Almost wrecked this morning

Phew, had a close one this morning.

I finished work on Thursday a week ago for holidays but on my way home hit a line of traffic, worked my way around to the front and some Diversion rider had hit the side of a tractor and trailer pulling out (fortunately he was ok, conscious at the scene and didn't seem to be anything broken) but every time going past that point now it reminds me, this morning I was coming round and noticed the spot where he lay, was thinking about it as I passed and round the next blind bend 50 yards away there was a feed truck diagonally across the road about to reverse into a farm drive

I wasn't speeding, was less than the nsl, doing maybe 55, but the back brake expectedly locked, the front was constant increasing pressure and was doing ok, feared locking that though so didn't go all out, released the rear and reapplied, not going to stop in time, no room round the front of the truck (on my side of the road), had to opt for the rear to avoid running out of road, fortunately the driver had seen and stopped reversing I shuddered to a stalled engine halt just the other side of the far corner (I wasn't sure he wasn't about to reverse over me!) fortunately though didn't bother taking stock as nothing had happened so I just started back up and finished my trek to work but the adrenaline was definitely pumping then, took ages to calm down.

Car drivers from the other direction must have thought I was just another impatient git or something as they couldn't see the look on my face.
Closest I've been so far except the running out of skill/grip last year but that was pretty low speed and minor, this could have been much worse.

I think I did ok to avoid anything but I should have been more alert and paying more attention, the extra half second might have made the difference between an emergency stop and what happened heh. Still think anyone reversing like that round a blind bend should have a person standing warning traffic or something.

Ah well, that was my morning. Learn from it and move on.

1. Always ride (and take corners) at a pace so that you can stop in the distance you can see to be clear on your own side of the road. It doesn't matter whether you are on an NSL road, and whether that speed is 25mph or 125mph, make sure you aren't exceeding it.

2. Position yourself so that you maximise your view of the road ahead through corners.

3. In an emergency stop, on a bike like an SV650S, 90% of your effective dry road straight line braking, possibly even 100% if you can get the rear wheel floating off the ground, is with the front brakes. You have to get the weight of the bike settled over the front end so you need to start squeezing them progressively, but once the front end has settled you can squeeze damned hard, hard enough to unload the rear so much that the rear wheel will very easily lock on you. If the front wheel does lock on you when you are upright and travelling in a straight line hard on the brakes, it is not a disaster, you can learn to partially release and then re-apply the front brake before the front wheel tucks and you eat tarmac, but warm tyres on dry tarmac will almost never lock if the front brake is applied progressively.

The California Superbike School have a "braking rig" with big long outriggers that lets you learn and practice this without any danger at all of falling off. They put a very old full-touring-compound front tyre on the bike and inflate it to about 45psi, and then run it cold, and it is still very hard to get it to lock!

Suggestion: Find a big car-park or a very empty road, and practice front-brake-only stopping, making sure that you apply the brake progressively and don't snatch at it, which will pretty much always lock it up...

That's a good suggestion- empty car parks are good for all sorts of things. Practicing u-turns, emergency stops, general slow speed practice, up to riding a circle on full lock at walking pace, that sort of thing.

Yeah fair points there, will try and get some braking practice in, haven't done anything too much since DAS on an ER-5 so need to get used to what the SV will do.
The road was wet this morning and after the guy that hit the trailer saying he couldn't stop on it I was a tad worried but I think thats more irrational than anything.

I'm usually reasonably cautious when it comes to speed on corners especially unknown ones, but if I were to allow for this kind of appearance around every similar corner with such short notice I'd never get above 30, or less in the wet, that seemed to be my big issue, hadn't accounted for the wet.


ah well, live and learn.
Will bear the advice in mind, thanks for that

Originally Posted by Brettus

I'm usually reasonably cautious when it comes to speed on corners especially unknown ones, but if I were to allow for this kind of appearance around every similar corner with such short notice I'd never get above 30, or less in the wet, that seemed to be my big issue, hadn't accounted for the wet.

The wet will do bad things to your overall stopping distance, so you need to slow down, because there is less grip about, but even in the wet more of your braking power comes from the front than the back.

The bike will go round corners far faster than is sensible - just watch any video of an SV650 piloted by a skilled rider at a track day - but once in a very occasional while on the public road, there will be a tractor across the road or a jacknifed lorry or a broken down bus just out of sight, and if you come round the corner travelling too fast to stop then you will hit it, without fail. And it will usually be fatal if you do. Not every corner, not even many corners, but you've a lot more chance of finding something blocking the road on the exit of a corner than you have of - say - winning the lottery.

So, on the road, the two things that allow you to go round a corner faster safely are:

1. How quickly you can stop (a combination of grip, how good your brakes are and how good your braking technique is).

2. How far ahead you can see. (Which is why advanced riding is a lot about placing yourself on the road so that you can see as far ahead as possible at all times - because the further you can see the faster you can safely ride!).

But modern bikes (even budget middleweights like the SV) are now so damned good that 99% of the time, if you want to find the cornering and grip limits of the bike, drag pegs, get your knee down at speed, really find out what it can do, etc etc etc, the only halfway sensible place to do it is on a track. Where you know that there won't be a trailer across the exit of the next corner...

live and learn.

Yes indeed, those are the two most important things - both of them !

[Luckypants]

And advanced riders will use both front and back brake.

While I agree with much of what KWH says, in an emergency stop you should be using both front and back brakes. The bike has two wheels, so use them both to stop! The key is to be able to hold both front and rear at just off the point of lock-up to gain maximum braking effect. This takes both skill and practice. So the suggestion of using a car park for practice is a good one. Get going at a reasonable pace then start practising maximum braking, once you have mastered it you gain the confidence to really apply the brakes in an emergency.

Once you have mastered it, it needs constant practice to keep that skill. This was amply demonstrated to me recently when I stoppied the bike in an emergency instead of keeping both wheels down and being able to use both wheels to stop. So I'll be hunting out a car park to

I would suggest using both brakes to perform an emergency stop in the wet, because you have less grip available for the front tyre, so there will be more weight on the rear that means it can be usefully used to assist you in slowing down.

In the dry, though, if there is enough grip to perform a stoppie then the rear brake really is redundant. If you look at what racers do on the track, they use the front brake alone to slow down as much as possible as quickly as possible. Some of them use the rear brake for other purposes, like controlling wheelies or making a bike squat mid corner, some never used their rear brake at all. Carl Fogarty only had a rear brake on his bikes so that they would pass scrutineering and never ever used it.

Theoretical maximum braking performance is obtained by starting braking with both brakes in a ratio consistent with the weight distribution between the two wheels of the motorcycle on the ground. The gotcha is that the moment you start braking, the weight of the motorcycle shifts from the rear wheel to the front wheel, so you immediately have to start rapidly reducing the rear braking effort towards zero as you increase the front braking effort. And the reason why this is theoretical is because for the extra retardation it gives you, versus the risk of locking up a wheel, and the amount of mental attention it takes from the important task of getting the bike stopped, or avoiding the hazard, it just isn't worth trying to do it, unless you have ABS to to it for you.

When the rear tyre is barely in contact with the ground, which it will be on an SV650 under maximum theoretical braking in the dry, touching the rear brake pedal will lock the rear brake, and all of the useful braking force is being provided 100% by the front brakes. If you do actually lift the rear wheel then you are in a bit of trouble and need to let the brake off slightly, because the back wheel will try to overtake the front. Which is exactly what will happen if you lock the rear wheel with the rear brake, but you really have to be trying extraordinarily hard to stoppie an SV650, whereas locking a rear wheel is all too easy.

Also, the laws of physics being as they are, using the rear brake doesn't make the rear wheel lifting any less likely (really, it doesn't, honest!), it merely makes the risk of locking that rear up more likely.

Final thought: Even if you are unconvinced by this, a rider who is scared of his front brake and only uses his rear to the point of locking while barely using the front would be well advised to practice and gain confidence using just the front to get a feel for what it can do on its own. Which is a great deal more than the back can do on its own.