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  The fact that you’re reading this book bodes well for your future survival as a motorcyclist. I’m trying to share a lifetime of experience with you, and I hope you’ll find it useful, but I can’t stress strongly enough the need to get proper training. Ideally you’ll use the information in this section of the book in conjunction with what you learn in an advanced riding course.

  SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

  AWARENESS OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS will usually be the critical factor that determines whether you live or die out on public roads. You need to be aware of what you are doing at all times, you need to be aware of what other people are doing, and you need to make other drivers aware of what you are doing.

  Being aware of your own actions is the element over which you have the most control. An obvious way of doing that is to ride sober. Normally I don’t care what people do. I figure it’s their business. If they want to have a beer or three, I don’t see a problem with that. Likewise I don’t really care if they like to burn a marijuana cigarette now and then. Hell, I don’t really care if they’re drunk and high all the time, if they snort Drano or bang rat poison. It’s their business, and it really doesn’t matter whether or not I approve. Abuse yourself in whatever way you see fit, but when it comes time to ride a motorcycle, I highly recommend riding sober.

  The Hurt Report found that alcohol was involved in nearly half of all motorcycle fatalities. That was thirty years ago, but the number has remained relatively stable. In 1998, 45 percent of motorcycle fatalities involved alcohol; in 2004, 48 percent involved alcohol. The problem is that alcohol and other drugs slow down your reaction time, and reaction time is everything when it comes to crashing or not crashing your motorcycle. When something happens—when that deer jumps out in front of you or that car swerves into your lane because the driver didn’t see you—you have only a fraction of a second to react. If your reactions are an instant too slow because you have had even one beer, that could easily mean the difference between life and death.

  Last year on the way home from Sturgis a couple of deer—a doe and a fawn—ran out in front of me. I was able to slow down just enough to miss the mother as she ran across the road, but not the fawn. Luckily for both of us the fawn didn’t cross the road, but instead, ran alongside me before turning back into the forest. I was stone-cold sober and paying attention, and even then, I barely reacted fast enough to avoid hitting the larger deer. Had I drank even one beer, that might have slowed my reaction time just enough to cause me to hit the deer.

  But other distractions can impair your reaction times almost as much as alcohol and other drugs. The main cause of distracted driving these days is the cell phone. If you’re calling on your cell phone or, worse yet, texting while you’re riding your motorcycle, well, you deserve to be killed, preferably sooner rather than later. That’s all I have to say about that subject.

  Still other distractions exist that are less obvious because they’re inside your own head. When you ride, are you focusing on what you’re doing and the potential hazards that are all around you, or are you thinking about giving your boss that beat down he’s deserved for all these years? Are you thinking about the condition of your motorcycle, or are you thinking about the condition of your marriage? If you’re concentrating on the fight you just had with your wife when you told her you were going for a motorcycle ride, you’re probably not concentrating on that cell-phone-yakking half-wit in the SUV that’s barreling down on you.

  I lost a good friend this way. The guy was a skilled rider and extremely safety conscious—he was one of the first people I ever knew who wore a helmet. His motorcycle was always in tip-top condition, and he never rode when he was drunk or high. But one day he got in an argument with his girlfriend, took off on his bike, lost control in a corner, and hit an oak tree.

  It’s impossible to clear your mind of all distractions all the time—if we could, the makers of sleeping pills, Prozac, and other mental medications would be out of business—but before you head out on the road, you have to do everything you can to empty your mind of anything that will disrupt your focus on riding. Do whatever it takes to clear your head, including going to the bathroom. (You’d be surprised how much your concentration can suffer when you’ve got a full bladder.)

  Anger is another huge distraction, but it’s hard not to get angry when you’re sharing the road with the collection of simpletons known as other drivers. Anger clouds your judgment and slows your reaction time. You’ll often have every reason in the world to be angry at other drivers, but you need to remain calm, cool, and collected in every situation, regardless of who is right and who is wrong. Above all, don’t get into road-rage situations with other vehicles. They may be completely wrong, but they have your life in their hands. Right or wrong, you can’t win an argument with someone who has the ability to end your life by simply turning his or her steering wheel.

  Buddhist monks spend entire lifetimes trying to figure out how to clear these sorts of distractions from their minds. Maybe it works for them; maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know—I’ve spent my life doing other things. Like riding motorcycles. Since I don’t expect to become a Buddhist monk anytime soon, I’ve had to find other ways to clear my mind when I’m on my bike.

  One trick I’ve developed is to focus my attention on potential hazards. I study my surroundings and imagine what might go wrong. I look for brush or other growth along the road that might block my view of a deer or other critter that might run out in front of me. I watch other traffic, looking for other vehicles that might swerve into my lane, or trucks with loads that might come loose or tires that might blow out, sending debris onto the road.

  I look for any element that might pose danger, then I check to see how prepared I am to deal with that danger. Have I placed my motorcycle in the best position to deal with potential hazards? Do I have enough room to maneuver out of the way of danger? (I’ll talk more about lane positioning later.) Am I covering my front brake with my right fingers so that I don’t lose a fraction of a second reaching for my brake if the situation goes south in a hurry? Is my engine in its powerband so that if I need to accelerate out of the way of danger, I won’t twist my throttle only to have the engine bog down? Am I traveling at a safe speed in the first place?

  In addition to assessing how prepared I am to deal with potential dangers, I devise plans of action in case something does go wrong. I look at the way a load on a truck is tied down to try to determine which way the debris is likely to fall if the ties come loose, then look for a clear, safe space to move in the opposite direction of where the debris will likely fall. I try to determine possible paths of travel of even the most errant vehicle. I allow plenty of room between me and the vehicle in front of me, and I position my bike so that I have the best view of any potential danger. If I spot potential danger, I reposition my bike so that I have the least exposure to that threat and the best possible escape routes if the worst-case scenario comes to pass.

  This exercise helps me prepare for potential danger, but it does more than that: it focuses my complete attention on that moment in time, so that I’m not thinking about anything other than riding my motorcycle in that place in time. It might not be the same as spending a lifetime in some Buddhist monastery, but the concentration required while riding a motorcycle is a form of focused meditation that makes all the petty distractions of day-to-day life melt away. It might seem morbid to concentrate on potential danger with such intense focus, but it clears my head. When I’m finished riding, I feel relaxed and recharged, so morbid or not, I consider it a beneficial activity. Some people ride with stereos blasting at top volume, but to me that would interrupt my meditation on the ride. The only sound track I need for that is the music my engine makes when it’s running in peak condition.

  DEFEATING ROAD HAZARDS

  THINK OF GOING OUT on public roads aboard a motorcycle as a form of going to war. As in any form of combat, the only way to win is to know your enemy. You can better understand the nature of the
threats you’ll face if you break down the types of hazards into three broad categories:

  Vehicles. These include everything from a fast-moving bicycle to a double-trailer semitruck. This category has the most potential to kill a motorcycle rider, so you should never trust any other vehicle. Obviously the bigger the vehicle, the more potential harm it can do to you; but when you’re on a bike, you are so vulnerable that even an errant bicycle rider can potentially take you out. Learn to identify the vehicles that are most likely to kill you, and when you’re riding among them, always look for possible escape routes should things start to go wrong.

  Debris and potholes. This category includes any stationary object that can lead to your losing control of your motorcycle if you hit it. This could be the road alligators from one of the thousands of blown truck tires that you’ll be dodging as long as you ride motorcycles, or it could be a sign post at the edge of the road, or a box of bolts that fell off a flatbed truck. You’ll need to perfect your control over your motorcycle to develop the riding skills that will help you avoid hitting this type of hazard.

  People and other animals. People and other animals move slower than vehicles, but they can be almost as deadly—and even more erratic. They can change direction quickly, and they don’t follow normal patterns of movement, as vehicular traffic does. When you’re moving down the road on your motorcycle, you’ll often ride in conditions that make it difficult to see animals and pedestrians until they pop out right in front of you, so you’ll need to learn to recognize the situations in which two- or four-legged critters are likely to appear.

  When riding on public highways, I recommend adopting the attitude that every single person on the road is a sociopathic serial killer who has just escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. This might seem a little pessimistic, but you’ll live longer if you assume everyone else on the road is a homicidal moron whose sole purpose is to kill you.

  Face it: an unsettlingly high percentage of American drivers are unfit to be behind the wheel in the best of circumstances. What else would you expect in a country where the hardest part of the driving test is parallel parking? Parking is the opposite of driving, so there’s not a hell of a lot of actual driving involved in getting a driver’s license. Technically it should be called a parking license, but it’s not, and the end result is a nation of people who think of the driver’s seat as a place to make phone calls and send text messages while they are going somewhere else. There’s not much you can depend on anymore, but you can be virtually certain that someone is going to do something incredibly stupid out on the road. The best way to deal with the situation is to make certain that person is not you.

  You need to have complete awareness of every single one of the idiots with whom you’re sharing the road while you are out on your bike. You need to learn to read traffic and learn to recognize the clues that will alert you to potentially dangerous situations. You need to develop a feel for the circumstances in which other drivers are likely to do something stupid.

  For example, when you are on a multilane road, pulling up to an intersection alongside a line of cars, you can be sure that at least one of them is going to pull out into your lane to get around that line, and you can be just as sure that the person will not have checked his or her mirror or looked over his or her shoulder to clear the lane, so he or she has no idea you are there. Or when you’re riding along a row of parked cars, expect at least one of them to pull out in front of you or even beside you.

  When you’re riding alongside slow-moving or parked traffic, always position your bike as far away from the line of cars as possible to give yourself room to react when the car inevitably pulls out right in front of you. Constantly scan for safe space in which you can swerve around the damned fool. Monitor your rearview mirror to make certain no one will run you over if the only safe course of action is to brake hard. Create circumstances in which you have the most possible options in the event of any dangerous situation.

  Don’t ever believe anyone’s turn signals. The person may be driving down the road totally oblivious to the fact that his or her turn signal is flashing. If he or she does plan to change lanes, he or she is more likely to not use the signals at all. The person changing lanes without signaling a lane change will probably be the life-threatening situation you encounter most often. It will happen with such frequency that you’ll soon be surprised when someone does signal a lane change and doesn’t pull into your lane while you are occupying it.

  To prevent this you need to be completely aware of what everyone on the road is doing at all times. The best way to determine if a person is about to change lanes isn’t to watch his or her turn signal; it’s to watch his or her front tires. Before a car can change direction, its front tires have to turn. Where the front tires turn, the car will follow. If you see the tires turn toward your spot on the road, you have an extra split second to react, find a safe space, and move out of harm’s way.

  Watching the front tires of cars is especially useful for alerting you when oncoming cars are about to make a left turn across your lane. This is an exceptionally dangerous situation. Unfortunately it’s also a common occurrence—I’ve been almost taken out by oncoming cars making unsignaled left turns in front of me more than all other near misses combined. To be fair to other drivers, motorcycles are hard to see in the best conditions; when they are coming right at you, they don’t present a very large profile and are even easier to miss. Factor in the 50 percent chance that the oncoming driver is distracted because his main squeeze is “sexting” him, and for all practical purposes you’re invisible.

  Because of this you’ll likely have someone making a turn across your lane of traffic on a weekly basis. Sometimes it will be on a daily basis. And it won’t always happen at obvious intersections. Often the person will be turning into a driveway or a parking lot that you might not have seen. The other driver may even be making a U-turn. I lost a friend in December 2009 because a van made an unsignaled U-turn and pulled out just as he was passing by. And this man was as experienced a rider as I’ve ever known.

  You can’t prevent this situation, but you can prepare for it, and, as I’ve mentioned, one of the best ways to do that is to watch the front tires of other vehicles. If a car is coming at you, watch its left front tire. Position yourself so that you’re as far away from the vehicle as possible, and ride in a place that will leave you room to get out of the way should you see the other vehicle’s left wheel start to turn in your direction.

  Watching the front tires of other vehicles won’t make you invincible, but it will give you extra time to react to danger. If you are paying attention and notice the instant someone turns a front tire toward your lane, you’ll have an extra fraction of a second to react, and that fraction of a second could save your life. But this only helps if you’re aware of your surroundings. To be effective, your reaction will have to take into account every other numb-nuts driver on the road. You won’t be gaining much if you swerve to miss a car moving into your lane from the right and accidentally hit the car in the lane to your left.

  You’ll also have to be aware of all the nonvehicular hazards. For example, when you’re riding along a line of parked cars, it’s just as likely that a dog or a child will run out from between the parked cars as it is that one of the parked cars will pull out in front of you. There’s no way to predict the behavior of an animal or a child; the best you can do is try to identify places where an animal or a child might possibly emerge onto a road. Be aware of your surroundings, cover your front brake lever, and be prepared to make an emergency stop the instant you see something moving into your path of travel.

  Sometimes the nonmoving hazards can be as deadly as the moving ones. You need to be aware of road conditions that could lead to a loss of traction, like rain, dirt, leaves, railroad tracks, potholes, oil, antifreeze, ice, and sand or gravel buildup. Debris is especially dangerous when you encounter it in a curve. It tends to build up on the outside edge of a curve, so you n
eed to give this area extra attention when you are scanning the road in a corner.

  If there is debris in a corner, slow down to give yourself time to maneuver around it. If it takes you by surprise and there isn’t enough time to avoid it, don’t panic and hit the brakes. This will upset your chassis and increase the chances that you’ll lose traction and crash. Instead, maintain a steady speed through the corner. If you’ve slowed down to a safe speed before entering the corner, you should be all right. If you are going too fast and need to slow down in a corner, stand the bike up for a brief moment, brake, then immediately countersteer back into the corner. If you react quickly, you should be able to maintain control of your motorcycle, but if you stand the bike up and brake for more than a split second, there’s a good chance you’ll run off the road.

  Even the paint on the road itself can be hazardous. The paint of the center stripe and at the edge of the road, or in a crosswalk, or warning of an approaching railroad crossing, or words such as STOP AHEAD can get as slippery as mud or ice, especially when wet. If you have Speed Channel, watch a motorcycle road race in the rain some time. You’ll see that even the best riders in the world will crash the instant their tire hits some wet paint on the surface of the racetrack.

  The paint doesn’t even have to be wet to be dangerous. Sometimes when the temperature gets high enough, the paint starts to melt and turn into a substance that resembles slippery wet vinyl. When your tire hits this, your whole bike can slide to one side or the other. If you’re not prepared or overreact, you can find yourself doing a face plant into the pavement. Always treat paint on pavement as a low-traction surface, especially when the weather has been wet or extremely hot.