Читать книгу Proficient Motorcycling - David L. Hough - Страница 25

All right, we’ve looked at an accident, reviewed some motorcycle accident statistics, and taken a little quiz to help you get some perspective on your relative risk. I realize that such exercises may be way off track. After all, statistics are based on averages, and there are very few Joe Average motorcyclists. What’s more, we might also be a little suspicious of accident studies that look at only how and why people crashed. It’s sort of like the patient who went to the doctor complaining of a sore tongue:

Patient: “Doctor, my tongue really hurts.”

Doctor: “Does your tongue hurt all the time?”

Patient: “No, but it really hurts when I bite down hard on it.”

Doctor: “Well, don’t do that!”

The statistics based on crashes and fatalities give us hints about what not to do, but they don’t tell us what successful riders do to avoid crashing. The traditional approach to getting a helmet full of knowledge is just to keep riding and riding. Experience, the veterans might suggest, is the best teacher. In other words, just ride far enough and long enough, and life will eventually present you with all the lessons to be learned. That’s probably true, but the trouble is some of the motorcycling errors can ambush you before you learn enough to avoid them. It’s a lot safer and less risky to learn what you can from other people’s mistakes and experiences. That’s why I pay attention to the grizzled old motorcycling veterans when they occasionally drop hints about lessons learned.

I happened to be along one day when the MCN editor was picking up a test motorcycle for a photo shoot. Mostly, he was engrossed in details of the new machine, the fleeting time, the need to find a photogenic location, and the urgency of beating the evening rush hour. The dealer, obviously a veteran rider, was on a different mental plane. He knew I wrote skill articles, and he offered some advice about one small but important detail: adjusting mirrors: “Most people adjust their mirrors so that the view converges behind the motorcycle. I figured out that it is more important to see more of what’s coming up in adjacent lanes. So I adjust my mirrors more toward the sides.” As we rode away with the test machine, I observed that I also adjusted my mirrors far enough outward that I could pick up only a corner of the saddlebags at the inside edges. Big deal! you may be thinking. Who cares how the mirrors are adjusted? Let’s get to the really important stuff!

Well, maybe a helmet full of such small details adds up to the important stuff. Sure, our physical riding skills have a lot to do with keeping the bike under control. But what goes on between the ears is even more important because that’s where we decide what to tell our muscles. Novices start out with the physical skills of mastering the clutch, throttle, brakes, and balance. Veterans understand that motorcycling is really more of a mental process of scrutinizing the situation, evaluating the hazards, and deciding what to do with the motorcycle.