Police riders' handbook to better motorcycling - Motorcycle road craft

[Ixion]

More experienced riders develop a sensitivity to the early indications of possible trouble. When risks arise they monitor them at a subconscious level in readiness to respond quickly if the situation developes dangerously

Well, yeah, but it's much easier just to get a spidey and let him take care of that stuff.

The average rider starting at 17 will have had more than eight accidents by the age of 35

Cluckin' bell. that sounds decidedly suss. We'd need to know their definition of accident. I don't think I know ANY rider who's had eight accidents, by any age., Unless you count 'fell off the side stand' stuff.

[sinned]

Thanks for this book recommendation; I have ordered from Amazon - it is on back order. A zillion years ago I did the Institute of Advanced Motorists driving program, got the cert but more importantly developed skills which have helped to keep me alive and enjoy driving. If only the equivalent motorcycle riding program was available in NZ?

[rustic101]

4. How Attitude Affects Good Riding(abridged)

Studies have shown that rider’s attitudes to other road users, speed and risk taking are a good guide to their likelihood of having and accident. Later in this section there is an opportunity for you to try two examples of attitude tests used in research studies.

Attitudes to other road users

Good riding depends on constructive attitudes and considerations for other road users. There is already a great deal of potential conflict on the roads without adding to it all by selfish and aggressive behaviour. Such behaviour increases the stress levels of other road users and increases the risk of accidents. Many road users become unnecessarily angry when others interrupt their progress. Even behaviour that is perfectly reasonable may be a source of irritation. Riders should be aware that their ability to filter through slower traffic may cause some drivers to react angrily., You can reduce the risk of accidents for yourself and everyone else by being more tolerant and by avoiding actions which create unnecessary stress. Riders who show consideration for other road users are less likely themselves to become involved in accidents.

Attitudes to Speed

The speed at which you ride is one of the most important factors in determining your risk of having an accident. Riding too fast is probably the factor that puts riders at the greatest risk of fatality. The faster you go, the less chance you have of taking avoiding action, and the greater your risk of having an accident. Speed is largely a matter of choice – the occasions when it is absolutely necessary to ride fast are fairly limited. Good riding requires you to ride at a speed that is safe for the conditions.

Attitudes to risk taking

There is always some degree of risk while riding a motorcycle, but the riders attitudes can greatly influence the risk involved. A general acceptance of risk is associated with a higher risk of an accident while riding. Attitudes which predispose you to risk are:

• Enjoying the thrill of danger
• Enjoying impressing other road users
• A disregard for personal safety
• The illusion of control, or over estimating your ability
• ‘noble cause’

Young, inexperienced riders run the greatest risk of accidents because they have a greater tendency to seek risk and disregard danger. They also see less risk in many traffic situations than more experienced riders.

Motorcyclists who ignore the law and ride in a risky way think that the risk of having an accident is lower than riders do. In fact the risk of an accident for this group is higher than it is for other riders.

Many riders take risks to impress other people – for example, young male riders ride faster when they have a young male passenger than when alone or with a female passenger.
Riders tend to suffer from the illusion of control, which is a tendency to over estimate their ability to cope with the accurate perception of risk.

Police riders, like riders in the other emergency services, need to be aware that the risks cannot be justified by telling themselves that they are taking the risk in a noble cause - to help someone else, or to catch a person suspected of a crime. Your overriding responsibility in any situation is to ride safely. That if you fail to arrive at the location you are no good to anyone..

Time Pressure and the purpose of your Journey

...No emergency is so great that it justifies the possibility of injuring or killing someone or yourself through bad riding. It is better to arrive late than never.

Red Mist

‘Red Mist’ is the term used to describe the state of mind of riders who are so determined to achieve some objective – catching a vehicle in front, overtaking an other road user, getting to a location as fast as they can – that they are no longer capable of realistically assessing rider tasks. Their mind is not on their riding but on some other goal; they have become emotionally or physiologically caught up in the chase. All road users are susceptible to ‘red mist’.

To prevent red mist, riders need to be able to maintain their usual clam. Each rider has to find their own method of keeping calm and concentrating, but the key steps in helping to prevent red mist are set out below:

• Do not get into a personality conflict with the person you are pursuing. Be dispassionate about the task or situation and concentrate on behaviour rather than personality. Use deliberately neutral, non aggressive language to describe the others persons (to yourself s well as others).
• Do not imagine what you might find at the incident – access the incident when you arrive at it.
• Concentrate of your riding – if you find this difficult, try giving yourself a running commentary on your riding, spoken aloud.

Other causes of risk taking

Greater risk taking also arises from attitudes that have nothing to do with risk assessment. Impatient, aggressive and selfish attitudes in drivers are linked with excessive speed and a tendency to commit driving violations that put them at risk.

Also a disregard for social values (such as defrauding insurance companies, illegal parking, tax evasion, not paying fines and a general disregard for the law) has been specifically identified with an increased risk of accident. The same is likely to apply to motorcyclists. We know that riders who commit violations and ride in a risky manor have a greater than average risk of accident.

Rash decision making also increases the risk, If you do not consider all the implications of your decisions, your actions are unpredictable and you fail to take account of traffic conditions.

Emotional mood and accident risk

Road users commonly express how they feel in the way that they ride/ drive, and can be very dangerous. Road users who have recently had an argument behave more aggressively than normal and ride/ drive too fast and too close to the vehicle in front. American research shows there is a greater risk of accident during times of stress such as during a divorce.
Traffic delays are a common source of stress and frustration. Many riders release this anger by riding more aggressively and then by taking more risks. If you are able to recognise this as a problem and can find another way of coping with the stress you will improve your riding. Focusing on the present rather than on the purpose of the journey is one way of reducing the stress.

{Cart to come – How do mood and stress affect your riding}

Next section

Attitudes and Society

[rustic101]

Coffee time

Only another 198 pages to go lol

[rustic101]

5. Attitudes and Society

Our attitudes are shaped to a large degree by the society which we live in, the organisations we belong to and the company we keep. These groups help us to define what is normal, what is acceptable and what is desirable.

Because the attitudes of your collages and the organisation you work for affect your riding, you should be aware of what these attitudes are. Certain attitudes – for examples, an overemphasis on reaching destinations on time valuing speed and competitiveness, or using language which stereotypes or is aggressive – may undermine safe riding practices. Problems such as these really need to be dealt with at an organisational level, but the first step in remedying them is to acknowledge that they exist and that they have personal relevance.

You need to be aware of the social influences on attitudes and safety but, in the end, the responsibility for the safety of yourself and other road users is yours alone. It is particularly important to be aware of your individual responsibility for safety when riding in a group. There is a temptation to follow the leader and not make an individual assessment of riding hazards. This is dangerous, because you alone can assess when it is safe to move and at what speed.

Most people are reactive; if they encounter another rider with a courteous attitude and an obvious concern for their safety, they are encouraged to adopt a similar approach. Riders who have a professional attitude to riding and safety can influence the behaviour of other motorists for the better.

6. Changing unhelpful attitudes

Develop positive attitudes

We have now looked at riding attitudes that have looked at the risk of accidents. Positive attitudes that help reduce accidents risks are:

• A tolerance and consideration for other road users
• A realistic appraisal of your own abilities
• An awareness of your vulnerability as a rider
• A high degree of care for your own safety, for your passenger’s safety and for other road users.

You need to be able to recognise your own limitations and to set aside personal goals in the interests of safety – an example would be restraining yourself from reacting aggressively to another road user’s aggressive behaviour. You need to make decisions carefully, to take full account of the traffic conditions and to avoid acting in an unpredictable way.

Recognise that attitudes affect safety

Understanding your own attitudes and changing them to reduce accident risk is a difficult task. The first task is to be aware of the effect that your attitudes can have on your riding safety. One way of gaining some insight to this is to use the attitude tests. By answering a few simple questions you can gain some idea of your attitudes and a measure of your accident risk.

Check your own attitude

{Test to come – Attitudes to riding}

Acknowledge resistance to change

Most riders would accept that developing a safety conscious attitude is important, but a big problem exists because we believe our own attitudes are right and are reluctant to accept evidence that we need to change them. Attitude to speed is a key area where there is often resistance to change. To asses your own attitude to speed, complete the questionnaire that follows.

Riding speed

{Test to come – Attitudes to riding}

Recognise your own vulnerability

If you have inappropriate attitudes towards riding, and are able to acknowledge this, the next step is to identify safety as your primary concern. Consider the elements that bolster your unsafe riding attitudes and how you can change them. Most important amongst these are:

• A false sense of personal invulnerability
• An illusion of control

These attitudes tend to prevent us from accepting that the risks of riding apply to us as well as to other people. (see riding defensively page 21).

Critical self-awareness – the key to riding skill

Acknowledging the need to change attitudes is difficult because the evidence is statistical and most people trust their own experience rather than statistics. If you are a fast aggressive rider, you may not make the connection between your attitudes and the way you ride even if you have been in an accident. Research has shown that riders have a strong tendency to blame the road conditions or other road users rather than themselves for the accidents that they cause. This helps to explain why there is a strong tendency for riders to repeatedly make the same mistakes and become involved in the same kinds of accidents.

A fully professional approach to riding requires you to take an objective look at the facts, to be prepared, where there is evidence, to discard inappropriate attitudes and to develop a critical awareness of your own attitudes and capabilities.

The key steps to achieving this critical self-awareness are:

• Acknowledging that attitudes affect riding performance
• Being aware of your own attitudes and recognising that they affect your risk of having an accident
• Recognising that you are vulnerable, especially on a motorcycle
• Making safety your primary concern in all your riding decisions
• Considering your own experiences of near misses or accidents and what you can learn from them
• Carrying through changes in attitude to your riding performance by applying them in every riding situation

Next section

Concentration and Alertness

[rustic101]

Unfortunately the only part that the NZ cops haven't quite decided to adopt though, is the bit (off the top of my head) on page 139, which states, that a rider can use the motorcycles small size and manoeuvrability to filter (Lane split) through the traffic.

Tricia

Bang on Tricia but might take me a few days typing to get that far lol

[Genie]

Interesting reading so far...thanks

[Okey Dokey]

This is really good stuff to read. I hope your typing fingers don't seize up on you. Bling sent, but I can't send more until I spread it around a little. Thanks for sharing all this with us.

[UberRhys]

Not a bad thing. Last time I was in blighty I saw a Police R1 on the motorway. What a great job!

They have a mufti Hayabusa too... and a range of good pursuit vehicles.

Better than an Astra chasing you round then...

[Toaster]

Better than an Astra chasing you round then...

Hyundai was a close contender for the NZ police fleet but they ended up extending Holden.... they kept "holden on"!!

[rustic101]

7. Concentration and Alertness

Concentration and alertness are also key mental aspects of riding skill. This section looks at the factors which can help or hinder them.

Our ability to handle information about the environment is limited. We cope with this by giving more attention to some parts of the environment than others and concentrating on them. This is important to riding as we react most quickly to things happening in the part of the environment which we are concentrating on.

One way of seeing this is to imagine your field of view as a picture – you can see the whole picture but you can only concentrate on one part of it at a time.

{Pictures missing here}

Scanning the environment

Riders that can rapidly scan the whole environment looking for different kinds of hazards have a lower risk of accidents than riders who concentrate on one area. There are several ways you can develop your ability to do this. Some are:

• Move your eyes around and look in all directions, including your mirrors.
• Look fro any hazards in any shape, size or form from any direction.
• Develop your sensitivity to the variety of possible hazards in different riding situations – this depends on learning, experience and commitment to developing this awareness

Looking but not seeing

What we see depends to a large degree on what we expect to see. You may have experienced, at one time or another, pulling out and narrowly missing a bicycle coming from the other direction in which you have just looked. Errors of this type are common because road users, including riders, are generally looking for cars or trucks but not for smaller objects like bicycles or motorcycles, which they fail to see. When we concentrate, we don’t just look at a particular part of a scene, we look for particular types of objects in that scene. We find it easier to detect objects that we expect to see, and react more quickly to them. Conversely we fail to see objects that we do not expect to see. This has important implications for your safety as a rider. (see riding defensively page 21).

Developing your hazard awareness

Some processing of information goes on at a subconscious level but a prompt can summon our attention to it. An example is the way we prick up our ears when we hear our name mentioned. Experienced riders rapidly and automatically switch their attention to events happening outside their field of focus because they have subconscious or instinctive understanding of the implications of particular traffic situations.

In the following chapters of Motorcycle Roadcraft we analyse many examples of traffic situations for the hazards that occur in them. You may wonder if so many examples are necessary, but their purpose is to increase your understanding of the potential hazards in each situation. The aim is to ‘pre sensitise’ your awareness so that when you encounter a situation you already know what hazards to look for and can respond to them more quickly.

Alertness

Alertness determines the amount of information you can process – it can be thought of as mental energy and its opposite is tiredness or fatigue. Alertness depends on many things, but with routine tasks like riding, it tends to decrease with time spent on the task. Alertness also depends on some extent on your personality. Extroverts (outgoing people that require a lot of external stimulation) are more susceptible to fatigue than introverts (inward looking people who avoid high levels of stimulation).

To ride well we need to reman alert – ready to anticipate, identify and respond to hazards. But most riding is routine; it places few demand on our abilities and the risk of accidents from moment to moment is small. This relativity low level of stimulation makes it easy to lose concentration, and we need to take active steps to maintain it. In busy urban traffic, the demands of riding may be sufficiently stimulating, but on long journeys on motorways or rual roads other forms of stimulation are needed.

Alertness and anxiety

Alertness depends on your level of anxiety, and there is an optimum level of anxiety for any task. A small amount of anxiety arising from a sound understanding of the risks involved can help to maintain alertness and readiness to respond. No anxiety at all dampens your responsiveness and decreases your speed of reaction. Too much anxiety can result in failure to process information and respond appropriately.

You can help yourself to stay alert by:

• Consciously assessing the current level of risk
• Constantly updating your assessments
• Talking yourself through the risks of traffic situation

If you actively maintain you awareness of the risks in this way, it will help you to keep anxiety at an optimum level, and you will be less likely to neglect a potentially dangerous situation.

Fatigue

Fatigue is the total time you spend at work and not just on the machine. If you are tired from other duties before you start your journey, you are much more at risk from fatigue during the journey. Riders have an increased level of susceptibly to fatigue from noise, vibration and exposure to wind and weather. Professional riders are particularly at risk because of professional and social pressures encouraging them to continue riding beyond what they know is their safe limit.

Heath, medication and emotional state

You should never ride when you feel unwell. This is particularly important on motorways because of the dangers of high-speed accidents and the limited opportunities to stop if you feel ill. Medication is a common source of drowsiness, so if you are taking any medication follow the advice on the label or given to you by a health professional before riding. Your emotional state affects your ability to recognise hazards, to take appropriate decisions and to implement them efficiently. If you are emotionally distressed you should be aware of the affect that will have on your riding.

Monotonous conditions

Riding for long periods of time in monotonous conditions such as low-density traffic, fog, at night or on a motorway, reduces stimulation and promotes fatigue.

How to combat fatigue

To reduce the risk of fatigue:

• Make sure you are not tired before you start riding.
• Use any available adjustment to make your riding position comfortable.
• Adopt a comfortable position on the machine with your instep resting on the foot rests.
• Consider wearing ear protection (ear plugs) to reduce noise.
• Wear clothing that provides physical protection and is appropriate to the weather.

Fatigue can be caused by both hot and cold conditions. In warm weather, light coloured garments will help you to stay cool as well as making you more conspicuous. In wet weather, it is important to wear fully waterproof outer garments - saturated cloths remove heat from the body very quickly in the airflow of a moving bike. Remember that gloves and boots need to also be waterproof.

Cold weather is dangerous; as the body’s core cools, the rider becomes sluggish and loses attention. The extremities cool more quickly than the body, and in cold weather the average temperature of the rider’s hands is around 14 to 15 degrees C. At this point they lose most of their sensitivity.

Take effective action to prevent chilling by:

• Wearing multiply layers – the more layers you wear the warmer you will be.
• Wear a thick suit covered by an outer windproof/ waterproof suit.
• Close all fasteners to prevent the suit from ballooning – movement of air inside the suit causes chilling.
• Avoiding wearing cloths that make you sweat – sweat removes heat and moisture when it evaporates causing dehydration
• Keep you head, hands and feet well insulated

Irregular work or shift patterns increase your risk of fatigue

If you feel drowsy, if your eyelids are heavy and the rear lights ahead of you begin to blur, you must do something immediately to stop yourself from falling asleep. Take a rest as soon as it is safe to do so.

Next section

Riding defensively

[george formby]

Top job Rustic

[Quasi]

Great job with the typing Rustic. Well done. Lots to take on board.

[Bikernereid]

Thanks for taking the time to type, much appreciated!! Will try and get the book shipped over from Blighty.

[george formby]

It's great to read about attitude & concentration, probably the two things that affect my riding most. On a recent run I found my speed creeping up on a beautiful road, right in the groove, but definitely beginning to put myself at risk. It took a conscious effort to rein in my speed and still maintain my concentration at what felt like a pedestrian pace. This thread is a good reminder of subtle things that rarely get discussed.
Better than Coro, when's the next episode? Somebody lend Rustic a scanner.