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      Foreword

      Riding a motorcycle skillfully has been compared with the difficulty of piloting a helicopter; there are so many unique controls to master. For instance, braking typically requires the rider to use both a hand lever and a foot pedal, rather than simply stepping on a brake pedal as in a car. And to make matters more complicated, a motorcycle, with its relatively tiny tire contact patches, can transfer so much weight forward under hard braking that properly balancing the applied front and rear brake pressures can be very difficult under the best of circumstances, and can test the skills of the most experienced riders on slippery surfaces. Oh, and rolling on throttle and squeezing the front brake will often need to be combined smoothly when downshifting, another trick of manual dexterity and careful judgment to master.

      The same goes for acceleration. As the average motorcycle has the power-to-weight ratio of a race car, but without the traction of four wide wheels, it’s also easy to overpower the rear wheel, causing a variety of unplanned events. With a manual clutch, taking off from a stop demands a balance of engine power and clutch slip to master smoothly. Additionally, starting off from a hill will require balancing the bike at a standstill with one foot while simultaneously engaging the rear brake—again a unique combination of skills—and both are a big part of why manual transmissions have nearly disappeared from automobiles.

      With all that, the most difficult part of motorcycling to master is steering, or rather countersteering, the uniquely counterintuitive method by which a motorcycle is most efficiently directed through corners. The number of riders that never properly master this technique is probably very large, although it has never been measured to my knowledge. But the failure to negotiate a corner is given as the cause for a high percentage of motorcycle crashes.

      Given this level of difficulty, those who do master these control skills to the degree that they can all be done in combination without conscious effort will often find motorcycling the most satisfying experience of their lives. Some even feel it has a mystical or spiritual aspect, as it seems to magically integrate the body and mind into a state of flowing movement.

      However, even at this level of mastery, a rider is not yet safe on the road. Even proper riding gear is no insurance against injury in a collision between a motorcyclist and heavy steel vehicles or hard stationary objects. Sharing the road with cars and trucks, a motorcycle is fragile and hard to see, even when drivers are not distracted or otherwise impaired. And conspicuity, the art of making oneself highly visible to other road users, is not enough, either.

      The final key to safety is an encyclopedic knowledge of potential road hazards and a full-time situational awareness of how common traffic situations can harbor hidden traps for a motorcyclist. This is the gift that David Hough’s latest book is meant to deliver—brief insights into the most common safety hazards and how to avoid them, bite-sized and easy to digest.

      As the Editor-in-Chief of Motorcycle Consumer News for almost 15 years, America’s only 100% subscriber-supported, advertising-free, nationwide monthly motorcycle magazine, the opportunity to communicate with so many committed enthusiasts has been my greatest enjoyment. And when I’d get a letter that shared how one of David’s “Proficient Motorcycling” or “Street Strategies” columns had literally saved a reader’s life that day, nothing could be more gratifying.

      Take these stories to heart and re-read them occasionally. Keep them fresh, in the forefront of your riding decisions, and while you may never be inspired to write a note of thanks for their lessons, I can’t imagine that you won’t be a better, safer rider for having read this book.

      Cheers,

      Dave Searle,

      Editor-in-Chief, Motorcycle Consumer News

      Introduction

      Your Road to a Million Crash-free Miles

      I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to help street riders manage the risks of motorcycling. It doesn’t take very long riding in traffic to understand that survival on a motorcycle is going to require a big bag of riding skills. With more than a million miles of riding in North America and on other continents over the past five decades, I’ve experienced a lot of different conditions and hazards that have caused serious motorcycle crashes. And I’ve seen many more that I recognize could cause a crash to an inattentive rider. When possible, I’ll stop and take a photo of a hazard so that I can better illustrate the problem. Based on my riding experiences, I’ve generated hundreds of safety columns for various motorcycle magazines and written several books, most notably Proficient Motorcycling. Since Street Rider’s Guide is intended to help you survive the ride, I want to introduce it with an explanation. It’s going to be a bit of a bumpy ride, so hang with me here. Take a break if you need to and then come back.

      If you took a basic rider training course, you may have thought that you got a decent introduction to motorcycling, but it’s a fantasy to believe that anyone can learn how to ride a bike and survive traffic and surface hazards in two short days. Lots of new riders get their licenses after just one weekend of riding around a parking lot on a training bike. It should be no surprise that lots of new riders have nasty crashes out on public roads.

      The first lesson