Tweet
Sense and Sensibility
I don't consider my motorcycling to carry exceptional damaging potential to my life. Riskier than hammering away on my keyboard perhaps, but inherently dangerous, no. After all, the motorcycle is an inanimate object, a great bunch of engineering ideas cast/forged/machined in metal, until I choose to bring it to life, and then I am in charge.
The key here is ‘being in-charge’. Which is holding yourself, and solely your own self responsible for your own safety? True, the car/truck/bus driver who hit me, cut in from the wrong side or jumped a red-light and didn’t even have a valid license, was caught by the cops and prosecuted by the courts but nothing brings back my amputated limb, my dead friend or the weeks and months of pain and loss I endured after the accident. It wasn’t my fault….and yet I suffered the most. Because the onus of my own safety was on me and I failed myself in that.
Motorcycling is not just about skillfully riding the bike. You ride more within than without. Its one of the most cerebral of all activities in modern times. The riding skills only come into play once perception and assessment of a situation leads to a decision. The leading edge of riding lies in perception. That is ‘seeing with meaning’. You are headed down a two-lane road, at legal speed, sparse traffic, intersection coming up some 200 yards ahead. The light is green and has been so for some time. No traffic leading you into the crossing. Empty gap. Your fingers cover the front brake. You are an active participant in your surroundings. Some impatient moron, deciding the light has been green too long for non-existent traffic, runs the light across the intersection, straight into your path. You brake, survive, shake your head in disgust and move on because you were ready. Because you took it upon yourself to account for other’s errors. Because you ride knowing that it is not enough to mind just your own business on a motorcycle. To survive, you need to mind the business of everyone else as well. And this decision adds clarity and focus to your perception.
In time, you develop a higher sense unique to those regularly engaged in life-threatening situations. A sense that makes you aware of hazards that the average motorist does not even consider: worn and shiny manhole covers, cow-dung patches, on-coming tractor-trailer with iron girders it carries jutting six feet out on both sides, new and thick street paint that spells ‘stop’ but means ‘skid’, a gravely patch on the sharp left-hander where the street sweeper left a deposit. These are minor blips on the radar of a motorcyclist's consciousness. You are aware and ‘in-charge’. You don’t skid and fall and curse the municipality or the government. You skirt the hazard and ride on.
Traffic will always be a humungous mix of vehicles driven by people with a wide variety of skill and awareness levels, the majority being way below average. But if you manage to anticipate the unexpected or even the unintended, you avoid an accident. A disturbingly large number of motorcycle accidents are the result of some situational failure on the part of the rider. The incident might not be the rider’s fault at all, legally of technically, but usually he was not paying enough attention. He had not roped in that ‘higher-sense’ as his guiding light.
Make this ability to sense and look past the present, to stay a step ahead, an inseparable part of your riding gear. Make it your second nature. Of course, some fine day on a race-track you might decide upon the need to find all about traction and power-bands and lean angles…but that will purely be about skill, risk and exuberance. Meanwhile, keep that rider-radar perpetually switched on and revel in the inherent safeness of motorcycling.
Read it on Hard Torque: http://www.xbhp.com/hardtorque/?p=85
Comment