Two Paths to Motorcycle Safety from Two Experts

What is the path to improved motorcycle rider safety? Specifically: What is the path to fewer motorcycle crashes?

I recently received two answers from two experts. One answer I asked for, the other came in some correspondence on another subject. My interest comes from my job at Yamaha Champions Riding School, before that at the Freddie Spencer school, and before that teaching a Friday racing clinic before every Willow Springs club race. And before that? Having the desire to never fall of a motorcycle again, a desire I bet we share.

A few months ago, I read something that David Hough wrote. Hough has penned two riding-technique books and writes for Motorcycle Consumer News. One of his captions had a glaring error and there were a few perhaps-not-quite-right concepts in the article, so I wrote him an invitation to attend YCRS free of charge, with the belief that if you plan to write technique pieces, the more you experience the better you will meet the needs of your readers.

Hough wrote back: Nick, I appreciate the offer to rub elbows in Arizona, but that's not in the cards for me. You asked why I would turn down the offer. If you've been following my articles in MCN, you know that I've recently focused on the dangers of motorcycling, and what might be done scientifically to manage the danger. I'm interested in skills and knowledge of the sport, but I'm more interested in how training affects the motorcycle driver fatality rate. The statistics indicate that "growing the sport" above 2 percent of the population results in increasing the fatality rate to a socially unacceptable level. Yeah, I know—it's a taboo in the industry to discuss such things, especially for those of us attempting to earn a living from the sport.

So to get back to the point of this column: This expert feels the path to motorcycle safety is to reduce and control the amount of motorcycle riders. This is very true. None of us will be hurt riding a motorcycle if we only sit on the couch. So there’s an answer: Don’t ride. Fewer riders will be fewer fatalities.

We have all considered this answer. Motorcycle riding is not mandatory or forced. Many of us have rejected this answer to safety, some of us believing in dumb luck, some of us turning to instruction and study of our pastime. I am in the latter camp and wrote back to Hough:

David, this “taboo” subject is at the forefront of YCRS! “How can we participate in this sport/profession/industry all our lives at the pace we choose?” That question leads our curriculum. David, your statistics are the exact opposite of our 18 years of instruction and monitoring. And they are opposite because the training most riders receive does a very poor job of preparing them for the real world. Two days in a parking lot to get a license and they believe they are equipped, and, of course, they are not. Poor training fails fatally at the moments it is most needed. And even if the failure isn’t fatal, it disheartens the rider and pushes him or her to another hobby. So yes, you’re right: More riders learning questionable riding techniques over a single weekend will result in more crashes.

Proper training: what does that mean? We believe it means riding the bike the way the expert-level designers ride it. Using the same thought processes and vocabulary as the best riders in the world. Understanding weight transfer, speed’s effect on radius, tire loading. Poor training has the rider doing the exact opposite of what the best riders do in vital moments. They are letting go of the brakes when the best are using them. They are accelerating when the best are slowing. It comes from poor instruction based on theory, using words and thoughts that confuse this simple but difficult subject. These instructors are writing blanket theories based on riding slowly, confusing and misleading the thousands of riders who buy motorcycles for the thrill of the performance. For instance, you wrote that Ruben Xaus was sliding his bike on the throttle in the caption of Xaus giving the thumbs up. You were exactly wrong. Zaus is sliding into the corner on the brakes, “backing it in,” not driving it out. 100-percent opposite, and new riders will draw incorrect conclusions. This mistake and others prompted me to invite you to our school because if you want to reach every rider with factual information, you need to experience much more. As for your studies and writings on the dangers of increasing fatalities as we increase the number of riders, look first, second, and third to the training.

So I’ve been messing with this stuff a few years and constantly marvel at the amount of nannyish advice out there. “Slow down. Go the speed limit. Be careful. Ride your own ride.” All great concepts but I laugh when I think of the Type A personalities I’ve encountered in this sport. Most of us got into riding because we don’t want to be nannied. My recent work with the military put me helmet to helmet with the baddest of the baddasses and for me to whip out the nanny words would instantly lose the attention and respect of men and women who thrive on challenge. All the lip-flapping in the world will not help the rider rushing into a decreasing downhill corner in the rain. At that moment, the rider needs exact technique.

And that brings me to our second expert. I can’t name him, but he flew jet fighters for the military and also trained military pilots in advanced fighter tactics. He came to YCRS and has returned a few times. He’s “not that young” and has podiumed on his SV650 at the club level and also races AHRMA on a Ducati 748. So I asked him about safety one day because he’s seen and done more “crazy stuff” than anyone else I know.

Here's what he wrote: In the world of aviation, we finally got a handle on our accident rate when we approached mishaps not from the standpoint of telling pilots to "be safe" (whatever the hell that means) but from the standpoint of operational excellence. In other words, if you are flying your airplane in an operationally sound and tactically proficient manner you will be flying safely within the risk parameters of those pilots and that situation. Therefore the first step in riding a motorcycle "safely" comes from knowing how to control the bike and without that foundation trying to lower the motorcycle mishap rate is left to serendipity. I call this approach: "brilliance in the basics."

Operational Excellence. This military branch reduced their accident rate by emphasizing basic flying skills and tactical execution in the target area. “Brilliance in the basics” is the first step to being able to “fight and win.” According to this expert, safety is all about taking it to the enemy and then bringing yourself and your airplane home to fly and fight another day. When this big hitter wrote me those words, I immediately forwarded them to my YCRS team and one other group I work with. My message to my teams was clear: “Let’s make awesome riders and we’ll also be making safe riders.”

If you’ve attended YCRS or IMS or any of our seminars, or followed my writing on riding better, you’ll notice the focus on exacting technique. We were unconsciously following the advice of this aviator, encouraging technique aimed at maintaining traction, progressively loading suspension, highlighting the importance of the direction change, with very little nannyish advice.

We remind students to “Slow down in town,” but follow the comment with number of feet covered in one second at certain speeds. We’ll say, “More speed, more brakes,” and talk about corners not changing for us so we must change for the corner. We’ll advise, “Don’t ride with idiots,” and discuss our friend being taken out by a habitually over-aggressive riding partner. You'll hear "Slow down and be smooth on cold tires," followed with instructors discussing their last crashes, which were almost-universally on cold tires.

But at no point in a school does a YCRS instructor wring his or her hands in front of the class and waste breath by saying, "Be Careful, Don't Speed, Speed Kills, or Take it easy." Those platitudes don’t work to reduce crashes. What works for us and the second expert cited above is getting really good at operating the vehicle: bringing up your focus level prior to riding, reminding yourself and your friends that you're on cold tires, having a mantra that snaps you back to the moment when your focus wanders, moving weight forward and backward smoothly, loading the tires before you work the tires. Our whole goal is to get students of any age, gender or riding level to ride the bike the way it was designed to be ridden by the expert-level test riders.

So if you’ve decided to keep riding, David Hough’s solution to safety won’t work for you. You want to ride motorcycles, not sit safely on the couch. You’ve decided to get off the porch and participate. You might even feel that your life wouldn’t be worth much if you didn’t ride motorcycles. You can’t imagine not riding. Yes, I’m also looking in the mirror.

Hough’s solution isn’t much good for the motorcycle industry either. But again, he’s right: More riders riding badly will definitely result in more crashes, no matter what platitudes are printed in the instruction booklets. Our military expert found that nothing they did worked until they become entirely focused on building exceptionally-skilled fliers. Safety followed operational excellence. The military aviator’s solution to safety is good for the industry and good for you as an individual rider.

Something that we discuss at YCRS is the minute differences between good and bad riding. The difference between good riding and bad riding is the amount of initial brake and throttle application, the level of respect a rider has for his motorcycle, ten-percent more trail-braking, the level of pre-ride focus a rider learns to create, the extra eye-movements the experts make, the picking of proper targets, the early realization of too much entry speed, the immediate understanding of what must be done to adjust an errant entry line and hundreds of other small issues that begin to make perfect sense when you approach the sport from an expert rider’s perspective of smoothness, calmness, and an understanding of how to maintain grip.

But this is not a riding-techniques book. This is a warning that some experts feel the only solution to motorcycle safety is to not ride motorcycles. That erroneous solution is based on the generally-poor training American riders have been receiving for decades, training that is counter to how the designers of the bikes actually ride the bikes. No, the training isn’t all bad, but the small errors become huge when the pace is up or the grip is down.

The movement toward YCRS's "Champions Habits" for motorcycle instruction is gaining momentum every day. Trackday and racing clubs like N2 and Trackdaz and Evolution GT and Xcel and Sandia Motorcycle Roadracing, Inc and Utah SportBike Association are certifying their coaches (3C: Champions Certified Coach) and teaching with us. Training groups like Sunset Riding Clinic and KH Coaching and Racers Edge and Rickdiculous and Total Control are training their students to ride the bike like the designers intended it to be ridden. And I must note that each man and woman in charge of the above-mentioned companies rides amazingly and quickly and consistently, focused on the basics used by the best riders in the world. They are safe because they work to be brilliant in the basics of motorcycle control. They, like you and I, are motivated to never crash again, and they're passing this goal on to their students, not in theory but with techniques that increase rider safety at whatever speeds their students choose.

The military must fly planes and found safety in operational excellence. Champion roadracers win titles by not making mistakes while outrunning the competition. YCRS just went all winter with zero crashes over nine sold-out schools. Veteran street riders stack up tens-of-thousands of miles a year but take the time to practice their emergency braking . A few of my instructors and I have gone complete roadracing seasons without crashing, and yes, we won titles. One of my staff has gone 18 years and nine months without a crash and rides street and track constantly. In every example, the riders weren’t thinking about “not crashing,” they were completely focused on riding the bike as well as possible. If the couch solution doesn’t work for you, get focused on your bike-riding skills and encourage riders in your life to do the same. Safety follows skill, get brilliant in the basics of motorcycle control.

More next Tuesday!