Motorcycle Emergency Stop Tips

The emergency stop is just as important on a motorcycle as it is in a car and learning to do it safely could well save your life.

The key to real life emergency stops on a motorcycle is to keep everything as controlled as possible and you need to ingrain the technique into your brain so it becomes an unconscious reaction rather than a consciously driven one. This way you will react quicker and will therefore have a greater chance of avoiding the impending danger.

Firstly you must learn not to use both brakes as this complicates the task. Concentrate on the front brake since under HARD braking the front does all the stopping (the rear tire should be skipping in the air doing virtually nothing.

Forget about trying to gear down as you pull in the clutch lever too. It’s great if you pull in the clutch lever (it’ll keep the engine from stalling) but don’t worry if you don’t.

The conclusion to all of this is that you should keep everything as simple as possible and concentrate on ONE THING only – squeezing that front brake lever in a controlled way to avoid going over the front handlebars.

In many ways you are learning to do a near ‘stoppie’ (rear wheel in the air under braking) and the key is to start with slight pressure as the weight moves to the front of the bike. You must learn how to feel for this happening so you know how much pressure you can get away with.

Most people squeeze too hard too soon and end up in trouble because their front tyre hasn’t got enough weight on it yet and skids free. Grabbing at the front brake almost always means that a fraction of the possible braking force is produced and the bike skids and goes down.

Learn to squeeze to maximise the front tyre load and listen for a ‘whir’ or ‘chirp’ as you tyre will generally make this noise before letting go. The goal is to keep that sound from the beginning to the end of your squeeze.

The other way is to try a graduated squeeze with the goal to end hard enough to lift the rear wheel. By doing this time and time again you will learn how fast you can increase the squeeze pressure before making you worry about either going over the handlebars or dropping the bike under a skid.

The important point to make is to learn this with a qualified motorcycle training instructor as they will be able to guide you carefully through the process avoiding many of the inherent risks and pitfalls.

For help with training to do a proper emergency stop on you motorcycle contact us now on 0207 7793 9313 and choose option 5.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Training Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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