Countersteering
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
There’s loads of other weird things, because the rear tire is wider than the front, the contact patch is bigger at the rear, so to extract maximum grip you need a rearward weight transfer, so lightly accelerating in a turn is optimal. Even when not pursuing max grip you’d still do this to keep the envelope large around your actual grip requirements.
Although The front wheel has a smaller contact patch, the contact patch at the front is often a different shape- the front wheel is often a larger diameter so it has a longer but narrower contact patch than the rear. That makes for a vehicle that tracks and responds differently over uneven ground at the front vs the back which leads to you needing to let the front move itself, a relaxed grip is needed on the bars over uneven surfaces, otherwise you will transfer so of that motion from the handlebars, through your body to the pegs and the seat. That will lead to a loss of control. Utterly counter intuitive that to retain control over rough ground you want to almost let go of the handlebars.
There’s two great books - for direct machine control, “a twist of the wrist” volume 2 by keith code and for more abstract how to think about machine control - not So much how to steer but why to steer and where to - then roadcraft by the uk police is another great book.
There’s also fun things like the bikes geometry gets longer or shorter under acceleration or braking to help with turning and grip. The physics is quite beautiful (and a lot of fun)
Do you live in the Bay Area? What org do you ride with? I’m with PTT for track days and AFM for racing.
Part of it is also similar to the reasons you trail brake into corners, in that you're managing the weight distribution over your tires. You don't want to be erratically changing how much weight is on the front tires, otherwise you'll find you suddenly have a lot less front grip.
In most car drivetrain configurations you’d then use a balanced throttle through the turn.
You can use a balanced throttle on a bike too - many people do - but all race bikes and most advanced riders even in non race scenarios will use a slight acceleration not a balanced throttle because where in the car you want to settle the suspension with a heavy loading equally on your two outside wheels (e.g. in an FR layout car) on a bike you want to have around 65% weight on the rear.
There’s a similar effect with the Porsche 911 - it’s an RR layout with 12 inch wide tyres at the rear and a slight acceleration is optimimum for it.
That force is there even if the bike turns at constant speed.
Craig, thanks for the comment and recommendations. I think I'll check out Roadcraft.
Although I think Roadcraft has been "superseded" by IAM with a simplified version called "How to be a better driver", I would use both.
Oh and another surprising thing: on track I never use the rear brake when braking hard. Why? Hard braking lifts the rear wheel, and when you use the rear brake it becomes incredibly easy to lose rear traction!
I sold my S1000XR (first generation) and was all set for a Tuono V4 but i really didn't get on with it. I'm 6'3 so a 2nd gen S1000XR looks likely next. I'd love a shot on the new Triumph TE-1 when it launches though.
>> I've been tracking a mostly-stock R6
I think that's the most popular bike here too, if i had space for 2 bikes, i'd do the same as you and have an R6 for track.
What happens to the suspensions when you brake? Front one compresses while the back one extends. That one was easy. Now this:
What happens to the suspensions when you accelerate? Front one extends while the back one... also extends.
Motorcycles are specially designed to have this last behavior.
"What happens to the suspensions when you brake"
Depends on the suspension!!
Earles front suspensions rise on braking, transferring weight to the rear. Its counter intuitive until you realize that the forward momentum of the bike is on an arm that has to rise to allow forward motion of the body relative to the front tire.
I think BMWs paralever could also rise on braking, but could be adjusted not to and all were.
I've hiked through a lot of forests ever since I was a kid and have a method, often criticized, but that has never injured me, of going down difficult terrain. I more or less glide down at a constant speed, putting my feet in places to apply upwards force. It helps a great deal that I have very flexible angles and can bend at near 90 degree angles. I usually get down very quickly and without fuss, whereas the slower more deliberate method tends to produce bigger falls. You tense up more when you're going down like that, and are more likely to produce uncontrolled fall, which is what kills you. If you can control your fall (throw yourself lightly at a patch that will stop you quickly and not injure you) and go a bit limp to disperse energy quickly, you can fall a lot more than most people but get injured less. I learned this technique from skateboarding. The idea is to learn to do a controlled fall whenever you're in danger into a safe area, rather than possibly risk an uncontrolled fall.
I've been called an idiot for doing this but I have never broken a bone nor had significant injury while hiking.
Anyway, my point is, sometimes just letting the movement flow naturally is the correct thing to do, even if it means the speed involved/perceived danger is higher.
An good analogue would be jet skiing. If you just hold on for dear life and hope for the best, you will get a very sore back. A lot about doing it right is letting the waves do what they have to do, and making subtle corrections to ensure your path is optimal but taking into account the obstacles it’s encountering
I gallop like a deer and I can go incredibly fast by basically keeping one foot constantly in front and never switching it and hopping down hills. I don't have to take a full step and I always have two feet or no feet on the ground so it's impossible to slip.
Because I don't switch my feet I can keep up faster than I can run and I don't slip because I always have 2 feet on the ground at a time and it's kinda like surfing without the board.
One of these days I want to try the Gloucestershire cheese race.
Here's a vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VqXBA-sGHA
His school: https://superbikeschool.com/
Even on the road it's safer to trail the front brake into corners and keep weight on the front tire. Keeping the front suspension compressed will also make the bike turn better. None of the fast guys ride the way Code describes [3]. You can see Marc brake all the way to the apex with zero throttle.
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Sport-Riding-Techniques-Develop-Co... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvrgn5akOm4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS3DTWq0QV8
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html
The writings of Sheldon Brown are somewhat a Wiki for cyclists teaching maintenance and riding a bicycle. I've learned riding a bicycle as child but the theory and maintenance guides are useful to know.
If you are German you may also appreciate Wikipedalia:
A lot of content is now merely the new editor's opinions, quite a bit of it is bullshit, and sadly people treat it as authoritative because Brown's name is so strongly associated with it.
I am skeptical about this claim. Here’s a recent video by a former pro on the subject of braking, for example, and he is squeezing on both brakes at the same time in most of the shots. [1] He does say that the front brake can be squeezed a lot harder, though, and is source of most of your braking power.
Even in the places where Brown says you should use the rear/both brakes comprise much more than 5% of my total brake usage: bumpy roads, slippery roads, long descents, breaking during a turn, etc. But I’ll also use both breaks to come to a stop pretty much any time I’m coming up to a traffic light or other non-emergency stop.
Note that he's stopping with both brakes and also moves his hips behind the seat, which makes tumble-forwards situation less likely. If you have enough strength you can go so low in that position that you will also slide on the front wheel as well on the back wheel.
The video is good and states that the front brakes matters most for emergency breaking. Breaking well planed before a turn, because breaking in turn can lead to loose of traction and result in skidding. Brown mentions this also as situation for gently breaking with front- and back break together to avoid skidding. I think most important is the rule to break gently in regular situations.
As you I'm breaking often with the rear break only, on bumpy roads or when I need little deceleration. And often with both! Sometimes also in change during step descents (allow cool down of front break). I once didn't notice the bumpy surface (asphalt looked well) before a turn on a step decent and used only the front break, it was horrible because lack of deceleration and every bump was a hit into the handlebar.
Basically by steering right while leaning left, then snapping the handlebars to the left, you can change your centre of gravity relative to the bike's faster than you can just by leaning left. When leaning your body left you also naturally push the handle bars right which produces a countersteer as well even if you didn't mean to.
However, you can easily observe a bicycle steering without first initiating a countersteer. The easiest is if you just push it and let it coast by itself. It will naturally start leaning one way and continue turning that way until it falls on the ground without any countersteering. Another way is, if its geometry permits, to ride it without holding on to the handlebars - you can see you're steering left and right by shifting your weight on only the seat without any countersteering. Or you can consciously avoid doing a countersteer and make turns that way - noticeably less quickly than if you do countersteer, but quite possible.
Another proof would be the fact that monowheels work and can be steered. You cannot countersteer a monowheel, yet it steers just fine. Look also at Destin's backwards bicycle experiment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0 . I really don't think you can countersteer that thing anyway, yet it steers just fine.
I think if Veritasium had given people more time (days? weeks?) to adjust to the bike, they would learn to make turns without countersteering. I know it took me a while to learn to do it when I first heard about countersteering and thought to experiment.
Finally, I really hate the word "countersteering". It is very misleading and logically impossible. Obviously you can't have to turn left before turning right, because then you have to first turn right in order to turn left in order to turn right, but you have to first turn left in order to turn right in order to turn left in order to turn right... ad nauseam. A much better term would be "counterjerk" - you're jerking the bike to the right so that you can more quickly shift your centre of gravity left and make a sharper left turn.
Why wouldn't you be able to countersteer it as any other bike (except in this case by using the opposite handlebar motion compared to a regular bike)?
> While this appears to be a complex sequence of motions, it is performed by every child who rides a bicycle. The entire sequence goes largely unnoticed by most riders, which is why some assert that they do not do it.
I've heard people say that even when teaching adults to ride a bike, it's best to have them just push themselves by their feet (as you would on a balance bike) until they learn how the bike moves, then tell them to use the pedals whenever they feel ready.
When I've seen them, they've been at least an inch or two above, which (coupled with telling the child that the game is to prevent them touching the ground) would seem to mitigate this problem while still effectively preventing falls.
Hopefully after kids "just learn" how to ride, watching a video of someone counter steering in slow motion and then trying to visualise themselves doing it enough to get it.
It is worth thinking about and then deliberately practicing though as nailing it can really help you reduce turning circle needed on both a motorbike and bicycle in general.
Some things, just doing them and getting a natural feel is 100x if not more, useful than tons of theory and explanations.
Countersteering helps to control/initiate the lean angle. To lean to the right, the rider steers to the left and the wheels (at the bottom) move to the left while the centre of mass stays where it was initially, thus the angle begins to lean to the right, initiating a steady rightwards acceleration.
But in flying and in riding motorcycles, it's dangerous to fly/ride by thinking, e.g., "counter-steer before the turn". It all depends on you and the machine, and there are other ways to do things.
For example, throwing your weight around also changes the center of gravity. On a dirt bike, sliding friction can enable you to be lower than you would otherwise, and sliding acceleration can help you be higher.
The question is what happens in the inevitable case you get it wrong. In dirt if you're low while accelerating and start to high-side, typically you'll instinctively drop the throttle, which is the right thing. On a road bike you want to have some degrees of freedom left both in how low your body is and how much you're asking of the tires, so if you're too low you can in-steer (taxing the tires more) without losing road grip.
So it's great to plan by thinking, but in a moment of hard riding/flying, it's much more important to feed everything through the cerebellum and not the cerebral cortex, and to have margins for responding to dynamic instability that track instinctive responses. I.e., actually practice racing and aerobatics.
People say it's the same as on a bicycle but not really. On a bicycle you can easily use your body weight to lean. The bicycle is light and your speeds are low. Motorcycles weigh several hundred pounds and go at speeds unthinkable on a bicycle. It's a completely different ballgame and push steering is essential to not getting yourself killed.
To wit, if you're running wide on a right-hand corner you'd better be pushing on that right handlebar to tighten your turn so you don't drift into the lane with oncoming traffic and experience a deadly crash. That's why motorcycle courses stress the importance of push steering. The good news is it's very intuitive once you've done it a few times.
A few thousand kilometers into the trip I changed the front tyre as it had hit the wear bars and was amazed how completely it changed the handling of the bike. Instantly I stopped needing to consciously countersteer to enter turns and needed to shift my weight in the saddle a lot loss too.
My assumption is that the new tyre has a cross-section that's a lot rounder than the old/worn tyres. I would have taken photos to compare them if I had realised that it would make such a difference. It was also a different brand (I didn't have much choice when I changed it) which also would have brought a different profile with it.
Luggage was a bit harder due to limited options but I got a 48L tailpack and a 12L tank bag. With a few straps and bungees I had enough space to fit everything needed for riding and camping.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_speedway
Interesting physics indeed!
The simplest way to understand it is to consider that if the bike did not do this, it would be unrideable. The bike tends to return to center. If turning the wheel right initiated a right turn, the bike would just fall over.
Countersteering is purposefully turning to the left and NOT leaning to the left, causing you to begin to topple over to the right...but then you quickly save it by turning the bars to the right. Now you are turning and leaning to the right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljywO-B_yew
Check it out.
The part I find amazing is you understand how to make this work in a part of your brain that apparently doesn’t communicate with the conscious understanding part. People can ride a motorcycle and not even understand how to make it turn, yet they do it.
Being able to do a thing is vastly different from being able to explain how to do a thing. If you ask me how I turn on a bike, the real answer is I just have the intention to go that way, and then I start going that way. Lots of other things are like that too; ask someone who is fast at word searches how they do it and it'll be something like "I kind of look at the grid and the word(s) pop out; and if it gets really tough I move my head around a bit and then they pop out" Not very helpful if that's not what happens to you, but it's what I do.
That said, they're quite all quite interesting phenomena in vehicle dynamics.
Often it's very well modelled in rally games as well, and crucial for making the best times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhfW1Vwgek0
I can't remember if they actually taught that in driving school, but my dad had me deliberately lose traction repeatedly in a parking lot in the snow to get the hang of it. It saved my life a few times because I was a reckless idiot as a teenager.
On a "proper" 4x4 sliding, increasing throttle will often straighten the path of the vehicle irrespective of current steering input - a fun quirk of locking differentials.
"when in doubt, gas it out"
Just remember when you're not driving a four-wheel drive car if you learn to rely on this method.
Steering inputs to correct for understeer and oversteer are not countersteering.
Countersteering is specific to two-wheeled vehicles. Please read links before commenting...
>For the technique with a similar name used in automobiles, see Countersteering (Automobile).
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I don't know what exactly you mean by "losing traction" (understeer or oversteer) but your advise does not sound correct to me.
But when you get into an oversteer situation in a car, the aligning moment acting on the tyre contact patch will automatically counter steer the front wheels to the outside corner (assuming the fronts still have grip).
The correct response to oversteer is opposite lock (counter steer) to the outside (not to the inside!) and rapid recovery (center the steering wheel) when the car starts to correct itself. In a front wheel drive car, some throttle can help to correct the oversteer faster but it can also induce a really bad tank slapper pendulum and you shouldn't do this in public roads. In a rear wheel drive, if the reason for the oversteer is too much throttle (power slide), easing off the throttle will correct it. But getting off the throttle quickly (esp if you're not power sliding) can also induce lift-off oversteer and make the oversteer worse.
In an understeer condition, just easing gently off the steering and the throttle will usually correct the situation but doing it too quickly can induce a tank slapper oversteer (from lift off oversteer), which you need to correct by counter steering. It sounds like this is the scenario you're describing, but you should definitely not apply more steering input in this situation.
In a road car you will almost never get to an oversteer without deliberately inducing by power sliding, hand brake, scandi flick or other rally driving moves (or accidentally in the case of a bad recovery from an understeer). Road cars' vehicle dynamics are set up to be very understeering through mass distribution and suspension set up.
My driver's education had two full days of skidpad training in slippery conditions. Opposite lock was the response that they taught for oversteer (which the instructor induced by pulling the hand brake in a turn). I also used to do a lot of parking lot snow drifting back when cars didn't have nanny electronics to prevent it. On top of that I have done lots and lots of simulator racing, both track and rally.
Maybe that's what OP meant by "into the turn" (although as you point out, that is actually toward the outside of the turn).
I'm not entirely sure I understand. Perhaps some context is missing?
One key question is: when was this and in what car?
Most modern cars have various forms of stability control systems that try to execute the driver's intent. So for instance my daily driver is vastly different from my 1980s plaything that doesn't have any driver's aids. On slippery surfaces they require completely different approaches to driving when you are on, or over, the grip limit.
If you are trying to work with the stability control system, yes, you probably need to communicate your intent to the car and let it take care of things. But I'm not sure "don't countersteer" is necessarily good general advice because it really, really depends on why/how you lost traction and how the car will react. The only way you can know that is to take it onto a slippery track (or a large open space) and try it out.
Also, stability control systems can (and do) fail. They can shut down due to sensor errors or, if you buy a sports car, there may be an option for shutting them off partially or completely.
Man, bike-human mechanics are complicated.
This visual demonstration was helpful for me!
I've seen videos that suggest otherwise. Not linking it, since the last time I did, I got downvoted to hell and back for it.
It's different when a novice is already progressing through a long turn and suddenly needs to tighten (obstacle or overshoot). They already feel less safe as soon as the bike is at an angle, and have instinctive tendency to begin straightening it up at even the slightest provocation. This instinct will 99% win with the undeveloped/unconscious countersteering instinct. (What? Point my handlebar at the obstacle?!) So, yes, training it could save their life.
There is a "high speed" slalom course you have to do as part of the test and it's impossible to do it without counter steering through it.