New style bike test - scrapped

My opinion:

Yes, but normally doesnt stay like that for long before they get think "Oh, this isnt so bad". They convince themselves they have got "used" to the power/size and relax just that little bit too much before some incident (close call, minor scrape or big time accident) put them back into their place.

I think the majority are like that.

I passed my HGV 1 and the very next day I had to do a 400 mile round trip to pick up highly explosive material and bring it back. Wasn't nervous at all. MUCH.

Slow speed, feet up control as part of the test is in my opinion as pointless as the turn in the road which also has to be completed with feet on the pegs. It's one of those things you HAVE to do to pass the test and then never ever need to do (or likely to do) ever again. It's supposed to be to show your ability to handle the motorcycle at slow speeds but that's just stupid. With an additional two points of contact on the ground you're going to have much more ability to control what you are doing. When I was instructing I always did the turn in the road first until it was cracked, rather than leave it to chance on the day of the test only to have a very good ride but fail for that one pointless manoeuvre.

[yorkie_chris]

Back brake can be pretty useful at slow speeds?

Good to be able to do it, but I think a short stint on a road with bends to be taken at some realistic speed to demonstrate basic road positioning and setting up for corners would be better in actually avoiding accidents.

After all no one in recorded history of motorcycling has had on coroners report "fatal RTC caused by putting foot down at 1mph"

But I would hazard a guess quite a few have swerved away from an emerging car to be killed by an oncoming one. Yet they teach you to use 70/30 (sic) braking to use on modern bikes which can very easily utilise 0/100 brake effort!


I would surmise that any testing has got sweet **** all to do with skill, safety or sense and everything to do with making motorcycles as inaccessible as possible because the eurocrats hate any idea of freedom, sport and fun.

[andrewsmith]

Originally Posted by Stig

I passed my HGV 1 and the very next day I had to do a 400 mile round trip to pick up highly explosive material and bring it back. Wasn't nervous at all. MUCH.

Haha

Diamonds resulted?

[cbay]

But they forked out millions for new specially design carparks and tarmac etc...

dont see any problems with the test at all and i passed in october. having never been on a bike before in my life i did my cbt in september (that is a joke)
i then did one afternoon training on a mod 1 500cc...first time on a manual bike. found the slow speed stuff hard and kept putting feet down on u turn but had test the next morning. no minors and did the swerve test at 70kmph.
if people cannot do the test then they are not capable of riding on the roads, its as simple as that.
as for the 125's struggling to get up to 31mph i dont buy it. you have a long bend before the straight and really should be taking that at a min speed of 20mph, leaving you 11mph more to accelerate once on the straight. a fat lady pushing a pram could do that in time
The way i see it if somebody like me can pass the mod 1 and 2 after only ever having around 10 hours on any kind of motorbike then it cant be hard...even tho i am the stig's long lost biking cousin lol

If it deters people from learning to ride a bike its a bad thing.

Originally Posted by hardhat_harry

If it deters people from learning to ride a bike its a bad thing.

That depends really,

It means that only people who are serious about riding can get a bike, hence reducing the amount of idiots on fast machines

Originally Posted by andrewsmith

Haha

Diamonds resulted?

Something like that. Especially when I went the wrong way and had to reverse into a side road to go back the way I had come.