High tech motorcycles, low-skilled riders. How we redress the balance

Biking cliché #2; ‘I like to have the extra power to get me out of trouble.’

I hadn’t heard it in a while, but it made me chuckle the other day when it popped up in a Facebook comment. Mostly because I’d just been talking about this with Mark McVeigh, BikeSocial’s Motorbike Coach.

My light bulb moment with bike technology came years ago on a magazine road test when Tom, a teenage racer was helping out on a photoshoot of used sports bikes as our ‘professional rider in controlled conditions’. While I’d have been feeling for grip and warming the tyres, Tom went straight to full attack mode and got the picture in three passes.

He knew the tyres would find grip because ‘That’s what tyres do’. Tom had only ever ridden on sporty radial tyres and 1990s suspension. His race bike was a Yamaha FZR400RR-SP. It never even occurred to him that tyres wouldn’t grip.

The advanced technology in a 1990s sports bike gave Tom a different baseline. My limits came from square-profiled 1970s Avon tyres and shock absorbers that did ‘shock’ better than ‘absorb’ as they struggled to contain the 35bhp of my tired Suzuki GT380.

Tom was faster than me, but safer, smoother and more in control of his riding because he’d learned to use the advantages his 1990s motorcycle brought him.

2024’s sporting middleweights have lean-sensitive traction and ABS, slide and lift control. 1970s sports middleweights had square tyres.

Fast forward 30 years and motorcycle technology is so far advanced of Tom’s FZR to be almost unrecognisable. The Yamaha MT-09 test bike in my garage has a chassis, suspension, tyres and brakes better than any 1990s road bike. It has lean-sensitive ABS, traction and slide control, engine braking assist, wheelie control, sporty and wet weather riding modes – all programmable to suit your riding in a road bike costing £10,106.

The MT-09 allows sophisticated rider inputs to devour a bumpy back road in a way that no 90s or noughties bikes could and is safer too. Fact.

But only if the rider has the skills to use those rider aids. If you still use a throttle like there’s a 1970s tyre beneath you or don’t actively counter-steer you won’t enjoy the accuracy, control and safety margins of a 2024 motorcycle. You’ll brake too early, turn too early, run through the corner on the wrong line at too-much lean angle and a closed throttle for too long and then not be sure what to do when corner tightens up.

The 2024 version of Tom brakes harder, waits till he can see safely through the corner, turns later with confidence in his bike and skills to steer actively, while holding a little front brake to keep the suspension settled and the steering sharp.

As Tom-2024 releases the brake, he’ll focus on the corner exit, winding on the throttle knowing the TC and slide-control are waiting to assist.

Modern motorcycles have the hardware to make us better riders. We need to update the rider software to get the best out of it.

And that’s where motorcycling gets interesting again. When planning our riding for 2025, why not make getting to really know and enjoy what our motorcycles can do a part of that? Why not build a series of practice drills that helps explore what this technology can do on every ride? We might not want to ride like Toprak on the way to work, but wouldn’t it be good to have the skills, experience and muscle memory to do the right thing instinctively when something goes wrong, knowing our bike has the electronic power to, er…get…us…out…of…trouble. 

Now, where did I hear that phrase before?

I like the idea of this, but I’m not sure where to start. So, I returned to BikeSocial’s motorbike coach Mark McVeigh. Mark has been running his motorcycle training school for more than 20 years, teaching 10,000+ riders. He’s a former MotoGP engineer with an interest in developing new rider training technology to improve the quality and consistency of training. I know he has strong opinions on this subject. Here’s his thoughts.

“Electronic aids are great, but the rider still has to use the throttle, brake, steer and understand the level of grip available and how to use it Modern tyres and suspension allow riders a bigger safety margin than before, but only if they have the machine control skills to exploit it.

“At our school we use aviation black-box principles to learn-from and simulate real world crash scenarios to train our riders. Many crashes happen in corners with no other vehicles involved. Riders are taught not to brake in a corner, so they never practice it. Lean-sensitive ABS is irrelevant to them because they don’t brake while leaning. Riders without the tools to get out of trouble resort to trial and error. The problem with trial and error on a bike is that errors can be fatal.

“What follows is a simple drill to start to put that right”.

How hard can you brake in a corner and how to do it properly.

“For riders that don’t have a test track and outriggers available as in the video above, we developed specific drills that they can use to practice. So, when it happens, they have the skills to deal with it. One of the most important involves learning to swerve and then brake while leaning over.

“You’ll need a large circle to ride around - I’d suggest a quiet car park - a large ball of string and some chalk. You are going to draw a 21M (69ft) diameter circle, which is a big area – like four SUVs nose-to-tail. You can use a smaller space, but the speeds will be much lower.

Learning to swerve and brake while leaning are essential skills. Modern bikes have the tech to make this safer

“If that sounds difficult or your car parks are always busy, you can get an idea of how the exercise works (in one direction only) using a small, quiet roundabout (and I mean really quiet because you need to be able to concentrate). One suggestion might be a roundabout on an industrial estate on a Sunday evening, with the huge caveat that doing this kind of thing on the road, while not illegal, carries some risk and needs to be done with awareness, common sense and a mate or two to act as lookouts and helpers.

“Ride around the roundabout slowly at first (like a long right-hand corner) at a safe pace and constant lean angle. When you are ready, gently swerve the bike to the left by pushing on the left handlebar (without braking) to avoid an imaginary object.

“When this feels comfortable, ask a mate to raise their hand randomly to instruct you to do this - to simulate an unexpected event.

“Build up slowly to real world speeds but remember to only stretch your inputs in 5% steps. That’s how you’ll build muscle memory safely and consistently.

“Remember you are on a public road and this exercise is about control, not impressive lean angles.

“Now comes the interesting part. Gently introduce the front brake while you swerve. Remember to do it in 5% stretches. Braking in corners will be new to many riders (that’s why we’re learning it) and takes time to be comfortable. Feel how in a right hander the bike lifts naturally on the brakes and takes you to the left which would be away from oncoming traffic on a right-hand bend, towards the kerb. It makes the swerve to avoid a hazard easier.”

“Once you are comfortable with this, you need to find somewhere to practice riding in the opposite direction, where we can also add coming to an actual stop as you swerve – to simulate avoiding a head-on collision.

“Because you’ll be riding in the opposite direction, you can no longer do this on a roundabout. You’ll need that empty car park. To make a 21M circle you’ll need a ball of string at least 10.5M long (the radius of your circle), some chalk and a mate to stand at the centre of the circle while you hold the string tight and walk around him drawing a chalk circle.

Once you have the circle, practice the exercise again going anticlockwise as a long left-hander. “Notice any difference? In this direction, swerving the bike away from oncoming traffic (turning left) simply requires adding more lean with some additional pressure on the inside handlebar. When you add some brake it sits the bike up again, allowing you to bring the bike to a stop within your lane.

If all you do is add brake, without the additional lean, the physics work against you and you cross the white line into the oncoming traffic. You now have to steer the bike left while braking (as opposed to braking while already turning the bike left which is easier) to avoid oncoming traffic.

“Now you understand why getting a left-hand corner wrong is so dangerous.”

Mark adds, “The learning here is that when you get a left-hander wrong you can correct it more easily by adding extra lean than by braking. With practice you can add the extra lean instinctively and your bike on modern tyres and suspension has all the grip you need to get around. The goal is to better understand grip and build your machine control skill. This drill is especially useful to avoid head-ons.

“On the off chance that you really are going way too fast then your practice at applying the brake gently, feeling the grip and adding some lean at the same time will make a huge difference to your chances of survival. Doing it for the first time in the middle of a panic situation will have the consequences you are imagining right now.

“The description above demonstrates how complex machine control can be, which is why it is so important to use very small increments when practicing. Take your time, practice the drill and motorcycle inputs consistently and intuitively, stretch by 5%. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so regular practice is key.

“The next step is to use bigger circles to increase the speeds.”

Once familiar with the smaller circle, make bigger ones and increase the speed.

Thanks Mark. When I first heard about this drill it felt complex and fussy to find a car park, draw an enormous circle and protect my space from grumpy OAPs. So, I went for the roundabout option to get an idea of how it works. And it works really well because the nature of the roundabout allowed me to experiment with setting a lean angle and then practicing adding a little more or lift the bike depending on the direction. Adding some gentle braking makes for a very controllable swerve.

I’m too lazy to measure out a circle and I have no mates, so I visualised a circle in my local Homebase car park about the same size as the roundabout. It was good enough to do the drill and surprising how easy it is to add enough lean to steer quite sharply. The added challenge of bringing the bike to a halt was really interesting. I imagined the perimeter of the circle to be the centre line of the road in a corner and was surprised how hard it was not to cross that centre line when braking. I found it far easier to add extra lean to avoid the imaginary object than to brake and stay my side of the line. I was getting better, but I was also getting tired, so I called it a day.

Which brought two conclusions for me. Firstly, adding more lean is easy when you have the confidence in your ability and your tyres. And second, taking the right line into a left-hander is just so important because it gives you the visibility to make the judgement on your speed sooner and make the right decision.

And just to ram home the point even harder. The quote below is from the original 1965 version of Motorcycle Road Craft

‘It will therefore be seen that when negotiating bends or corners at any but very low speeds, all that is necessary to travel the curved course is to bank the machine over without any movement of the handlebars so that balance s maintained all the way round the bend.’

Back then they didn’t even have tyres and suspension as good as my old GT380. Imagine what they’d have done with a 2024 MT-09 and Mark McVeigh?

Crashing a motorcycle into the inside verge of any corner is a peculiarly advanced technique. Eight years after it happened, we still can’t work out how the rider managed it.