Road Positioning
Aug 12th, 2009 by Leo
Diagram #1
It’s amazing how what we normally tend to do is almost always wrong on a motorcycle… this is part of what makes motorcycling so interesting. In diagram #1 I tried to draw what most of us (tend to, want to) do on a long curved road going left…we hug the inside line. The problem is one out of every dozen or so times doing this you’ll get surprised by a car coming in the other direction hugging that center line, or even crossing it. Not only that, if you’re going at speed, you can be leaned over far enough so that even though your tires are in the middle of your lane your head is in oncoming traffic. So here’s a better plan…
Left hand curves
Diagram #2
Any experienced biker will tell you to hug the lane that’s away from oncoming traffic. I want to add to that a little bit. This diagram is for right hand roads, if you’re in Japan or the UK or Australia, here’s a left hand version. What you need to know is, the bike is upright (you’re not really “turning in”) until you hit Point B… So at point A you’ve slowed down and can see what’s in the middle of the turn but you can’t see what’s at the other end of the turn. When you get to point B you can see through the whole turn. At that point you can lean it over and make your line as close to or far from the center line as you want until you straighten it up (point C).
Why break up the turn into three parts? Why not say you just hug the outside line? Because you can hug the outside line and wind up with an emergency situation (e.g. stopped cars you didn’t see at the beginning of the turn, animals, rocks and gravel, dirt, etc)… At point A you don’t have enough information to commit to a real turn…even if it’s near the outside line. So at point you need to be at a speed where the bike is still pretty much vertical (and not committed to a particular trajectory – you have fewer options once you’re leaned over), setting your speed (maybe even speeding up a little) for the real turn point “B”.
Right hand curves
So what about right hand curves (on US roads)? Can we do it the same way? Probably not a good idea, because that would put your turn points too close to the center line…
Diagram #3
Instead you can do what’s called a late apex turn, or what I recommend is to do a late apex turn that “squares off” a long right hand curve. Here you can make 2 sharper turns. As you approach point “A” you can see what’s coming out of the turn in the other direction, and you want to set your turn point as close to the center line as the traffic will allow (as long as there’s nothing coming the other way). Why so close to the center line? Because it will give you the best view of what’s in the middle of the curve… and your line approaching point “B” will keep you away from the center line (and the danger zone). At point “A” you can make a sharp turn and straighten out until you get to point “B”, at which point you can see entirely past the curve, sharp turn once more and you’re through!
For shorter curves you can simply do a late-apex turn: basically the same as diagram #3 but instead of making two turns, you can turn once at point “A” and run a closer to the right edge of the road. [The point of staying wide and making a second turn in a long curve is to be able to see ahead...mainly what's in your lane].
Anyway there are other ways to get around long curves… so this is just my two cents.
What’s your cornering plan on curved two-way roads? Let us know!
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Brilliant… thanks a lot for that, really helpful.
This makes sense but it seems like you are equally likely to get hit in your entrance point and correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t you more likely to crash hugging the outside part of the lane in your lean? I thought the whole idea of outside, inside outside was be able to re-adjust if you were either going to fast or had bad road conditions?
The benefit of a late turn is mainly that you can SEE more of the turn before you’re leaned over. So if you were close to the center line and a car crossed the center, you’re just as likely to get hit with a late apex, but the point is with a late apex you can see the car coming (and stay away), as opposed to something like diagram #1 where you can’t see as far ahead into the turn.
I don’t know if one is more likely to crash on the outside of a lane, do you mean because of road debris? In which case, yeah I’d want to stay away from the debris, but still get as far out as possible…until you can see the end of the turn, then you can lean fully and get as close to the center line as traffic allows.
Now none of this matters at 10mph, because at low speeds you can really take any line since there’s hardly any lean angle… But at 50 mph, you need a definite plan because once you’re leaned over and committed to taking a particular line, there are fewer opportunities to change it.
By the way my diagrams really stink – anyone have better ones? There’s a nice diagram of a late apex turn in Proficient Motorcycling – does anyone have a link to that?