MCrider.com Shirts are now available!
When was the last time you practiced swerving around an obstacle? if you are not practicing swerving it will not be in your bag of tricks when you need it on the road. This week on MCrider we will look at swerving, how to do it and why you need to practice it.
Swerving is defined as two consecutive turns or counter steers, one to avoid an obstacle followed immediately by another to regain original direction. When we swerve, we want to keep the motorcycle lean independent of body lean. This means our upper body torso will remain upright as the motorcycle leans beneath us. Keeping our upper body independent of motorcycle lean allows the motorcycle to lean quickly.
Swerving is often more beneficial than stopping for avoiding a car size obstacle when traveling above 18mph. We can actually perform the swerve maneuver in less time and space than it would take to stop your motorcycle.
Consider a situation where you are confronted with a couch that has just fallen off the back of a pickup truck. Would you rather stop before you reach the hazard or swerve? Right, we’d rather swerve because YOU AVOID BECOMING THE HAZARD FOR MOTORISTS BEHIND YOU. If we stop, we find ourselves in the middle of the road for motorists who are less likely to stop as quickly as we may have.
Tips to swerving:
- Avoid applying brakes (swerving uses a lot of available traction; adding braking forces may overcome the remaining traction available thus creating a crash)
- Keep a smooth, steady throttle (again, swerving uses a lot of traction; abrupt changes off the throttle upsets the suspension and could cause us to lose traction)
- Move vision away from obstacle (To prevent target fixation, we’ll want to move our vision to where we want to go)
- If time and space permit, brake before the swerve, but make sure to separate braking from swerving completely!
