What would be your advice?

[Buckaroo]

I've not posted here for ages, although I have been lurking and enjoying the posts particularly of Taipan and The Priest, both of whom I can relate to.

Anyway, I went on a motorbike tour in May and had a great time. About a thousand miles in three days. All up and around the North West, it was a mixture of tight and twisty lanes, fast roads and lots of rain.

In the group of twelve, we had one who admitted to being shit scared of cornering fast, another who overshot every time, on three occasions nearly hitting a car and another who did three penny bit cornering, which looked funny.

I was counter steering pretty much all the time and genuinely had no problems with any corners. It felt natural and the bike was planted most of the time. Tighter the corner the harder I pushed.

We had lots of discussions about the best way to overcome fear of cornering fast or handling some challenging roads and didn't really come to any conclusion. Also it felt a bit patronising to say 'your riding is crap', although some of it was.

Given the centuries of experience here on RTTL, what do you think would be your advice to someone who was struggling with cornering at speed, or cornering in general?

What's your technique: counter steering, shifting body position, bolt upright and lean in, knees down.....?

What say you

[Bigyin]

The first thing i would say to the one who is overshooting is he or she really needs to go back to basics or things are going to get messy and hurt ......get the braking done in a straight line, get the speed down, get the bike in the correct responsive gear, get in the correct position, stop rushing into bends, look for the warnings like signs, chevrons and road markings. Have a look at limit/vanishing points in riding manuals. Look where you want to go, where the eyes look, the bike will go ..... If you look at the white line and oncoming traffic the guess where you end up. Slow in, maintain the turn then accelerate out once it opens

Counter steering is great once you know how to apply it, better still get the road position correct before you enter the bend .....over to the left for right handers, centre of the lane for lefts ...its basic so forget looking for the view near the while line as that might be the cause of the overshoot but i would guess the speed is more of a factor. Too much speed will always take you wide

You were riding in a large group so peer pressure is always a huge factor as well as people push beyond their comfort zone to "keep up"

Its late and i have been up since 0500 but i will expect an influx on this one ...... simplest solution would be for them to look at a bit of training from someone who knows how to help them without being patronising and there are a couple on here who can do just that ....IAM and Rospa cant provide instruction, just assess your riding and tell you what you are doing wrong. An instructor can help you through each process and provide on the spot tuition and help to remedy any problems

this is a very quick reply so i will have missed things and i am sure a lot more detail will be incoming tomorrow

[wull]

The key here is it doesn’t matter one way or another about technique etc, just ride within your limits and do what you feel comfortable with and enjoy it. It’s road riding so any of this shifting weight and knee pish is irrelevant because the road is not the place to be fucking about with anything other than what feels natural comfortable.

And god forbid don’t be one of these bellends that hang off like a monkey, that technique is horrendous and actually upsets the bikes handling more and has folk going slower than they actually could be.

[The Spin Doctor]

The key here is it doesn’t matter one way or another about technique etc, just ride within your limits and do what you feel comfortable with

The trouble is, if you haven't a clue what you're doing and getting round bends is a matter of luck, then that advice won't help one little bit.

As BigYin says, get some training in the basics. Doesn't matter whether you teach yourself from decent quality articles on the internet or a book like my DIY guide to riding 'Survival SKILLS', or whether you go to a rider coach, something more organised is needed that 'do what you're comfortable with' as quite clearly anyone struggling on bends isn't 'comfortable'.

[The Spin Doctor]

The first thing i would say to the one who is overshooting is he or she really needs to go back to basics or things are going to get messy and hurt ......get the braking done in a straight line, get the speed down, get the bike in the correct responsive gear, get in the correct position, stop rushing into bends, look for the warnings like signs, chevrons and road markings. Have a look at limit/vanishing points in riding manuals. Look where you want to go, where the eyes look, the bike will go ..... If you look at the white line and oncoming traffic the guess where you end up. Slow in, maintain the turn then accelerate out once it opens

Did I write that

[wull]

I think if you have no clue then should you really be on the road and on a bike. I think the issue is people who when they start to push on then they start making a cunt of themselves, which means refer to where I state “ride within your limits”……….

[dern]

Look where you want to go, learn how counter steering works and then use it.

[The Spin Doctor]

I think if you have no clue then should you really be on the road and on a bike.

But clearly, these people WANT to be on a bike.

So we need to help them get a clue.

I think the issue is people who when they start to push on then they start making a cunt of themselves

Which is why group riding is over-represented in crash stats. It's easy to start worrying about holding the group up or start thinking everyone else in the group will think you're a wuss if you can't stay with them. So people ARE going to try to keep up and it's a damn site easier if they have half a clue about what they are doing.

which means refer to where I state “ride within your limits”……….

But how do you know where your own personal limits are, until you exceed them?

We ALL reach the point where we run out of talent... but as the OP said:

In the group of twelve, we had one who admitted to being shit scared of cornering fast, another who overshot every time, on three occasions nearly hitting a car and another who did three penny bit cornering, which looked funny.

If we don't have the basic skills in cornering - and there's nothing in the basic DVSA training for CBT or DAS that covers how to ride a bend - then we're going to run out an awful lot sooner. Some of us learned the hard way. I was entirely self-taught, which is why I suggest that others DON'T try that. I nearly killed myself quite a few times before I figured out solutions.

We had lots of discussions about the best way to overcome fear of cornering fast or handling some challenging roads and didn't really come to any conclusion.

It's a lot easier to learn from others' experience. Training essentially short-cuts the 'school of hard knocks' by offering the opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes.

Also it felt a bit patronising to say 'your riding is crap', although some of it was.

The mad thing is, in virtually any other activity - playing an instrument, playing golf or tennis, even getting fit - most of us would be quite happy to sign up with a personal coach. But for some reason, when it comes to riding bikes and driving cars, we're supposed to be 'naturals' at it, or give up!

[Count Steer]

Just out of interest, how much had the blokes who can't ride 'properly' spent on making the bikes go faster, handle better or look 'nicer'.....and how much had they spent on training? Lots are prepared to chuck £££s at 'improving the handling' when the problem isn't the bike at all. There must be a fortune wasted on fitting 'better' tyres alone.

The other funny thing is that, quite often, the blokes that can't get round bends can't do slow u-turns either.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Get a light easy to ride bike and practice

[The Spin Doctor]

Get a light easy to ride bike and practice

That's what I did at 18. I fell off it... lots.

What exactly do you 'practice'? Practice implies you already know what you should be doing. What's actually happening is learning by trial and error.

Having - sort of - got to grips with 12 hp, I then discovered that what I'd learned didn't actually work on a bike 40 mph quicker and weighing double.

That's when I started perusing every better biking article I could find, and really started to learn.

[Count Steer]

Ride more. Probably not an issue in Oz, but a few sunny Sundays each year won't hone your skills very much, particularly if 90% of your effort is put into keeping up with your mates. Get out there - on your own - and focus on what you're doing.

[Horse]

... and practice

It seems that they have practiced, lots, and have perfected being crap.

To get better, they need to know what to practice and why - and how to tell whether they are getting it 'right'.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I'll get my cost as obviously it's impossible to ride a motorcycle without formal training, I must be crap at riding and better give up.

[Count Steer]

I'll get my cost as obviously it's impossible to ride a motorcycle without formal training, I must be crap at riding and better give up.

Of course people can ride a bike without formal training. Did it for years and years and years, so did most of my mates. The attrition rate was pretty high, but, by the process of natural selection, some of us almost became competent.

Confuse-us say ' Ah, self-taught man has most ignorant tutor he can find'.

[Dodgy69]

Novice trackday would help.

The worst riding I've seen lately is group riding by a mile. I was following 3 bikes the other week, the overtaking the guy at the back was doing was embarrassingly dangerous, making oncoming cars brake and swurve on one occasion, just trying to keep up.

Patience is the answer to safe overtakes, spread the word.

[Horse]

I'll get my cost as obviously it's impossible to ride a motorcycle without formal training, I must be crap at riding and better give up.

It's not about you, though, is it?

It's about them. One's admitted he's shit scared, so the 'learn by experience' isn't working. The others might think they're riding gods - but are obviously on borrowed time too, they're riding on luck more then skill. If an extra hole pops up on the 'Swiss cheese' then the outcome could be very different.

There are some people (you, Couchy, Yorick) who can work it out for themselves. Others can't.

And when learning from experience, you need to first survive it.

[Supermofo]

Personally speaking if you over shoot a corner once in a weekend that's a sign that you need to wind your neck in. If you do it multiple times then suggests that person isn't able to discern their limits at all which is pretty scary.

I know the trainers talk about training and I'm fine with that and even recommended my mate to Spin. But IMO whilst you can say these people don't know what they are getting wrong or have practiced being crap it's pretty damn obvious even to them they are doing it wrong....so why keep doing it that way. Doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result is stupidity in general. For matey to over shoot a corner and not change anything suggests he's probably a bit deficient in thinking process as much as riding skill. Learning from your mistakes is a life skill not a riding one and if you can't do that then maybe bikes aren't for you.

For the other matey who's scared of fast cornering I'd probably ask him why he needs to do it? Corner slower who cares what other people think. That's the problem with group riding. Matey should corner in a way he is comfortable with not how he feels anyone else thinks he should. Yorick's pace will be higher than mine so I'd let him go not try and keep up, equally I might be faster than someone else and they should do the same. Being able to recognise your own comfort zone is a massive start as outside it things fall apart fast.

So whilst in this instance training would probably help, not being idiots would be a better start. Most of that is common sense not skill.

Are these guys long term riders or new riders? I'm guessing they are older but seems odd if they've been riding this long and survived if that bad as typically natural selection in riders will mean its unlikely you'll ride like that for 30+ years and not end up dead or very hurt.

[Count Steer]

Aksherly, just realised, the only car training I've done was the 'how to pass the test' training and a day at Drift School. So, given how much more I enjoyed bike riding after training I'm going to book some.

(Probably at Brooklands, something like the Mercedes Experience. I think it includes skid pan etc. My neighbour is a tutor and used to be an instructor at the Nurburgring so hoping for 'mates rates'. I'll report back. ).

[Skub]

Most of the chaps I see on the road and who seem to have little clue are middle aged men,who (guessing here) have probably taken a notion for bikes after a lifetime driving cars. They bring the same lazy and barely competent skills along with them. As @wull says,if they rode to their comfort level instead of how they imagine others perceive them,they'd discover the enjoyment of bikes.

I've watched some riding in groups and maybe the leading chap is quicker than some of his mates,but it's all Billy Bigballs and egos for the others trying to keep up. Add in,riding at the back of a group can mean you ride harder and it all becomes frantic/riding beyond their level for them.

Young folk starting off appear more at one with riding,considering they both do the same basic training to be on the road,I have to suspect the older guys are just crap and will get worse with age.

Anyway,all that is the problem as mentioned in the original post,the answer or answers may be more convoluted,but imo they should do three things. Ride at their own pace at all times and get some training. A trackday is also a great way to learn what a bike can do in relative safety.