He hit a deer

[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?

[toEleven]

Originally Posted by jkv45

Well then - you told me!

I still have no idea what your question really was...

But we'll move on.

If you couldn't grasp the question, why answer at all?

[jkv45]

Originally Posted by toEleven

If you couldn't grasp the question, why answer at all?

Good question. I understood that one.

Won't happen again.

[csmith12]

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?

[Z1R rider]

When I first saw this post a couple of days ago, the first thing that popped into my head was "You need to learn to talk without your hands!". (I.E. keep your hands on the bars) Second was "just got his licence and he's got his mind occupied with narrating a video?!" Darwinism at it's best! You just can't brake well with only one hand on the bars, even if you'r expecting to slam on the binders.

[akima]

csmith12: I liked your whole post and especially liked this:

Originally Posted by csmith12

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!!!!

[toEleven]

@csmith12 - Thank you. Consistently lots of useful stuff.

Your mention of the g-forces involved is great, because we can quantify it and talk about actual numbers, rather than qualitative perception. You also used MotoGP as an example, which is also super useful. Sport Rider magazine posted an article comparing braking forces between F1 and MotoGP, which references a Brembo document for the latter.

In the specific case of MotoGP at CoTA in 2016, Brembo notes a maximum deceleration of 1.8Gs. For simplicity's sake, maybe it's fair to say that a rider at maximum braking thus has to deal with supporting 2 times their own bodyweight (which may be contentious, idk). To accomplish that task, they have some number of points of contact with the bike along with an assortment of spinal erectors, abdominal muscles, and everything else generally lumped into one's 'core'.

The points of contact vary; after all, we're talking about people who come screaming into corners with a limb frequently off the bike:

There may be an alien in that particular picture, but the dangle/wave/whatever habit can be found in every closed circuit international series I've watched this year.

Trying to keep it somewhat quantitative and working with readily available numbers, we'd need some sort suitable analog for dealing with braking forces. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest the ever venerable squat. If one wanted to increase the rotational inertia, we can even focus on front squats or overhead squats. Although your core muscles are not primarily responsible for moving the load vertically, they do have the responsibility of stabilizing your upper body. In my mind at least, that's quite a bit like their use under braking.

Using me as an example: I typically weigh 160lbs. Using the ~2G figure, I'm faced with 320lbs of force (apologies to anyone who appreciates SI units ) under maximum braking (at CoTA, on a MotoGP bike, with MotoGP skills ). If (and it's a huge if) one accepts the squat as a suitable analog for stabilizing my upper body under load, then max braking here is analogous to squatting 320.

Is that a normal lift relative to one's bodyweight? For an athlete (and not necessarily an Olympic caliber gymnast), I'd say yes. For me, I'd say yes - it's less than my 5 rep max. For the average rider (physically speaking, not in terms of skill - I am not claiming to be above average) or stereotypical fat American? Maybe not.

On the off chance that this gets revisited with a view to quantitative measures, please suggest a better analog. I'm curious what your further thoughts might be, or what other measurable approaches might be suggested.

Originally Posted by csmith12

...
I am pretty sure if ya'lls could see inside my head, you would say OMFG and back slowly away!!!!
...

But just think how much easier it would be to guide your students if they could just look directly at all that knowledge! I think it'd be fantastic.

[choneofakind]

Remember that you're only supporting your upper body (ideally not) with your arms during braking.

Lower body should be supported by a good tank squeeze (and maybe some of the old squished nuts) with your legs during strong braking.

Yes, your body takes some incredible forces to keep yourself composed during braking. It's kind of fun, from a science perspective, to experience at the track. You can sustain it for quite a while in braking zones to the point where you have time to individually relax parts of your hands and breathe, etc. Why do you think racers typically are athletic build and do well rounded workouts? Obviously they're small because of weight advantage, but they're also typically in good shape.

[InvisiBill]

I went for a ~50 mile ride last night, and a few miles from home I got to see an 8-point about as close as I want to on a roadway.

I'm always keeping an eye out for wildlife around here (I've been onboard for 5 car-deer accidents in this county over 20 years), but this isn't peak activity time. They're much more active in the fall, especially once hunting season starts. The sun was getting low in the sky, but it was still definitely "daylight" rather than "dusk". I had actually just recently thought to myself that I needed to watch for deer, but didn't get too concerned because it wasn't when they were normally moving around a lot. I guess I jinxed myself.

I'm very familiar with the road, as my buddy and I live about 4 miles apart on it, plus it's one of only a couple ways to get to the next town. I need to swing back by the spot and check it out to see if I can get a better idea exactly where the deer came from. I was approaching a fun little mild S curve (left then right, with a small swing out to the right before going into the left). A creek runs through there, so it's fairly wooded in the middle of the S, but there are houses with big lawns on both sides of the road before it. It felt a lot like the video, in that the buck seemed to suddenly appear next to the road, and then he was trying to run across it in front of me.

My reaction was pretty much fully instinct. As soon as I realized the deer was in the road, I braked hard. He was coming from the left side, so I angled (not really swerved, just steered away) toward the right side of my lane. In a well-planned maneuver, it may have been better to try to go left to get behind him, but he seemed to be crossing at a bit of an angle rather than perpendicular to the road, so going right may have given me a bit more distance between us. It was largely just instinctively turning away from the thing that was coming at me. I honestly don't remember any of my technique (like if I even used the rear brake), just squeezing both levers and being forced toward the tank and bars, and a bit of trying to guide the bike away from the big brown spot in front of me. I don't like not knowing exactly what I did/didn't do, but at least my lizard brain worked acceptably to scrub off enough speed and turn away enough to avoid a collision. There was no loss of control or running off the road, or even coming to a complete stop. Just enough avoidance to let him get off the road in front of me.

Compared to the video:

• I think I saw the deer further from the road, so I had more time to react, but my road also had a higher speed limit so I was going faster.
• I think I was probably a bit less startled by the deer, having specifically thought about watching for them earlier in this ride, and having prior deer crash experience.
• I don't know what he's done to his bike, but my bike is set up pretty well. I have a suspension that matches my weight, upgraded brake pads/rotor (OEM caliper, line, master, and fluid), and performance radial tires.
• I assume I have more seat time than he does, since he was literally coming back from getting his license.
• I had both hands on the bars. I was able to immediately grab both levers and brace against the braking forces evenly.
• I had music playing on my Sena, but I wasn't narrating a video.

Really the only things under the rider's control are paying attention (expect the unexpected, don't waste your focus on other tasks) and being ready to react (with both hands on or near the controls, obeying speed limits). Making sure your bike is set up and maintained properly ensures it will perform in emergency situations, but is something that needs to be done in the garage beforehand, not in the middle of your ride when you encounter the emergency. Experience simply comes with time (and frequently from mistakes). When and where danger pops up is luck of the draw, although being alert about where danger is most likely to pop up (i.e. paying attention to your surroundings) can help mitigate the danger.

[CaliGrrl]

Originally Posted by InvisiBill

The sun was getting low in the sky, but it was still definitely "daylight" rather than "dusk". I had actually just recently thought to myself that I needed to watch for deer, but didn't get too concerned because it wasn't when they were normally moving around a lot. I guess I jinxed myself.

::snip::
I don't like not knowing exactly what I did/didn't do, but at least my lizard brain worked acceptably to scrub off enough speed and turn away enough to avoid a collision. There was no loss of control or running off the road, or even coming to a complete stop. Just enough avoidance to let him get off the road in front of me.

That's the little voice in your head that you should never ignore. I know mine has rarely lied to me or been wrong. It says "hey, watch that guy over there" who then does something sketchy. Or "wait just a second" and that was exactly the right thing.

Glad you avoided hitting him! And just because it's daylight doesn't mean all that much- the last two deer I've seen were in full daytime. They may be more active and more common at dusk but clearly they're still out and about in the daytime.

[InvisiBill]

Originally Posted by CaliGrrl

That's the little voice in your head that you should never ignore. I know mine has rarely lied to me or been wrong. It says "hey, watch that guy over there" who then does something sketchy. Or "wait just a second" and that was exactly the right thing.

Glad you avoided hitting him! And just because it's daylight doesn't mean all that much- the last two deer I've seen were in full daytime. They may be more active and more common at dusk but clearly they're still out and about in the daytime.

Yeah, dusk and dawn are like deer rush hour. They can and will travel anytime, but those times are when they're usually going between their bedding grounds and feeding areas. As I said, I'm always on the lookout around here. And I worded it a little weird, but I didn't ignore the idea of watching out for deer. I specifically thought about it during the ride, but it got slightly lower priority on my worry-meter than it would have at dusk on the first day of gun season, for example.

Got a pic of the area uploaded now that my host fixed their technical issues...


I was coming from the west. The creek runs right along the treeline even with the 4th "Riverside Dr" in the middle of the pic. I think that yard on the north side is where the deer came from, but I'd like to drive through there again and try to get a better idea of it (aerial views can seem so different from what you're used to seeing as you drive a road). Similar to the video, there's a bit of a border between a yard and more overgrown area - deer like to stay near cover when they do come out in the open.

[CaliGrrl]

Yes, they do like cover and they kind of come out of nowhere sometimes.

[nickjpass]

Deer are hard to predict. You can swerve left to avoid it, and all of a sudden they turned around and you hit them. Your best bet is to make a decision and hope for the best. I've personally witnessed a deer strike, and it didn't end pretty. Not much can be done.