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Comment by noir_lord | Hacker News Reader

Counter-steering.

It comes intuitively if you've ever ridden a bike at more than a sedate speed.

The irony is that the majority of people will think you're making it up when describing counter steering, yet they are already doing it without even thinking about it all the time.

The first time I read about counter steering, I thought "man, this'll take forever to practice" until I realized it's really the only way one ever does it.

The main advantage to knowing is that you can stop wasting energy with footpeg weighting or unnecessary leaning and use bar pressure. (weighting and body position have their uses but for most riders in most situations countersteering is the most efficient technique.)

That's when they call it push steering. But it's really the same thing. When you push, you are causing your bike to counter steer. You are literally pushing the bar forward, even if you think you are pushing downward, which is by definition a counter steer.

I think a lot of people assume those are different things. But they aren't. You simply can't turn at speed without counter steering, regardless of how you visualize the mechanics.

You are spot on for people who think pushing with their foot on the inner foot peg has an effect. I'm sure it does, but it's a lot of wasted effort given that the end result you are looking for is the bar turning the opposite direction, and you'll be doing that whether you are conscious of it or not. It takes far less effort to simply not think about it, and do what comes natural since your arms and hands will inevitably do the right thing without any "different" theories interfering.

It's also why 3 wheel bikes are notorious for throwing the rider high-side if they corner too quickly. It stops you from leaning, so there is no ability to counter steer. You end up behaving more like a London double-decker bus in the turn.

Also, understanding how to steer greatly enhances the ability to apply abrupt steering inputs - e.g. swerving around obstacles.

I blame that more on the people who "explain" it. Bad explanations of relativity or quantum mechanics have nothing on countersteering - everyone who talks about it does it as "woo, this super mysterious thing".

In particular people say you can't turn left without first turning right and vice versa, which is obviously nonsense - if that were true as stated then it would be impossible to ever turn at all.

The only time I ever notice it is if I'm riding up really close to a curb or something and it feels like it's somehow pulling me in, like there's no way to steer away from it.

Intuitively it feels weird, but logically it makes sense - if I'm too close to something, I can't turn briefly towards it in order to get away from it.

Same thing in mountain biking and getting up on the edge of the trail. It can look like you just rode straight up it for no good reason, but in reality you intuitively felt that you had no room to counter steer without running the front wheel off the track.

Uh, no. Motorcycle racers learned about countersteering in the 70s. Before they had no idea.

You realise that motorcycles existed for literally decades before it had a name, how where they turning corners at speed, hell how was I doing it in the 90s on scramblers when I was a kid, no one taught me, it’s intuitive.

Totally correct. At speed, you simply cannot turn without counter steering. If you tried to turn by turning your bars in the direction you wanted to go, you simply won't go there.

At some point, someone noticed racing bikes counter steer really severely so you can easily see the wheel is actually pointing the opposite way. But the reality is that even at "won't fall over" speed on a bicycle, you're already doing the exact same thing. When you lean, you counter steer. Otherwise you'll high-side like a missile.

One of the Wright brothers has a quote about this (before they were airplane makers they were bicycle makers, the bicycle being the latest mechanical marvel of their time). The summary of the quote is that the action is intuitive but nobody realizes (or even admits) that they're doing it:

> I have asked dozens of bicycle riders how they turn to the left. I have never found a single person who stated all the facts correctly when first asked. They almost invariably said that to turn to the left, they turned the handlebar to the left and as a result made a turn to the left. [...] I have never found a non-scientific rider who had particularly noticed it and spoke of it from his own conscious observation and initiative.

The existence of counter-steering is still controversial to some riders, to the point where machines like the "No B.S. Bike" were created to demonstrate it as a necessary effect: https://soundrider.com/archive/safety-skills/nobsbike.aspx

Another way to demonstrate it on a bicycle, you can do something pretty much every child has already done numerous times: ride without your hands on the handle bars (hands free).

To turn, you lean in the direction you want to go. But what way does the handle bar turn when you do that? It counter steers! You will fall if it doesn't (which is essentially what the No B.S. Bike demonstrates).

If it came so intuitively, there should be less videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVE79XT8-Mg

This is a helmet cam video from a motorbike rider riding straight into a truck at high speed. It should probably have a NSFW tag or warning.

It is a bit of a brutal watch. FWIW it says the rider survived, and it does clearly demonstrate how countersteering can be non obvious in some situations. (In the video the rider is already in a corner and needs to tighten his line (sharpen the corner). Instead of counter-steering, he tries to simply turn the bars into the corner more, which has the opposite effect, and causes him to hit the truck.)

A little context is nice. The guy survives. Still a good video.

This is a good, relevant video and should not be so heavily downvoted. Yes, it is NSFW, but we're all adults here and this is an informative video aimed at adults, to teach the subject and demonstrate where it _applies_.

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