When you start to fall downstairs, reaching for a banister that is not there is very bad. Particularly if you hit the wall just right and snap off your wrist bone.
It’s not really instinctive behavior anyway, here where we drive on the correct side of the road we learn to look left, and as a result forget to look right as well. Looking both ways should be instinctive.
Pulling your hand out of the pain box during the Gom Jabbar Test of Humanity.
Word. As the old saying goes, “A falling knife has no handle.” Do the spraddle-legged jump-away instead. Looks idiotic, saves flesh.
“If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your own mask first, and then assist the other person.”
A couple years ago I had to help a scooter rider who managed to pin his vehicle underneath a minivan.
He had swerved and braked to avoid a squirrel.
I told him next time to swerve or brake, but not both.
Correction: A rider doesn’t turn the handlebars at all. To go right, you push (or lean, if you prefer that verb) to the right.
I don’t get why motorcycle courses waste so much time on this. They make it sound far more complicated and mysterious than it is in reality, but I suppose it would be the same if we tried to describe how to walk.
The simplest solution to grok the concept is to ask people who are signing up for lessons when they were last on a bicycle, and then tell them to ride one every day until they earn their motorcycle licence.
Ride a bike. Push right. Turn right.
Young horny couples of the opposite sex can easily end up with trouble if they follow their instincts.
I did consider mentioning that so far the only maneuver I’ve needed so far was to brake, but realistically I’ve done enough nighttime-wintertime-curvy road driving at speed to know there were plenty of times where I could have come upon a deer with insufficient room to completely brake.
C’mon man, we’re fighting ignorance here. Not adding some to the discussion and calling it a correction.
For the front wheel to change direction, you actually need to turn the handlebars. Not sure why you think the vehicle geometry will change without moving the handlebars.
From the wiki link I posted earlier:
Also, leaning on a motorcycle does almost nothing to change the direction you’re going. You’re not enough mass to fight the gyroscopic effect.
You lean on a motorcycle to move your mass to better distribute it during a corner. It doesn’t effect the direction travelled in any meaningful way.
We don’t care about what the front wheel is doing, we want the bike to go right. This is accomplished by moving the front wheel to the left which causes the bike to lean to the right and like a good coin, the bike will go in the direction it is leaning.
Now, a person could think about this a lot, not watch where he/she is going or get in a tight and do it wrong or just learn that you push & look where you want to go.
The fine adjustments to be smooth on a push scooter with 4 inch wheels, or a cruiser bike with a V-8 in it and weighs way too much, will work this way, even if you are just reacting cause you are scared but still doing your strongest habit or longest habit or most practiced thing.
It is so nice when all there things are the same.
I discovered an unknown action to add to this. You can lean the way you want to go and since one arm is injured and you are resting it, you can pull on the handle bar opposite the one you normally push on and the same turn happens.
I am going to patent, copy write, register this and make a fortune.
And I still don’t have to get into a bunch of scientific mumbo jumbo cause it just works.
I am so smart I surprise myself quite often. 
Just what do you think “pushing right” does if not turning the handlebars to the left? I think the confusion here stems from the fact that at high speeds the actual movement of the bars is very subtle, but it must occur, you have to initially get the front wheel to turn left slightly for the bike to fall to the right. You turn the wheel left by pushing on the right side of the handle bar. And as GusnSpot pointed out, you can achieve the same result by pulling on the left bar if your right arm’s been amputated or something.
Would pulling back on the yolk as the plane threatens to stall fall into this category?
Probably leave you with egg on your face.
.
Yes, I mentioned it in the OP.
Ooops.
From a former colleague who was* an aerobatic pilot: if you’re going into a wing-spin your regular training has taught you to pull up to avoid crashing. DON’T DO IT because that will tighten your spin and send you spiraling downward even faster. Instead, push down to flatten your spiral until you can fly level again. My colleague noted that this was the key to the young Kennedy crash a few years ago (aside from his lack of instrument-only experience).
I don’t even have an interest in piloting a plane and I’m not quite sure what a wing-spin is, but for some reason that little discussion sticks in my mind.
From a the after-class discussions at an MSF course: If you get the high-speed wobblies from hitting a bump or other wheel problems, instinct would have you reduce your speed so the forthcoming crash is less damaging to you. However, the proper action is to increase your speed so the wobblies smooth down to shudders and then to smooth riding.#
Theoretically, it’s like changing the frequency on a sound pulse. If you increase the speed of a thump-thump-thump you’ll start to get a smooth tone; if you decrease it, you’ll wind up with a Wham! Wham! Wham!
And on a motorcycle, that’s a dangerous beat!
–G!
*He is no longer a coworker; he was a pilot at the time, but I have no idea if he still does that or where he’s working.
#When asked what one does if the shudders and wobblies return after slowing back down to normal speed, the former highway patrolman merely smiled enigmatically. When asked how one explains the speed to an active law enforcer, he grinned and announced class was over for the night. :dubious:
The general advice I’ve found for correcting slides in my BMW is to do nothing and let the DSC/ESP autocorrect. It’s totally counter intuitive to me, so I drive the Jeep in bad weather and steer into slides.
As we’ve all seen on the news, many folks’ instinct is to try and outwit a carjacker, with tragic consequences. Advice is to immediately exit the car, hand over your wallet if demanded, and get the hell outta there.
Don’t chop the throttle or you’ll high-side the thing.
One of the thrills of riding a motorbike is powering out of the corner with just a little bit of rear-end slide. It’s a great feeling. However the feeling can go from bliss to oh-shit in a matter of seconds as the rear steps out quicker than the front can keep up with it. This usually happens as a result of you being a little “greedy” or enthusiastic with your right wrist. As your brain is processing the resulting “oh-shit”, its auto-preservation function (release throttle) makes a powerful stand in the immediate hierarchy of actions. However, chopping (quickly closing) the throttle at this point is likely to crash you in good fashion (i.e. a high-side crash) as the rear wheel immediately, and often violently, regains track with the front wheel.
However, if you have the presence of mind to hold the throttle steady (quit rolling on) or just barely back off on it, the rear wheel will gradually regain traction and catch back “down” with the front. But it’s hard to keep from choppin’ the throttle until you’ve been there a few times.
Also, to get on the countersteering bandwagon… another way to think of steering a bike is to consider that all you’re doing is moving the contact patch out from under (and to one side of) the center of mass. Once the contact patch is out there, the bike leans in to redistribute the forces.