How To Change Directions With Precision | CODE BREAK

California Superbike School instructor Keith Code talks about making precision direction changes.

Quick direction changes are an essential street skill, whether maneuvering around cones or unexpected objects in the road.©Motorcyclist

A motorcycle has six controls—front and rear brakes, throttle, clutch, shift lever, and handlebars—all dedicated to changing either speed or direction of travel. When it comes to riding a motorcycle, that is all a rider can do. When making speed and direction changes, there are only two errors that can occur: 1) Changing speed and/or direction at the wrong location in space, or 2) Changing speed and/or direction in the wrong amount, i.e. too much or too little.

Confidently controlling a motorcycle begins with a decision to arrive at some precise location in space. The decision to arrive somewhere first requires accurately identifying that space you chose to occupy. To begin moving toward that space requires knowledge of your current location.

Knowing your own location requires a minimum of two external reference points. Having two external reference points provides depth perception, which gives scope and perspective to space. Having scope and perspective allows you to plot an approach line to your chosen location.

Having an approach line and depth perception provides an accurate perception of your speed and any changes to that. Once you have an approach line and an accurate perception of your speed, you can determine the rate and degree of direction change needed to arrive at your chosen space.

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An accurate perception of speed, approach line, and destination allows you to accurately predict your time until arrival. With time of arrival known you can begin preparing for your next action, which frees up attention to re-evaluate your line, available traction, lean angle, and speed. When traction, line, lean angle, time of arrival, and speed are all being adequately tracked and evaluated, the rider is in control, and the chosen location is arrived at with confidence.

This sequence of events might appear complicated, yet our capacity to execute these steps all within the time of a heartbeat or less can play out a thousand times in one ride. It’s easy to take these points for granted, as they rightfully seem quite natural, but while the pattern itself is innately robust, it is also fragile. Any one of a rider’s primary enemies—target fixation, tunnel vision, or frenetic scanning, for example—can easily unhinge this process.

Speed alone can be enough to prevent a rider from smoothly completing the loop of tasks necessary to accurately control a motorcycle. In a rider-training course designed and conducted by The California Superbike School over a seven-year period, we discovered some interesting trends. During that time, 1,100 street riders made roughly 20,000 runs through a cone-divided slalom course. The drill was performed at 15, 20, 25, and 30 mph, with each run monitored by radar for accuracy. We found with every 5 mph increase in speed, 95 percent of riders lost touch with their basic steering skills. (For comparison, the cone course was found to be negotiable at 40 mph by a top-tier rider with just one or, in some cases, no practice runs; it took average street riders sometimes as many as seven attempts, even at lower speeds.)

Adding even a little speed can disrupt a rider’s perceptions enough to disable his sense of timing, even after that rider has demonstrated the ability to coordinate the necessary steering-control actions at a slower speed. At 15 mph we travel 22 feet per second; at 20 mph that number is 29 feet per second—adding one bike length per second is more than enough to disrupt our confidence and performance in technical—or, you might say, critical—riding situations.

Your ability to quick-turn your bike to the proper lean angle even a quarter of a second faster can make the difference between hitting a wheel-bending pothole—or a car entering your lane—or avoiding it and carrying on with a self-satisfied grin of accomplishment. Work on it.

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