Street Strategies E-Book

David L. Hough

• Herausgeber: CompanionHouse Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 127

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

A collection of street riding savvy gleaned from years of real-life motorcycling.

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Ruth Strother, project managerNick Clemente, special consultantAmy Fox, editor

Interior design copyright © 2001 by Michele Lanci-AltomareCover design copyright © 2002 by Bocu & Bocu

Copyright © 2001, 2009 by I-5 Press™Photographs and diagrams copyright © 2001 by David L. HoughAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of I-5 Press™, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hough, David L., 1937-

Street strategies :a survival guide for motorcyclists / by David L. Hough.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-889540-69-2 (Paperback with flaps :alk. paper)

eISBN 978-1-62008-000-9

1. Motorcycling-Anecdotes. 2. Motorcycling-Safety measures. I.

Title.

TL440.5 .H6723 2001

629.28'475--dc21

2001003058

I-5 Press™A Division of I-5 Publishing, LLC™3 BurroughsIrvine, California 92618

Printed and bound in Singapore10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all you motorcycle safety instructors who have so generously given your time and energy both in the classroom and on the training range to help motorcyclists become more skilled and knowledgeable. Helping people avoid accidents isn’t nearly as exciting as surgically putting hapless victims back together at the hospital, but training riders is a much better way to avoid pain—by helping motorcyclists avoid accidents in the first place.

—David L. Hough

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

ALLEY ALERT

ARROW SLIDES

BACKING BASHERS

BIKE TRAPS

BLINDING LIGHTS

BLIND-SPOT BLUNDERS

BLIND SPOTTERS

BOUNCING BOARDS

BOUNDING BAMBIS

BUCKING BUMPS

BUMPER BIKES

BUS BLAMMERS

CENTER STRIKES

DEEP TROUBLE

DESPERATE DRIVERS

DETOUR DUMPING

DOUBLE TROUBLE

EDGY ATTITUDE

ENEMY EDGES

FALLING FOR YOU

FARM-ROAD FOUL-UPS

GRAVEL GROVELS

GROOVY SURPRISES

HIDDEN TURNERS

HIGH SIDING

HOT CORDS

KILLER CORNER

LANE CRASHING

LAST LOOKS

LETHAL LEFTIES

MACADAM MUDDLES

MERGING MANIACS

NEIGHBORHOOD DOGS

OFF-RAMP GET-OFFS

OILY ON

ONE-WAY WEASELS

PARKING LOT DARTERS

PASSING PANIC

PENDULOUS PASSES

PEPPERY PASSES

POOR PREDICTING

PUSHY PASSENGERS

RAILROAD TRACKS

RASH RIGHTIES

ROAD GORP

ROAD SHARKS

ROLLING STOPS

RUDE RUNNERS

SANDY SPRINGS

SHARK REPELLENT

SHOCKING TRUTHS

SIDE STREET SIDESWIPE

SIGNALING SLIPUPS

SLICK STOPS

SLIP SLIDING

SMOKIN’ STOPS

STALE SIGNALS

TAILLIGHT TRAUMA

TAR SNAKES

TENTATIVE TURNERS

TIMBER TRIALS

TIRE-TREAD TERROR

TOUCHDOWNS

TRACTION TROUBLE

TRESPASSING TURNERS

TRICKY TRACKS

TURN TROUBLES

WET BRICKS

WHITE CURBS

WIBBLE-WOBBLES

WINDY-WAMBLES

WOODY PERILS

WORK-ZONE WOES

ABBREVIATIONS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Foreword

This book could save your life. How many books have you read that could make that statement?

As Editor of Motorcycle Consumer News, I receive a lot of reader mail intended for David Hough. We forward them to him sometimes dozens at a time.

Some are questions about riding gear or what roads to ride on an upcoming tour, which David always graciously answers in depth. Hough (pronounced “Huff”) is a very well-rounded rider, a man who enjoys wrenching on his own motorcycles, a well-traveled two-wheeled world tourist, and a great storyteller around the campfire. You’d enjoy his company.

Other letters are from people who’ve suffered an accident and are asking what they might have done differently. These are tough, but David always does his best to help them come to terms with the event, to learn the lesson, and to move on.

But our favorite letters are the grateful real-life stories of how one of David’s riding tips has just accomplished its intended purpose and prevented an accident.

I can’t image a greater satisfaction than to receive a letter from someone who credits you with saving his/her life. So I can understand why David has dedicated so much of his life to this work. It certainly wasn’t for financial gain, as the time and effort involved could have been spent much more profitably on many other projects.

Personally, I think he’s been inspired by the camaraderie we feel as motorcyclists—that special bond between otherwise very different people who are all involved in a sport that relatively few know and appreciate. And I think it’s this sense of fellowship that motives his selfless acts of rider education.

Read these stories and commit their lessons to memory. “Be prepared,” as the Boy Scouts say. Don’t dwell on calamity, but be alert and focused and enjoy your ride. There’s a lifetime of thoughtful riding wisdom in these pages, any tidbit of which might one day be crucial.

All of us at Motorcycle Consumer News are very proud of our long association with David’s work and of being the monthly magazine that brought these pages to first light.

Best wishes for a safe and memorable ride.

– Dave Searle   Editor   Motorcycle Consumer News

Introduction

I started writing riding tips I called Street Strategies back in the 1970s when I was commuting to work at Boeing by motorcycle through Seattle traffic. In those days—before the big boom in motorcycling—very little information about riding skills was available. My brainstorming goal was to write riding tips that were brief enough to be read on the spot, rather than stuffed in a saddlebag and forgotten. I volunteered to be the Safety Coordinator for the Boeing Employees’ Motorcycle Club (BEMC) and started generating these skill tips to hand out at the monthly club meetings. In addition, I usually carried a supply of my latest tips to offer to other motorcyclists with whom I fraternized while commuting to work.

Some of these tips came to the attention of the Washington Department of Licensing, which offered to hand them out at drivers’ licensing offices.

The Street Strategies concept was redefined in the early 1980s, when the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) discovered some of these old BEMC skill tips, and asked me to write a series specifically for them. I agreed, in hopes that the MSF might publish and distribute a monthly “Street Strategy” series to motorcycle publications, organizations, dealer showrooms, and drivers’ licensing departments, as a free service and a plug for the MSF.

After submitting a hefty package of forty tips to the MSF, I waited to see the results. Time passed. It wasn’t until several years later, when the MSF created the Experienced RiderCourse, in which they published shortened versions of a few of my tips in the back of the Instructor Guide, that I got to see my work being used across America, even though it was only one-fourth of the tips I had written.

In the early 1980s, I expanded some of the tips into articles and started contributing them to Road Rider magazine, which later became Motorcycle Consumer News (MCN). Those simple one-page street-riding tips grew into articles for a long-running monthly column, “Proficient Motorcycling” (which still runs today and was assembled into a comprehensive book, Proficient Motorcycling, in 2000).

Despite the success of “Proficient Motorcycling,” I noticed that motorcyclists still seemed to appreciate the shorter versions that could be read on their morning work breaks or while waiting for their club breakfasts to begin. Even twenty-five years after I first began writing the articles, MCN continues to receive letters from readers who recall one or more of the brief tip sheets that started a lifelong interest in riding skills or helped them avoid what could have been a nasty accident.

When Fred Rau became an editor of MCN in 1992, he began including the “Street Strategy” tips from the MSF Instructor Guide, with their permission, as a column. At the time, I was enthused that a national publication was finally making good use of them, but by the end of 1994, Fred had published all of them. It seemed like it would be a good April Fools’ Day joke on the MSF staff for MCN to come up with an additional “Street Strategy” as a parody of the style that the MSF had used in its Instructor Guide. I knew most of the MSF staff, and knew that they read MCN, but I also suspected that few would remember where “Street Strategies” had come from. I could just imagine them spotting the rogue “Street Strategy” in MCN, and furiously flipping through their old Instructor Guides looking for it. To add to the joke, I requested that Fred not add any byline.

The joke fell on its face when the rogue “Street Strategy” parody missed the April issue and slid into May. Then a couple of months later, the MSF fell into a budget crunch and most of the employees—at least the few who knew the history of “Street Strategies”—were laid off. So much for the famous 1995 April Fools’ joke. Ironically, however, Fred didn’t see the rogue “Street Strategy” as a parody. He felt it filled a need, and asked me to write some more. So I continued writing them from 1995 until the spring of 2000, when I missed a deadline because of an extensive trip.

The next time Fred and I saw each other was at the Americade motorcycle rally in New York. At that time he confided that “Street Strategies” was using up valuable space, and since no one had ever commented on the series, it was time to discontinue it and use the space for something more important. I agreed, happy to be relieved of a responsibility. After all, a couple of the “Street Strategies” had been repeated by mistake, and the normally sharp-eyed readers hadn’t noticed, and no one had complained about the issues that didn’t include a “Street Strategy.”

But the very next month after our mutual decision, the latest MCN Reader Survey shocked us with the news that “Street Strategies” was high on readers’ priorities. Fred sent me a frantic e-mail, and I furiously cranked out some additional strategies to make the publishing deadline.

So, maybe we’ve come full circle. Although many motorcyclists request a detailed four-page explanation of some riding tactic, complete with vector diagrams and photographs, others seem to appreciate brief, spontaneous tips that can be absorbed in a couple of minutes.

This book isn’t organized by topic. Each tip stands alone. However, before you dive in, be aware that most of these tips involve an accident or near miss. You can get pretty paranoid reading these tips one after another. Be aware that no one person is likely to encounter the whole shebang in a lifetime of riding. Flip through the pages whenever you have a spare moment, and read whatever strikes your fancy. Perhaps one of these Street Strategies will help you keep the shiny side up when you stumble into a similar situation.

Alley Alert

Don’t Let Your Guard Down Between Intersections

You’re riding down a quiet residential street. Traffic is light, the road surface is clean, and you have a clear view of the street ahead. Approaching an intersection where the view is partially blocked by tall hedges, you cover the front brake and scrutinize the side streets for cross-traffic, bicyclists, and pedestrians. The intersection is clear, so you roll back on the throttle and continue on your relaxed ride.

But right in the middle of the next block, a car suddenly darts out of an alley hidden between two garages. You reach for the front brake and squeeze the lever as hard as you can just short of skidding the tire, but even your best quick-stop technique can’t bring the bike to a halt short of a collision. Your front wheel crumples into the left car door as the startled driver slams on his brakes.

You already know that intersections are dangerous, and it’s wise to cover the front brake in the event a quick stop is needed. But we tend to forget that alleys also intersect the street, and most alleys are so narrow that the view of emerging traffic is limited. As a measure of our complacency, statistics show that 13 percent of all motorcycle accidents occur at alleyways or driveways, yet they account for 17 percent of motorcycle fatalities.

You should be just as cautious approaching the alley as you are when crossing a busy intersection. Slowing from 40 to 30 mph will cut your stopping distance in half. You also can move to a lane position that offers a better view of the situation. And your reaction time will be much shorter if you are already covering the front brake lever.

Arrow Slides

Some of Those White Arrows on the Surface Are As Slick As Ice

You have just turned off the superslab, and the curving off-ramp leads down to an intersection. There, the traffic signal is red so you apply the brakes gently while leaned over in the curve, then brake harder as the motorcycle straightens up.

Suddenly, the front tire loses traction and begins to slide sideways. You release the front brake to regain balance and prevent a spill, and just as suddenly the rear tire fishtails. You stay on the rear brake to prevent a high-side flip, thereby keeping the motorcycle upright, but you only manage to bring the machine to a stop with the front wheel out in the traffic lane. Fortunately, other drivers see you and swerve to avoid a collision.

Next time it would be a good idea to observe the white directional arrow glued to the pavement. Such directional markings are often made of a durable yet slick white plastic that can be especially treacherous when coated with oil drippings or rainwater. Select a path of travel to one side of the arrow, or if you can’t avoid crossing the slick surface, you can brake harder in a straight line before your tires reach the problem area, then ease off the brakes to conserve traction.

Backing Bashers

It Shouldn’t Be a Surprise When a Car Backs Out of a Parking Space

You’ve made a quick trip to the store to buy some plastic ties. With your purchase safely stowed in a saddlebag, you remove the disc lock, strap on your helmet, zip up your jacket, slip on your gloves, and start the engine. You’re anxious to get home and continue a wiring project. With a quick look around, you snick up the sidestand and accelerate away from your parking spot.

Riding down the lane between the rows of parked cars, you watch for stray shopping carts, children darting between cars, and other drivers turning into the lane the wrong way. The lane is clear except for a man loading some bags into the trunk of a car ahead on your right. When he goes around to the passenger side, you assume he is still loading, and not about to drive away.

The instant the passenger door closes, however, the car is already backing out into your path. You reach for the front brake lever and attempt to make a quick stop, but the car backs out so quickly that you can’t stop short of slamming your front tire into the car’s bumper. It’s a minor collision, but now you’re confronted by two angry men who claim it was your fault. Apparently, there was a driver in the car, just waiting for the passenger to get in. Since you couldn’t see the driver, he couldn’t see you either.