Quote:
Originally Posted by toEleven
@ csmith12 - Say we distinguish
panic braking - responding to an emergency by trying to stop the bike as quickly as possible while in a panicked state.
emergency braking - responding to an emergency by trying to stop the bike as quickly as possible in a controlled manner.
I'd venture that while panicked, a rider is likely to either go (1) all clutch, (2) no clutch, or (3) whatever they've practiced enough for it to be ingrained as a reflex.
While emergency braking, a rider is composed enough to consciously choose.
If a rider believes that their deliberate emergency practice is what they will execute when things go terribly wrong and they're stuck panic braking, what would you recommend they practice? |
Deal! We can distinguish between the two, got no problem with that.
Panic braking - Simply put, I never try to do it. It happened to me once so far on the track and I locked the front. By the time non lizard brain took over and unlocked the front, I was outta braking space and about 3ft from hitting my obstacle. That obstacle was a human fyi and I ate it that day.
Emergency braking - A mentally trained and physically practiced maneuver and my goal every time I touch the brakes.
As I have posted before, I am not much on the "luck" aspect of riding, but do understand that it is part of the equation. There is good luck and bad luck. WTF does that have to do with anything? Simply put... the timing. It's the bad part of luck that puts an unexpected obstacle in your path. How you react to it is the panic vs control part and hopefully, the more one works on it, the less panic plays a role.
imho, there are a number of things that can be worked on to reduce panic vs control but most of it falls under prevention (the blue side of the line).
To keep things high level
Vision (blue line) - Railing your eyes directly down in front of your front wheel has you literally looking at what WILL happen no matter what you do. You simply have to look farther down the road. Next, tunnel vision is bad... very bad. If your not using your peripheral vision to see risks, then there is more work to be done here. Duh!!! To all that right? Some of the street skill books have visual exercises in them to serve this purpose.
Reaction time (blue line) - To put it quite bluntly, if you suck at ping pong or the likes of similar "twitch" timing style games. Then go practice... no bike required! The increased skill of eye to brain to hand coordination will have a net effect that is priceless. This is so important that the msf connects vision to reaction time to desicion via an online test found
here (again, no bike required and NOT having tunnel vision is the secret to getting a perfect score on the test). When we are new, our reaction time is similar to that of a young child trying to catch a ball, as our skills improve we catch it easily. Now go catch 3 balls before they hit the ground. It WILL FORCE a wider fov and improve your reaction time.
Knowing your hardware (blue line) - As I have posted before, get to know your brakes at an intimate level. Which would include exploring their total power while not in an emergency situation. Practice it enough and hopefully it will become part of either emergency or panic. Here is an example of how intimate I am talking about. If you cover your controls at all times, cool (that lessens the reaction time) but what if you don't? When coaching A group riders at the track, we even look at the angle of the levers to make sure getting their fingers over the lever can be done quicker. I even look at the finger sliders on their gloves to ensure they don't catch. THAT is how intimate I mean. I am pretty sure if ya'lls could see inside my head, you would say OMFG and back slowly away!!!!
But before we go, let's look at that red area more closely.
Weight and g force (red line) - With the rider is sitting more forward in the seat, body weight ON the bars and ridged/tight arms to keep the front wheel straight while under hard braking the bike will tend to stoppie more. This lifts the rear off the ground and reduces effectiveness of the rear brake. While we all know it's not by much
, but using both brakes IS more effective. ABS, linked brake systems and other tech bits are catching up, but it currently can't compensate for the rider moving around on the bike or how the rider manages their body weight. As I asked in my above post, I am just not sure how a rider can brake to the limit with only one arm. The g forces alone are quite high and the strength it would take to keep you firmly on the bike seems to be only possessed by members of the olympic gymnastics teams. While staying loose are the bars is the ultimate goal, to scrub 95mph in 350ft is enough g force to send... dare I say ANY of us, forward enough to NEED to put some weight on the bars to simply not at least require a seat belt, airbag or back brace to keep us from smacking our helmets on the triple.
So yea, I would think keeping your weight managed (by primarily locked on via the lower and spreading weight out over both bars as needed) would definately shorten the red line. Even motogp riders that stoppie before corner entry have both hands and the bars and they are aliens. So imho, yes how you manage weight does affect the red line. In some cases, quite dramatically.
So unless I am missing something obvious, how could one ride one handed and pull it all off?