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In legend, King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table
set out on the Quest of the Holy Grail
Unfortunately, only the best knights could find it. In fact, only three achieved the quest and Galahad alone was considered the chaste and perfect knight. Of all Arthur's other knights who began the
quest, many gave up the search and of those that persevered many suffered grisly fates and failed to return to Camelot.
Like those knights, we find ourselves confronted by the same issues. Advanced rider training can encourage us to try to achieve the "Holy Grail" of the perfect, fault free ride, and tends to
present the concepts of police riding practice as explored in 'Motorcycle Roadcraft' as the only way to achieve this.
Motorcycle Roadcraft is the best source of guidance available to the rider
It's good but 'Motorcycle Roadcraft' is not the only book ever written about riding skills, and in my opinion, it's not even the best. There are other books that I'd recommend any thinking rider add to
his/her library.
In particular, my research has indicated that training in other countries, particularly the USA and Australia, is much more about disaster management than in the UK, which given my own riding experience
as a courier makes a lot of sense to me.
Should we try to ride the 'Perfect Ride every ride?
The reality is that the Holy Grail of 'Perfect Ride' is thinking about riding from entirely the wrong angle. In fact one of my US instructor friends puts it like this:
Riding a motorcycle is a continuing exercise in disaster management
And this is where the distinction between 'Survival Skills' and 'The Perfect Ride' should be obvious.
Rather than try to encourage a fault-free ride, I take a much more pragmatic approach to rider training and try to explain why and how things still go wrong, despite the rider taking the "by the
book" approach to riding. My courses are designed the way I ride; I look for the Worst Case Scenario in any hazard. I look at what might go wrong, and how much it will hurt me if it does?
It's absolutely fundamental to any activity involving risk that we know what can go wrong and how to avoid it. We can ride using all the advanced techniques in the world but if we don't consider how we
and others around us make mistakes, then we're unlikely to use those skills to stay out of trouble.
This may seem an over-cautious approach, and even a very paranoid way of approaching riding, but in fact it's anything but; by expecting the worst, I'm usually pleasantly surprised when it doesn't
actually happen - and if it does, I'll deal with it. By contrast we've all met the rider who comes back from a spin having avoided disaster by the skin of his teeth, fuming about the driver who nearly
had him off at the blind crossroads, the dodgy bend where he didn't see the warning signs, and the skid on the roundabout where he didn't spot the diesel.
Ask yourself - who had the more enjoyable and least stressful ride?
The rider who expects the worst and plans for it, or the rider who prides himself on his skills but still doesn't think about how the ride can catch him out? I'd say it was me, expecting the worst!
Are Police Pursuit Techniques relevant?
It's worth pointing out that a lot of police training is about high speed riding technique and in reality civvie riders are unlikely to need to ride at those speeds, let alone be able to ride at them
consistently; in my opinion, that's the real difference between a highly skilled civilian rider and a police expert rider.
Or as a police instructor who gave me an assessment some years back put it;
"extremely competent at low speed but had nothing left when I pushed him"
As we were at times travelling at three figure speeds that would have had me in serious trouble had he been on duty at that time, I was pleased enough with that assessment of 'low' speed.
It fully confirmed my thoughts - that for normal riding we don't need to get hung up on police-style progress. In reality of course, there's absolutely no reason advanced skills shouldn't be available to
the rider who wants to circulate at rather more sedate speeds - advanced riding is about disaster management, by not putting ourselves at risk in the first place and by being able to get out of trouble
if we find ourselves in it, not simply riding as fast the road allows! On the open road, as long as we're not a mobile chicane, we're riding fast enough; there's should be no pressure to overtake unless
the vehicle ahead is causing a queue and following it puts US at risk from vehicles behind.
Unfortunately, as the IAM and RoSPA use police riders as examiners, they tend to focus on the skills they were taught as riders, and they see progress as a key indicator of advanced skills. 'Progress' as
a goal can be counter-productive. Roundabouts are often seen as a place to make 'progress', so many advanced riders straighten them by taking what is sometimes called the 'kerb-kerb-kerb' line. However,
roundabouts are junctions, where we should expect cars to pull out. It's no big surprise to come across fuel spills too.
So are they a place to even consider 'making progress' when making progress usually translates as 'going faster?
Shouldn't we be thinking in terms of what can go wrong? Should we not in fact be planning a route that gives us the best chance of dealing with those cars and spills, and riding at a speed that allows us
to react?
Can we achieve police standards?
Qualified police riders only get that ticket at the end of a long and intense course, and not all that start the course are able to complete it either.
Let's face it, we're not going to reach that standard at the end of a few days training or being observed, but that's nothing to be ashamed about, and there's plenty that we can do as civilian riders in
terms of learning and applying advanced riding technique.
But put in some time and effort on developing riding, and I believe that at road-legal speeds, most competent and thoughtful riders can get close.
Advanced Training doesn't mean we won't make mistakes
The big danger of advanced training is that at the end of a short course or after passing a short riding test, we'll think ourselves 'fully trained'. Riders tend to think there's nothing more to learn and
that with our new skills we won't get ourselves into difficult situations. In fact there's no evidence that advanced riders have fewer accidents (other than the IAM's claim to that effect), but there is
some evidence that they make more advanced mistakes!
The combination of "doing it by the book" after a short course and seeking the Holy Grail myth of "the Perfect Ride" can leave us singularly ill-equipped for riding in the real world;
for those of us who are less than perfect, it will be a case of WHEN rather IF things go wrong.
We can always get better
The learning process goes on for ever and the broader the experience you can give yourself in terms of the riding techniques you research and the knowledge you gain, the better a rider you will be. So my
belief is that any post test training should be realistic and pragmatic, to encourage riders to recognise the kind of mistakes we make, to learn how we can try to avoid them, but most importantly to have
a way out of trouble when we foul up.
If we believe that having done advanced training removes the risk of accidents we are simply saying to ourselves "it'll never happen to me". I'm quite happy to admit I'm not a perfect rider, far
from it. But when I've made a mistake - and I've made a few in my time on a bike, some of which have hurt - I've made sure that I've learned from the mistake as I plan on not making the same one again!
And I've learned by looking at others' mistakes too.
In short, we want to avoid a similar grisly fate to that awaited those less-than-perfect knights
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