Motorcycle Riding Safety and Defensive Riding
Motorcycle Riding Safety and Defensive Riding
This domain tests the habits that keep a rider alive: protective gear, visibility, lane position, following distance and hazard prediction. Questions often describe a traffic situation and ask for the safest response.
Gear and visibility
- RA 10054 requires every rider and passenger to wear a standard helmet with an ICC or PNS mark and the chin strap fastened. Fines rise for repeat offences and can include licence suspension.
- Eye protection, gloves, closed shoes, long sleeves and long trousers reduce injury. At night, add reflective material.
- Motorcycles must run with the headlight on, day and night, to be seen.
Position and following distance
- Occupy a lane; do not weave between lanes. Lane splitting and filtering are not authorised by RA 4136 and are a leading cause of motorcycle crashes in traffic.
- Use the left or right third of your lane for the best view and escape path, and stay out of truck blind spots - directly behind, and along the right side.
- Keep at least a two-second gap; double it in rain or at night. Cover the brake levers in heavy traffic.
Reading hazards
Scan about 12 seconds ahead. Expect a jeepney to stop without warning, a tricycle to swing wide, a pedestrian to step out, and a car door to open. Brake before the curve, look through it, and use both brakes together, with most force from the front.
Worked example
A parked car's door begins to open 15 metres ahead. You do not grab the front brake - that locks the wheel and throws you. You roll off the throttle, apply both brakes progressively, and steer into the space you have already checked beside the car.
Traps
Braking with the rear only; staring at the hazard instead of the escape path; assuming a loud exhaust makes you visible; riding in the blind spot of a truck.