UK “Swerve” Test
May 28th, 2009 by Leo
Check out this video from the BBC about the new swerve test in the UK. Riders have to get up to 31mph and swerve around a cone.
Here’s what I’m wondering: what’s the big deal? Am I missing something? If you can’t swerve around an object in a road at 31 mph, should you even be able to ride a motorcycle legally? Tell me what you think.
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The swerve maneuver is both very easy and very important. If a person can’t do this, they don’t need to be on a bike.
Inability to perform this maneuver indicates a lack of understanding about counter steering, plain and simple. The test is fine, but maybe the rider education portion is lacking.
If you wreck on a swerve, you don’t understand the thoery of riding, and therefore wont get any better in the art of riding… and it IS an art.
I think it is good to have in a test because it can show evasive movement at speed. Not just a turn where you can lean into it. This being said I think there are a ton of people who are on bikes that shouldn’t be. At my last track day I was thinking I shouldn’t be on one.
While the swerve manoeuvre of the test itself is a good idea, the problem was probably more due to it being introduced in april, wet, wet, wet. If you had to preform evasive action on the road, you’ve more choice over where you’re going to go, and in the wet, could well be at a lower speed, this part of the new test doesn’t take any of that into consideration, so you have to do a swerve that they want you to do, at the speed they say, in the wet, and before you’ve had most of you driving experience (since that really comes in after having passed the test).
Just my 2p though, I did the UK test last year before this came in
Bazza: Those are some really good points.
The test I had to take already has a swerve at 20 MPH (regardless of the weather), another 10 MPH shouldn’t be a problem.
As my instructors said, “Now that you have passed the test all it really means is you are competent to ride in an empty parking lot under controlled conditions.”
If you can’t do a manuver under such conditions, you really don’t need to be in the real world putting the rest of us (regardless of what we are driving) in jeopardy.