Advice on accidents

Getting over on the road to maximize your view is very often the key. As long as it is safe to do so get over to the centre line (or further) for a left hander and near to the kerb on right handers. Too many people use the racing line and seriously limit their vision and safety margins.

Thanks for all the input guys, I've been off the road for a while now so it's good to have the input, helps for the confidence when I finally get back on the road, hopefully a month though. I don't normally have problems with corners; I think I got a bit overconfident as I was tackling everything pretty well, scary lean over (for me) on a long roundabout, thrilled me, I hit about 60-65 on one so took everything a bit quicker; guess it just caught me out. Need to work on trailing the brakes though.

Thanks again, guys.

I agree with the target fixation stuff mentioned here. I'm a fairly new rider still building confidence since a minor off before xmas, and have had a few hair raising moments on corners where fear has gotten the better of me and it tightens up.

When we hit corners fast, and fear sets in, our natural instinct is to slow down, and to get upright, as lean angle and speed "feels" suddenly dangerous. So we hit the brake, and/or roll off the throttle, and look at obstacles (fences, oncoming vans) that we fear we may hit. However, from what I have read (Twist of the Wrist II etc), we need to get on the gas to shift weight to the rear, and lean more (by countersteering) and look at where we intend to go!

I find this a really hard discipline to get a grip of. I find it takes a lot of will power to override my natural instincts and ignore the oncoming van on a left hand bend. But taking my eyes off these things and looking where I want to go and giving it the beans gets me round smoothly. I nearly cocked up on a corner in Wales only yesterday, only about 10mph, when I simply looked at a wall for a fraction of a second, lost focus on the corner exit and ended up panic braking and heading for the wall. Stupid, when I was previously taking corners much(!) faster, but just goes to show how much of an influence on direction target fixation has.