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Philip's Ravings

L Plates - They're just a sign

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The topic of L Plates comes up frequently, predominately about weather complying with the learner licence conditions and using the L plate increase the danger of the rider on the road.

The best place to start is by considering why we have L plates, and what they aim to do.

When the majority of people first start riding a motorcycle they will have little or no machine handling skills. This includes basic but critical abilities such as counter-steering, emergency braking, brake and evade, throttle control, "looking", etc.
The other key skill they will be lacking is situational awareness. Even if you have had a car licence for 30 years your situational awareness skills for using a motorcycle will be insufficient. That's simply because the dangers of being on a motorcycle are quite different to being in a car.

The other major issue is attention span. Keith Code talks about this quite a bit in his motorcycle books. We have a limited amount of it.
If 80% of your attention is spent on machine handling skills (changing gear, "steering", throttle control, etc), then that only leaves 20% for you to be aware of the situation you are in - and importantly - that you are heading in.

And this is where L plates riders often feeling that using an L plate makes things more dangerous. They think other road users are suddenly targeting them because they have an L plate on.
The vast majority of road users don't want to have an accident with an L plate rider - or anyone else. The vast majority of road users wont suddenly become more aggressive because of a yellow sign on the back of your bike. Why would they suddenly want to risk having an accident because of a yellow piece of plastic?

What tends to happen is the learners rider attention is being consumed by machine handling skills that have not yet become automatic. As a result, they fail to observe the situation around them and take appropriate action, until suddenly they are right in the thick of the action.
It's not so much that the road user has acted aggressively towards the rider - it's that the rider has only just noticed the locality of the road user relative to themselves when they should have noticed it much sooner.

The other common complaint is that it is dangerous to ride at 70km/h on a 100km/h. Think carefully about this. What it means is that the learner rider has chosen to place themselves in that dangerous situation. This is not a choice that any rider should be making - to deliberately place themselves in danger. It reflects on their ability to read safe situations (situational awareness again).

The risky bit is when you are travelling at a drastically different speed to the rest of the road users. So yes, riding at 70km/h on some 100km/h roads can be risky, on others it is just fine. If your riding on a quiet 100km/h road at 70km/h, and you observe another road user approaching from behind at a much greater speed simply pull over and let them pass.

The other option leaner riders choose is to ignore the 70km/h licence restriction and travel at the same speed as the traffic. This does remove the danger created from travelling at a greatly different speed to the traffic - but the reason why there is an 70km/h restriction is because many machine control skills have not been learnt sufficiently that they occur automatically without any conscious thought being required (and hence it subtracts from your available attention span).

Some learner riders say they "have to" ride at 100km/h because that is the only way to get to destination "x". This is simply not true. No one makes you get on your bike and exceed the learner licence restrictions except the rider. An alternative perspective is that the route to the destination is not yet safe for the learner to use until they their skills have become automatic.

The best way to make riding skills become second nature is simply more riding time. Some learner riders will only ride infrequently, while others will commute daily. So different riders making machine handling skills become automatic at different rates.

The aim of the 70km/h licence restriction is reduce the seriousness of an accident should the rider's attention span become overwhelmed with processing information about their machine and the situation around them. Slowly down simply means that the brain doesn't have to process information as fast.

The learner licence restriction is only 6 months. I feel new riders should take the time to enjoy their introduction to riding, and allow the time that is required to for the new skills they are acquiring to become automatic.

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Comments

  1. Spearfish's Avatar
    p.dath has hit the nail square on the head with this post.

    I also think the "cars pick on L plates" thing can grow excessively if the rider doesn't find some balance between what they perceive is happening to what is really happening. I found myself falling into that trap, all it did was steepen my learning curve.
  2. Gibbo89's Avatar
    well thought out p dath.

    a few things i would add is that the speed restriction is 70km per hour, not 80 as mentioned above. so 30km per hour can be quite dangerous at times, but as a learner at the moment i avoid any long straight 100km per hour roads, twisty ones are all good.

    something i think i have found handy was i rode scooters for a few years first before i stepped up to a 250cc. so in regards to the "only 20% left to concentrate on the road" comment, scooters were very useful, as they just run full throttle 95% of the time and of course have no gears. i think that has held me in good stead for when i moved up to a bigger bike.
  3. p.dath's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gibbo89
    a few things i would add is that the speed restriction is 70km per hour, not 80 as mentioned above.
    Thanks for the correction. I will update the blog article.
  4. Squiggles's Avatar
    Good shit
  5. Sable's Avatar
    Fuck off. Go and put an L plate on. I did it for shits and giggles and I got tailgated by a Pajero most of the way home.
  6. Neshi's Avatar
    don't agree...
    80% of attention used on riding the bike, 20% on what's happening on the road... where did you come up with with these numbers?
    I'm not saying an L-plate is a target for cagers, I never experienced anything bad when I had the L-plate attached.
    I took it off because I want to do a 100km on the motorway, which is a lot safer in my opinion than doing 70km while all other traffic is doing a 100. You will be holding cars and trucks up, who will get irritated with you, want to overtake you and do so with every opportunity they get, even if it might be a dangerous opportunity.
    Furthermore, if you do a 100 while wearing the L-plate, you make it incredibly easy for cops to give you a fine for doing 30km over the speedlimit..
    So, I don't wear an "L"plate, don't do anything stupid to attract attention of police.. and happily doing a 100 on the motorway. Although I might be biased. I rode the car quite frequently for 3 years before getting on a motorcycle, so situational awareness is already something I have developed. I commute the bike and ride with every possible opportunity I get which resulted in me having ridden more than 5000km in just short of 5 months..
  7. Gibbo89's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Neshi
    don't agree...
    80% of attention used on riding the bike, 20% on what's happening on the road... where did you come up with with these numbers?
    I'm not saying an L-plate is a target for cagers, I never experienced anything bad when I had the L-plate attached.
    I took it off because I want to do a 100km on the motorway, which is a lot safer in my opinion than doing 70km while all other traffic is doing a 100. You will be holding cars and trucks up, who will get irritated with you, want to overtake you and do so with every opportunity they get, even if it might be a dangerous opportunity.
    Furthermore, if you do a 100 while wearing the L-plate, you make it incredibly easy for cops to give you a fine for doing 30km over the speedlimit..
    So, I don't wear an "L"plate, don't do anything stupid to attract attention of police.. and happily doing a 100 on the motorway. Although I might be biased. I rode the car quite frequently for 3 years before getting on a motorcycle, so situational awareness is already something I have developed. I commute the bike and ride with every possible opportunity I get which resulted in me having ridden more than 5000km in just short of 5 months..
    would tend to agree with this. i havnt done long motorway stints yet so do not remove my plate as i am still getting used to my bike, i will hop on the motorway when ready.

    i have been driving cars since 2006 and find it annoying with the speed limit being 70k's, when i have driven around a lot of the south island, even after 10pm and before 5am
  8. Slyer's Avatar
    They're