later so essentially you are at full throttle for longer, so when you turn in you are still reducing your speed towards the apex.

So braking into the corner, up to the apex or thereabouts, "allows you to brake later"? Etc. I'll have to think about that a bit more...

Watch the video I added, that explains it perfectly.

I agree - he explains and demonstrates the technique really well, and shows the inadequacy of my original link. But it also confirms my original comment - that's its a track thing, with no real relevance on the road. Nothing to do with being able to brake in a bend when you need to, which is a given, although many people don't prepare for that. I'll just have to ride a lot faster.

[Skub]

I'll just have to ride a lot faster.

A mate and I used to play a game of picking a familiar stretch of road and ride it as hard as possible without using brakes at all. Kind of the opposite of trail braking. It can be a lot more risky than trail braking.

Do what's comfortable forya man,you don't owe it to anyone which bike you have or how you ride.

[wull]

So braking into the corner, up to the apex or thereabouts, "allows you to brake later"? Etc. I'll have to think about that a bit more...

Watch the video I added, that explains it perfectly.

I agree - he explains and demonstrates the technique really well, and shows the inadequacy of my original link. But it also confirms my original comment - that's its a track thing, with no real relevance on the road. Nothing to do with being able to brake in a bend when you need to, which is a given, although many people don't prepare for that. I'll just have to ride a lot faster.

If you look back I pretty much say the same thing with regards to using it on the road, I’m merely explaining what it is.

[Couchy]

I don’t understand Why wouldn’t you use a bit of trail braking on the road when having a blast down your favourite road ? Not as much as on track but it’s still useful and safe carrying the brakes into a corner ?

[The Spin Doctor]

I don’t understand Why wouldn’t you use a bit of trail braking on the road when having a blast down your favourite road ? Not as much as on track but it’s still useful and safe carrying the brakes into a corner ?

What if your favourite road happens to have an articulated lorry backing into a farm entrance* in the middle of the corner, neatly hidden from view by the trees at the roadside?

Or you're using the technique on a road you don't know and the bend that looked ripe for a bit of trail braking actually turns out to be a lot tighter than you thought it was?

It's all about how much margin we build into our riding to deal with predictable problems like this.

As I've said before, this technique's no big deal for a rider with even modest skills once they understand the do's and don'ts, and you certainly don't need cornering ABS, sticky tyres or a race track surface to use it effectively.

But it's just like rushing up to bends braking later and harder, or cornering with more lean angle. We can do any of these but we're just eating a little more into our get-out-of-trouble reserves. if we're are eating into those reserves on a routine basis on every corner we enter, sooner or later we will find a bend that pushes us to our limits to avoid coming to grief.

I can't tell you or any other rider - and wouldn't presume to try - what makes for an adequate safety margin - you know your limits and I don't.

But what I do know is that there are plenty of riders who haven't a clue how fast they can stop because they've never bothered to find out. Some of those realise they can't stop and ride frustratingly slowly (had some on group rides). Others are quite happy to twist the happy handle and ride like a bat out of hell, but have little idea how to get rid of that speed again (picked a few of those out of hedges) and if I'm honest, I'd include myself in that category for a few years. I learned the hard way, and that's why I say what I say and teach what I teach.

* I was on a training course in Bucks, on a lovely twisty road that leads into the back of Chesham, when we encountered the artic. It's got the odd fast straight and quite a few tight corners. Fortunately we were on day two of the Performance: SPORT course where I cover trail braking to lose speed into bends (as well as how to start braking when already leaning mid-corner), and the trainee had been practicing.

The artic was in the middle of a blind S bend and became visible as he was leant to the left. He was able to brake progressively harder as the bike came upright and bring the bike to a comfortable stop.

Yes, many of us would probably have been able to do the same, and do it without any coaching (no-one taught me how to do it, and the IAM observer was horrified when I showed HIM how to do it) but not everyone springs fully formed from the womb. We all had to learn. I learned by getting it wrong a couple of times and crashing. I was lucky and none of them were too serious or life-threatening, so I was able to learn the lessons - not to try to carry so much speed next time into a sharp bend, not to try to brake harder as I leaned further, and not brake quite so suddenly mid-corner next time a dog ran into the road.

My trainee was quite impressed that I'd set that up for him to demonstrate his new skills... and quite relieved too. "I don't think I'd have made that if we hadn't covered it earlier" he said

[Couchy]

Agree with most of the above mr spin and I’m not daft enough to do it into blind bends tbh but it’s a part of my everyday riding it’s just a non issue. Tbh I don’t believe many go into a blind bend at a speed they can stop from if there is something round that bend, you can go in at a sensible speed but bikes take a long while to stop especially in a corner that you’d be doing 15mph on some national speed limit roads to stop safely in the distance you can see.

[weeksy]

What if your favourite road happens to have an articulated lorry backing into a farm entrance* in the middle of the corner, neatly hidden from view by the trees at the roadside?

Yeah that gets proper hairy. I had that about 18 months ago, rounding the left hander over a crest into the exact same scenario. I managed to stop. For a while though it was very much open to debate

[Mr. Dazzle]

Like most people I had a few of those sorts of moments when I first learned to ride in my late teens. Ever since then I've always been conscious of the need to be be able to stop within the distance you can see ahead

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I learnt by falling off, mostly on motor cross bikes, so no real damage to me or the bikes, I still find the grip on dirt a lot more predictable than on tarmac.

[Dodgy69]

I reckon if your mid corner and need to stop sharpish, you could already be in trouble. Not convinced cornering abs would help much. Depends how fast and how tight I suppose.

[wull]

See the problem here is abs does not give mechanical grip ( well it does and it doesn’t depending on how you look at it ) it stops the front tyre from locking up, the other purpose of trail braking is about loading the front tyre increasing contact patch and grip.

The same principle applies to the rear tyre, when you exit a corner or start to load the rear tyre by applying the throttle the tyre loads increasing contact patch allowing you to then get on the gas more and more etc, if you were to give it loads of gas straight away the tyre hasn’t had a chance to load and will just spin up.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

See the problem here is abs does not give mechanical grip, it stops the front tyre from locking up, the other purpose of trail braking is about loading the front tyre increasing contact patch and grip.

The same principle applies to the rear tyre, when you exit a corner or start to load the rear tyre by applying the throttle the tyre loads increasing contact patch allowing you to then get on the gas more and more etc, if you were to give it loads of gas straight away the tyre hasn’t had a chance to load and will just spin up.

So to sum up, braking and accelerating smoothly is better than grabbing the front brake or banging the throttle wide open - did you really need to be told this?

[KungFooBob]

So to sum up, braking and accelerating smoothly is better than grabbing the front brake or banging the throttle wide open - did you really need to be told this?

I've also been lead to believe that on a trackday, tarmac is grippier than grass.

HTH

[Yorick]

See the problem here is abs does not give mechanical grip, it stops the front tyre from locking up, the other purpose of trail braking is about loading the front tyre increasing contact patch and grip.

The same principle applies to the rear tyre, when you exit a corner or start to load the rear tyre by applying the throttle the tyre loads increasing contact patch allowing you to then get on the gas more and more etc, if you were to give it loads of gas straight away the tyre hasn’t had a chance to load and will just spin up.

So to sum up, braking and accelerating smoothly is better than grabbing the front brake or banging the throttle wide open - did you really need to be told this?

I reckon 80% of the trackday crashes that I saw were exiting corners.

[wull]

See the problem here is abs does not give mechanical grip, it stops the front tyre from locking up, the other purpose of trail braking is about loading the front tyre increasing contact patch and grip.

The same principle applies to the rear tyre, when you exit a corner or start to load the rear tyre by applying the throttle the tyre loads increasing contact patch allowing you to then get on the gas more and more etc, if you were to give it loads of gas straight away the tyre hasn’t had a chance to load and will just spin up.

So to sum up, braking and accelerating smoothly is better than grabbing the front brake or banging the throttle wide open - did you really need to be told this?

Yes, yes they did.

[The Spin Doctor]

See the problem here is abs does not give mechanical grip ( well it does and it doesn’t depending on how you look at it ) it stops the front tyre from locking up, the other purpose of trail braking is about loading the front tyre increasing contact patch and grip.

But - as I said earlier - you're also increasing the vector forces operating on the front tyre's contact patch by adding the force generating the turning moment to the braking force that's slowing the bike. So it's not giving you 'free' extra grip, you're also using it to steer.

Many of the race track crashes at the top level happen in the trail braking zone, particular when riders run a bit off line and try to add a bit too much brake to a bit too much lean.

So OK, if you're on the track, I guess you learn that the hard way.

And I know you are talking about the track but that very 'braking into corners increases the contact patch' statement has been repeated numerous times in road riding magazines and on bike forums and so road riders DO take it at face value and think that they can brake hard AND lean at the same time.

Now, normally, they'll get away with it because the average rider has very little idea where the limits of grip actually are, typically most are only using 60-70 % of the tyre's grip even then they think they are riding hard, so in fact the tyre has got grip to spare.

But the problem is that roads are far less predictable in terms of grip than most tracks (Donington in the wet in BSB looked a bit patchy) and so a lean / brake angle that was working one moment can have you on your ear faster than the average rider can respond. I have survived a front wheel letting go under braking mid-corner on the road but it was nothing to do with me - the centre stand hit the road so hard, it bounced the bike back upright again. I'd just dived up the inside of another courier who'd cut me up on the previous bend and he wasn't so lucky - he buried his VT500 in the railings on Bird Cage Walk outside Buck House.

So that's why I teach riders NOT to brake into bends on the road as a routine approach but to get all the braking done upright - if the tyre slides or the ABS kicks in, it's far less alarming in a straight line. But to deal with the mid-corner emergencies I also teach them that you CAN mix and match the braking and steering forces... with the proviso that it does take you closer to the edge, the harder you brake and the more you lean.

[The Spin Doctor]

I reckon if your mid corner and need to stop sharpish, you could already be in trouble. Not convinced cornering abs would help much. Depends how fast and how tight I suppose.

If you're only using a modest lean angle, there's quite a lot of grip for braking.

If you're cornering with your sparky slider sparking, there won't be much grip at all.

But... because of the way vector forces work if you're not already sliding the front, there IS a little grip to brake. Not much, but as you as soon as you do brake, the speed comes down.

And that allows you two options:

- you can reduce the lean angle and feed in progressively more brakes as the bike stands up
- you can maintain lean angle and braking force and turn progressively tighter as the bike slows

[Wossname]

I reckon if your mid corner and need to stop sharpish, you could already be in trouble. Not convinced cornering abs would help much. Depends how fast and how tight I suppose.

And that allows you two options:

- you can reduce the lean angle and feed in progressively more brakes as the bike stands up
- you can maintain lean angle and braking force and turn progressively tighter as the bike slows

...which is why I think the ability to countersteer effectively, instinctively and immediately is far more useful in these marginal situations on the ROAD (NB the title of the thread) than "trail braking".

[The Spin Doctor]

...which is why I think the ability to countersteer effectively, instinctively and immediately is far more useful in these marginal situations on the ROAD (NB the title of the thread) than "trail braking".

They BOTH have a place in the arsenal.

If the road is completely blocked, what good will counter-steering be?

There was no way past that HGV I mentioned. The trailer was between the gate posts, and the cab was up against the hedge on the far side of the road.

Not all issues are capable of being dealt with by steering:

[weeksy]

And not all one off happenings will happen to everyone on the planet.
You can't compensate, plan or plot for every eventually of circumstance that may come up.

Sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and no amount of 'do this' is going to stop you lying down.