This video clip is also by Nigel Bowers and it takes you through the sequence of a safe overtaking manoeuvre. It covers the things you should be looking for and the plan you should make before you commit to the manoeuvre. Nigel’s real-time commentary is very helpful, so don’t forget to have your computer’s sound on to get the full benefit.
Commentary follows……………………. continues………
This video clip is from the Advanced Rider Collection on You Tube by Nigel Bowers, an ex-police instructor who now provides Advanced Riding Training in Staffordshire; it’s being used with Nigel’s permission. I’ve written the analysis which follows so any errors or omissions in that are mine.
This one shows a near miss during an overtaking manoeuvre. Watch it once and then read the analysis which follows which might help you to draw lessons from it. You can replay the clip repeatedly if necessary.
Incident analysis follows……………………….
Battle Stations!
There is so much traffic competing for space on our roads these days that it’s hardly surprising that challenging “right of way” situations can easily arise, especially at roundabouts, which are designed to help crossing traffic flow smoothly and do so, providing everyone plays the game considerately.
The problem is that there are different and conflicting ideas of who should give way to whom at roundabouts and, having re-read what the Highway Code has to say on the subject, it still seems to me that there is ambiguity about “right of way” and how to use it safely.
I got tooted and gesticulated at by a blonde lady in a Land Rover Discovery for getting in her way on a roundabout recently and it gave me food for thought and hence this article. I’ve been carved up by another lady on a roundabout since then too; I’m starting to feel harassed!
We are either instructed by road signs or advised by the Highway Code that we “should” give way in a number of situations – at junctions, roundabouts and sometimes when the road narrows. The problem is that this sometimes creates an expectation in other road users that they thereby acquire a “right of way” which they might then try to enforce – for example by maintaining speed in an intimidating way or even sounding their horn and barging through a shrinking gap.
Impromptu Practice at Woodvale - we will be wearing helmets in future!
Plans are afoot to form a Motorcycle Drill Team in UK along the lines of the Central Florida Motorcycle Drill Team, which came over to display at the Blackpool Light Parade in 2008.
During their practice sessions in UK prior to that display, the Americans were encouraging their UK host Wingers to have a go and several of them did just that, including me.
Terrifying to begin with, until you realised the bike would cope very nicely if only you would let it do so, this was great fun. We even achieved some modest success and four of us rode, in a formation of two pairs, a “routine” consisting of flared reversals of direction, matching wheel outwards circles and a thing called a cloverleaf manoeuvre.
These are the basic elements of drill team riding technique which our American friends use to break in their trainees but it was amazing that they were able to get us started off in this in this way within only three or four hours of training . We weren’t very polished of course but there were no collisions and had continues………
Tempting but increasingly tight for a GoldWing?
I have referred to a helpful internet article written by Biker/Solicitor John Measures of Barratts Solicitors previously and this Article was provoked by another one of his. Filtering past or through standing or slow moving traffic is common practice in UK but is it safe and is it legal?
With our busy and often traffic-clogged roads, the option to filter through standing or slow moving traffic is a potentially valuable aspect of life on two wheels, providing you have the confidence to do it and the perceptiveness to appreciate when it’s a bit too risky.
Not all GoldWing riders are confident enough to take their big bike into the relatively narrow gaps which filtering often involves but plenty are. When I get the chance to make progress while cars and trucks are stuck in traffic I do so, with contentment which sometimes verges on smugness at my good fortune at being a motorcyclist. Not only am I riding continues………
Getting this close for a photograph was not ideal
Motorcyclists are more vulnerable than most other road users, who are usually surrounded these days by a protective steel cage, within which multiple airbags are poised to come to their aid if they have a serious collision, even from the side. So it makes sense for a motorcyclist to feel relatively vulnerable. Ride a motorcycle like everyone else on the road is actively trying to kill you, so they say. And sometimes of course that’s precisely what someone is trying to do, even if he or she doesn’t quite realise it.
I was attacked (the only word for it) by a car driver recently who decided he needed to teach me a lesson of some sort by passing very close and cutting in sharply at high speed. He passed within less than two feet of me and was clearly doing it quite deliberately. There had been no previous encounter or altercation, so presumably it was because I had dared to be on his road and in his way. I wasn’t riding as fast as he was driving and I had therefore put him to the trouble of changing lanes to overtake me, so maybe that was it.
But would there be any point in reporting it? Would the police be interested? continues………
Thanks to bifocals, one of us could see where we were going
I’ve never been on a Track Day of the sort you see advertised to UK motorcyclists, when you pay a fee to take your bike on to a race circuit and maybe get some tuition, the idea being to let you explore or develop racing-type skills. That sort of thing might appeal to sports bike riders but a GoldWing on a race circuit? I didn’t think so.
I had taken the opportunity to ride my Wing around the Nurnburgring during one of its public access sessions a few years ago when I was touring in the Mosel with some other riders who were keen to do it, but that was a one-off experience of just two laps; the first one in a state of high anxiety getting used to keeping out of the way of the really high speed lunatics among the high volumes of traffic on the circuit and the second one less terrified and experiencing the beginnings of enjoyment of what only a race circuit can provide – bends and sequences of bends which have been specifically designed to provide challenging riding.
The Nurnburgring during public sessions is something of a madhouse and I have no desire to do it again. But the opportunity to ride on a race circuit for a whole day, free of charge and without having to cope with lots of other traffic on it, well that’s a different matter altogether. I jumped at the chance.
There are however no free lunches in this world so there was of course a catch. Access to the circuit for continues………
Good for the motorcycling soul
My first set of confessions about what I have learned by frightening myself riding my GoldWing seems to have pushed viewing figures for this Blog to a new high, over 4,500 unique visits last week which is very gratifying, thank you all.
So it presumably struck a bit of a chord with some of you readers out there, if only to give those of you who don’t suffer any such qualms an opportunity to feel a bit superior. The subject may therefore be worth developing a bit more – and my buttocks have, if nothing else, gathered enough experience of motorcycling clenches to provide plenty to write about.
Maybe there are Wingers out there who did all the bike-dropping they needed to do or learned all they need to learn before treating themselves to a GoldWing, but generally speaking there are Wingers who admit to having dropped their bike and Wingers who pretend they have never done so.
So let’s be honest with ourselves; none of us are infallible and if we want to minimise the risk of undignified wobbles and horizontal parking, we need to make sure we understand what can go wrong and how to avoid it. Then it’s simply a matter of eternal vigilance and sustained concentration when you are riding, as usual!
Having established that there is interest among my Blog Viewers in basic riding skills, or at least in me owning up to failures of skill, I might as well bare my soul by confessing to difficulties I have had with continues………
Despite pulling right up to the line and a well trimmed hedge, this driver's view is still obstructed
Many of us will have had a break from riding over the winter and I had a longer break than usual myself this time, thanks to a bit of surgery followed by a lot more snow and ice ( and therefore salt) than usual. So coming back to riding might involve for some of you, as it always seems to do for me, recovering riding skills which have gone a bit rusty.
Setting off for the first ride never seems to bother me and it feels quite natural to get back on the bike and start riding it again. So I am perhaps fortunate in rarely suffering any huge crisis of confidence, although it did happen to me one Spring – ironically after passing my Advanced Riding Test the previous November. I really did have to go back to basics that year and rebuild confidence in my basic handling skills that year. Mind you I was still riding my GL1200SEi that year and compared to a GL1800 it is a bit of a handful. Fortunately that sort of major loss of confidence continues………
Shall we turn right next then chaps?
The Central Florida Motorcycle Drill Team, who came to Blackpool for the GoldWing Light Parade in 2008 to display for us, are alive and kicking and they are still World Champions too partly, as i recall, because no one has been brave enough to challenge them for a while.
We became friends with the four Team Members who came over to UK in 2008 and have stayed in contact ever since. My wife and I (and other members of the Light Parade Organising Team) have met up with them whenever we’ve been in Florida on holiday ever since and their Captain, Randy Rodriguez, will be coming back to UK again for this year’s Parade in September and bringing his wife, Cat, too. So we look forward to seeing at least two of them in Blackpool again.
Not as a Display Team this time unfortunately and not to give a Display, but at least Randy will be here and continues………