Hazard awareness and emergency procedures
Hazard awareness and emergency procedures
This domain tests whether you spot danger early and react correctly when something goes wrong. Questions describe a developing situation and ask for the safest response, so you must distinguish between braking, swerving and simply easing off.
Scanning
Look far ahead - roughly 12 seconds of travel - and use mirrors every few seconds. In Malta, expect hazards from side roads with poor visibility, buses stopping without much warning, delivery vans, pedestrians stepping out between parked cars, and gravel or spilled diesel on bends. Ride so that you always have a plan B: a gap, a verge or a clear lane.
Junctions and filtering
Cover the brakes when a car waits at a side road - the driver may look but not see you. Filter only at low speed and never between a vehicle and the kerb where a door may open. When being overtaken, hold your line and speed.
Emergency actions
- Emergency stop: both brakes firmly and progressively, sit upright, keep the bars straight, pull the clutch as you stop.
- Swerve: separate from braking - brake first, release, then swerve; never brake hard mid-swerve.
- Skid: release the brake that locked, steer where you want to go, and let the wheels recover.
- Blowout: hold the bars, ease off the throttle, avoid hard braking, steer to the verge.
- After a collision: switch off engines, warn other traffic, call 112, and do not move a casualty unless there is immediate danger.
Worked example
A car edges out of a side road on your left as you travel at 50 km/h. The correct response is to roll off the throttle, apply both brakes progressively while keeping the bars straight, and prepare to stop. Swerving towards the oncoming lane would put you in front of traffic you have not checked for.
Traps that cost marks
- Fixating on the hazard instead of the escape route.
- Braking during a swerve and dropping the bike.
- Grabbing the front brake on gravel or a wet manhole cover.
- Assuming a driver who makes eye contact has seen you.