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Evasion and Avoidance - risk management strategies that work together
If you've got this far, you're clearly interested in what makes Survival Skills 'tick', as it were.
Without going into too much detail, I came to advanced riding towards the tail end of a long career as a full-time courier where I'd survived my fair share of near-misses and had one or two prangs that
hurt.
By the time I did the advanced training in 94 and 95, it'd been quite a while since a really close incident. Even so I remembered enough near misses to be really surprised that though there very little
attention was given over to skills of practical use in dealing with the kind of real world emergencies I'd survived.
Nothing was said about how to brake hard, for instance, or how to swerve, or even how to do both at the same time! Indeed, I was regularly told that if you had to use the brakes to deal with a hazard,
you'd misjudged it - and that seemed to be reason enough not to bother practicing using them! Even now, 15 years on, riders with other advanced training rarely seem to think practical collision avoidance
skills rank as high as cornering lines or positioning skills!
On the back of that early experience, and my subsequent change of job to basic trainer, it became obvious (to me at least!) that riders DID need to know how to cope with real world emergencies, so
Survival Skills came about. Right from the off, I put heavy emphasis on what can go wrong and how to deal with it.
Over the years I'd wondered why so little emphasis was put on collision avoidance techniques, and I found something of an eye-opener following a Google (as you do) earlier this year. I came across a
statement where a writer with UK training connections identified a fundamental difference in mind-set between police training in the UK and the United States. He said:
"Over there (USA) they teach evasion techniques; that is what to do when you meet an accident (or more correctly, crash) situation. Over here (UK) if you have gone that far you have got it seriously
wrong in the first place".
Now, keeping out of trouble is a great idea and from day one when we first let ourselves loose on the roads, we're trying to avoid situations where we put ourselves at risk of a crash, accident, or
whatever you wish to call it. All 'advanced' training in hazard avoidance does is make us better at seeing those situations and staying out of them; it's not in itself a concept unique to advanced drivers and riders, it's basic survival and something taught from CBT upward!
The author of the remark above goes on to say:
"There is no use learning the mechanical bits (the physical management of a vehicle (or bike)) without the right mindset to go with it. Because the mind set determines implementation."
Mindset is important, no question, particularly in ensuring that new skills aren't simply used to "push the envelope".
But if we're honest, however 'advanced' we get at reading the road ahead, sooner or later we'll still make a mistake or someone else will make a mistake we haven't foreseen, and at that point evasion
tactics are our key to escaping from the situation that's developing badly.
Many accident reports highlight the fact that the bike could have escaped IF the rider had used the right inputs at the right time. So for whatever reason, in situations where the rider HAD got into
trouble (ie., their avoidance tactics didn't work), they didn't have the skills to get out of it (ie., their evasion tactics didn't work either!). And although Police riders and drivers are put through a hugely expensive and in-depth training program to get where they are, something the rest of us don't have the benefit of, even they still have accidents!
The inescapable conclusions have to be:
- neither the "learn how not to get into trouble" approach nor the "learn how to get out of trouble" approach are in themselves wrong.
- each, if practiced to the exclusion of the other, is inadequate in itself.
We need to stay out of trouble wherever possible, but also to get out of trouble when we found ourselves in it; yet the very latest UK Driving Standards Agency advice on bends crashes in the UK simply
repeats the sage advice "don't go into a bend too fast". Aside from the obvious question about how do you know it's too fast, it's not much practical help to the rider who's already committed the
error is it?
Evasion is just as important as avoidance.
There's an awful lot of advice floating round in books and magazine articles, and even 'progress-oriented' bike training that suggests that post-training, the trainee will be able to ride faster. There's
almost as much that concentrates on the 'spit and polish' of perfect technique.
One of the simplest "evasion" techniques to apply is slowing down. Yet as far as I know, Survival Skills is practically unique in suggesting that post-training you'll be slower in some places!
But that's entirely down to surviving my previous life as a courier!
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