Observation & Hazard Recognition

Being able to identify potential hazards as earlier as possible, may well be the most valuable skill a rider can learn.  If you can see ahead, predict a hazard and take avoiding action well before the threat reaches you, you will vastly improve your safety.  As mentioned before the biggest threats to motorcyclists are other road users.  Being aware of them and predicting their actions will significantly reduce your risk of having an accident.

Everyone has a natural ability to identify potential hazards - call it self preservation or whatever, but often when we are focused on a complex task or performing a mundane task, our ability to spot and react to threats is dulled. So what can you do to re-focus your mind?

Training your vision - Learn to be aware of what’s going on in your peripheral vision or wide view.

Searching for clues & anticipating hazards - A ball bounces across the road, what should you expect?

Prioritising by threat - A junction on the left, a car overtaking ahead, a sharp corner in the distance what do you do?

Avoiding the hazard - Steering away may not necessarily mean you’ll avoid the hazard.

Protection from yourself - Understanding your limits and what can cause errors of judgement.

Training Your Vision

 

Poor observation causes over 10 times more accidents than speeding.

The main cause of road traffic accidents is not excessive speed or loss of control, but poor observation - ‘failing to look’ or ‘looking but not seeing’.  So how can we improve our observation skills?  Well, keeping your eyes open and looking at the road ahead is obviously not enough given accident statistics.  What we actually need to do is avoid focusing on one area (e.g. the car in front) and concentrate on the entire picture.  There seems to be two approaches to enhancing your ability to do this, generally known as scanning and wide view.

Scanning

Next time you go for a ride, try to keep your eyes moving, search the road ahead, look into junctions, search for pot holes, look ahead for activity, people turning etc.  Whatever you do, don’t keep your eyes focused in one place.  This will enable you to build up a better view of your surroundings and help you avoid the temptation of either focusing on the car in front or the nearest potential hazard.  Both will result in you having reduced awareness.
 

Wide View

Understanding a little about how your vision works will help you make best use of it.  You basically have two types of vision  focused and peripheral.  Your focused vision, is the area you are directly looking at.  It enables you to pick out detail and clarity (e.g. reading a number plate).  Your peripheral vision is what you see around the edges and is sensitive to movement, but gives less detail.

Your brain will naturally concentrate on your focused view, the trick of wide view is to train yourself to balance concentration and enhance your peripheral view without moving your eyes (i.e. scanning without so much eye movement).  The theory is, that it gives you a wider view of your surroundings, but it takes some practice.

Searching for Clues & Anticipating Hazards

You’ve probably heard the commonly used example: if a ball bounces across the road, you should expect to find a child following it, but what about the less common examples? Here are the some common situations, the clues and the hazards (risks) which may occur (There are motorway specific examples discussed in the guide to motorway riding).
 

Situation:	You are riding in a built up area moving slowly behind a taxi or small goods vehicle.
Risk:	The vehicle is going to stop suddenly or perform am impulsive U-turn.
Action:	Drop back to give yourself time to react.
Situation:	You spot breaks in the tree or building line ahead.
Risk:	There is a hidden junction.
Action:	Move out to get a better view and give you space to react.
Situation:	Oncoming slow vehicle (e.g. cyclist, tractor, horse etc.).
Risk:	Faster oncoming vehicles will move into your path to overtake.
Action:	Move to the left to get a better view and create space for overtaking vehicle.
Situation:	You’re on a country road and haven’t seen any oncoming vehicles for a while.
Risk:	There is a queue of cars stuck behind a slow vehicle, will they risk an overtake?
Action:	Adopt a position that gives you a better view and enables you to be seen.

 

Visual Clues

We tend to rely on signaling to identify another vehicle’s intentions, but many motorists are not in the habit of giving correct signals or actually believe the rules are different. Ask five motorists what the correct lane and indication is for going straight over, on a two lane roundabout and you’ll get at least two different answers.  So what other visual clues will help us to decide on another motorists intended actions?

• Has he seen me? - Making eye contact with another driver can help reassure yourself that you’ve been seen.
• Which way is he going?  Look to see where he’s looking, which direction his wheels are pointing.
• Is he going to pull out? Look to see if his brake lights are on, is he moving forward or holding it on the clutch.
• Is he going to stop suddenly or turn? A driver who is trying to navigate may not have his mind on his surroundings. If he keeps checking house numbers, street names or parking signs, he may suddenly stop or turn.

Driver Behaviour

The main cause of accidents involving motorcyclists, where another driver is at fault are right of way violations.  Typically an approaching vehicle will fail to give way to the motorcycle and pull out.  It is such a common mistake (around 90%) that motorcyclists refer to this as being SMIDSY’d (Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You) as this is typically the comment that follows when the rider enquires why the driver was so keen to launch them into space.  This phenomenon is so common that researchers of driver cognitive behaviour have conducted research and concluded the following:

• Drivers underestimate the approach time of motorcycles and are more likely to pull out in front.
• Motorcycles travelling at urban speeds (<40MPH) are less noticeable than other vehicles.
• Drivers search for what they expect to see – motorcycles make up <10% of urban traffic and are therefore not likely to be anticipated.
• It is easier to spot an object moving across our visual path than one that just gets bigger.
• The further away a motorcycle is the harder it is to judge the speed.
• Although it is believed that wearing high-vis clothing, choosing a bike with an increased frontal area (e.g. a full fairing) and riding with dipped beam on during daylight increases the chances of being seen, there is no research to support this.
• Motorcyclists tend to be at the front of traffic more often than cars (due to their ability to overtake and filter), which subjects them to the risk of right of way violations more often.

In addition the process many drivers use for joining a road at a junction, can fool the rider into thinking that they have been seen.   Many drivers will focus ahead at the junction, concentrating on braking and changing gear rather than looking for a gap.  When they arrive at the give way line they will make their assessment (look right, left, right again and go).  To an approaching vehicle it can appear that the emerging vehicle is giving way, only to have them pull out at the last moment.
 

Key Points

• Wearing high-vis clothing doesn’t guarantee that you will be seen
• A driver may stop at a junction appear to give way and still pull out
• Moving across your lane can improve your chances of being seen
• A vehicle turning right from a side road represents the greatest threat as there are two lanes of traffic to synchronise with and limited escape for the rider should they pull out and stop.

There are also plenty of visual clues for the conditions of the road.  As well as road signs, the centre lane markings indicate what’s ahead (more paint = more danger).  If the road is bellow the land (banked at the verge), look for mud on the road.  If it’s above the land watch out for cross winds.  Trees over hanging watch for leaves.

Prioritising by Threat

Once you’ve improved your ability to spot potential threats, the world will seem a much more dangerous place.  You’ll notice threats that you were previously oblivious to.  Many of the recommended actions will contradict with each other when it comes to avoiding the threat, so what do you do?

Looking ahead and anticipating the behavior of others is not particularly useful if you end up riding into a pot hole or getting wiped out by a car pulling out of a driveway.  You need to prioritise your action according to the time you have to react.  Basically, consider your immediate threats before dealing with any distant potential danger.  It may be easier to group potential hazards into three classifications:
 

• Green:  There is sufficient time and space for you to avoid the hazard by stopping safely without needing to perform an emergency stop or risk being rammed from behind e.g. sharp bend at the end of a long straight.
• Amber:  You need to take action soon,  you can still stop safely, but need to address the hazard e.g. a car approaching a junction ahead, but appears to have seen you and is slowing to stop.
• Red:  You need to act now by taking avoiding action.  You may have to perform an emergency stop or swerve sharply to avoid the situation e.g. car pulls out from side road without seeing you.

 You’ll need to size your safety bubbles according to your speed and ensure they include your rear and sides.

Avoiding Hazards

So you’ve spotted the hazard and need to take avoiding action - simple, just steer round it.  How many times do you ride over a manhole cover, despite trying to avoid it?  We have to remember the steering dynamics of Motorcycles.  Your speed and the amount of time you have will determine the best action to take.  Steer away at the last moment and you’ll probably end up even more on target.

If you know the basics of counter steering, then this may come as no surprise.  The wheels on a motorcycle act as two balanced gyroscopes (which is why you stay up).  If you apply force at the top to the left (e.g. lean over) the wheels will move to the right bellow the axle, before you start to bank left.  Counter steering works by applying the force bellow the axle in the opposite direction, which will force the bike to bank over.  To cut a long story short the net result is that if you steer left, your wheels will initially move to the right, which may be why you can’t avoid that manhole cover.

All this takes time to master and gets easier with practice.  Try applying some of the techniques next time you’re out and it may well help you to avoid a nasty spill.

Protection from yourself

Many advanced texts advise that we should always ride within our limits and the limits of our machine according to the road and whether conditions.  Failure to negotiate a bend and failure to overtake successfully are the biggest killers of experienced motorcyclists today.  Once we are away from the traffic our biggest threat is our own skill and judgement.  There are several guidelines that should help you keep a check on your ability.
 
• Self critique your riding – Every time you have a near miss, or go in to a corner to hot ask yourself what you could have done to prevent it.  Did you miss something?  We all have momentary lapses, understanding what we could have done to avoid the situation is more constructive than blaming another road user (who may well be to blame in any case).
• Make your own judgements – Don’t rely on others to set your pace, if another rider passes you, they may well be better, but they could also be more willing to kill themselves.  Don’t be tempted to follow through to keep up.
• Red mist – Don’t get pushed into doing something stupid, just because someone has annoyed you.