Motorcycle-specific hazards: visibility, road surface, weather and wind
Motorcycles hide in traffic and are exposed to everything the road throws up. This domain tests whether you scan for surfaces and weather that would not trouble a car, and whether you position yourself to be seen rather than merely to see.
Visibility
- A single headlamp and a narrow profile give drivers little to work with. Ride with dipped beam, wear high-visibility outer layers, and avoid blind spots - alongside the door pillar, or behind a lorry's mirrors.
- The commonest collision is the car that pulls out of a side road or turns left across you. Cover the brake and watch the front wheels, not the driver's face.
- In fog use dipped beam, not main beam, and slow to the distance you can see.
Surface hazards
- Diesel and oil at filling stations, and the oily centre of the lane at traffic lights.
- Gravel and mud at rural junctions; wet paint, arrows and manhole covers are slick.
- Leaves, tar seams, tram rails, wooden bridges, cattle grids, ice in shaded bends.
- The first rain after a dry spell lifts oil and is the slipperiest moment of the week.
Cross such hazards upright and off the brakes, with the bars straight.
Weather and wind
Rain: reduce speed, lengthen the gap, brake earlier and more smoothly, and expect the visor to fog. Wind: a crosswind needs a steady lean into it. Gaps in hedges, bridge exits and passing - or being passed by - a lorry produce sudden gusts and buffeting. Some Danish bridges restrict or close to two-wheelers in high wind; obey the signs and electronic warnings rather than pressing on.
Worked example
You leave a motorway service area. The forecourt exit has a rainbow sheen of diesel and it has just started raining. Hard braking there, with the bars turned, will put you down. The correct response: slow before the exit, keep the machine upright and off the front brake, cross the spill in as straight a line as possible, then brake gently once on clean asphalt.
Traps that cost marks
- Braking on a painted line or a manhole cover.
- Following a lorry closely enough to lose the view ahead.
- Waiting at a stop line in the oily centre of the lane.
- Underestimating a gust at a bridge or after a gap in the trees.
- Riding fast into a bend on a road you cannot read, because the surface is invisible until you are on it.