Survival Skills

30/09/2026

*** COMMENT *** Why is bike theft always someone else's problem?
[Based on an item in Sunday's 'Elevenses' live webcast]
The National Motorcyclists Council have released their latest plan on theft, anti-social behaviour and motorcycle-enabled crime, and it's being supported by the Motorcycle Industry Association. The plan proposes technology, intelligence, registration, enforcement and rider education, although the NMC themselves say anti-theft campaigns have not fundamentally shifted motorcycle theft. It calls for a coordinated response involving government, police, industry, riders and other organisations.

I'm pretty sure I've heard it all before, and as usual, it mostly seems to think it's up to everyone else to tackle the theft problem, including the unfortunate owners who seem to be expected to invest more cash in security for their bikes, as well as expecting the police to work harder to deter theft.

But as usual I see no emphasis on security-by-design and what manufacturers could build into the motorcycle itself to stop the bike being half-inched in the first place.

And also as usual, that creates a rather awkward question for the industry; why isn't the motorcycle itself substantially harder to steal straight out of the factory?

The fact is, motorcycles are not well protected from thieves. Police.uk explicitly tells owners that “thieves often steal a bike by breaking the steering lock and wheeling it away” and says not to rely on it alone. Avon and Somerset Police say essentially the same thing, describing standard steering locks as easily defeated.

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The first factory chipped key immobiliser arrived with Honda's HISS system a quarter of a century ago, and since then little has changed, whilst it's illegal to possess, manufacture, import or distribute electronic devices used to steal vehicles, there are immobiliser bypass devices readily available for a fraction of the motorcycle's value. And no alarm or immobiliser stops a bike being loaded into a van.

And things have actually gone backwards with keyless ignition, which is generally less secure than a traditional keyed system. Marketed as a premium upgrade, replacing a physical key barrel with an electronic transponder actually trades a mechanical vulnerability for a digital one. It's claimed to make the motorcycle easier to steal. If a thief can trick the bike’s computer into thinking the key fob is nearby, the bike will unlock the steering lock and activate the ignition.

Meanwhile, several premium brands market "free factory trackers" on their new models, but this is not a permanently free service. They may supply the physical tracking unit but the catch is usually a mandatory dealer installation fee followed by a subscription to keep the tracker working.

A reasonable follow-up question would be why isn't every new motorcycle sold in Britain carrying a prominent, independently verifiable security rating? The fact is that the MCIA Secured five-star system was launched in 2018 intending to show consumers how much anti-theft protection their new motorcycle actually had. While it was still being billed as an industry anti-theft initiative in October 2024, it seems to have vanished without trace, probably because out-of-the factory security didn't improve as hoped.

My take? It's high time for the motorcycle industry to stop hiding behind bureaucratic, multi-agency 'talking shop' plans and dumping the psychological and financial burden of theft onto the rider and the police. If manufacturers can design complex lean-angle traction control, semi-active suspension, and seamless smartphone mirroring into standard production bikes, they possess the engineering capability to build machinery that is much harder to steal. The industry must stop treating out-of-the-factory security as an optional luxury or a subscription-based cash cow, and design bikes that actively protect themselves.

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29/09/2026

*** TIPS ON TUESDAY *** The Fog of War
AN M6 FRAMEWORK BACKGROUND ARTICLE
Read almost any book on advanced riding and you'll almost certainly come across the term 'defensive riding', a military analogy if ever there was one. So So, military history aside, what's this got to do with motorcycling? Quite a lot, actually. It's time to borrow another idea from the military; the Fog of War.

1. Information — incomplete, contradictory, misleading, changing
One of the key points of military strategy and riding motorcycles alike is gathering information but how ever much information is collected, there are always “unknown unknowns”.

Donald Rumsfeld famously popularised this concept in modern times, but Carl von Clausewitz captured its brutal reality on the battlefield centuries earlier. In military strategy — and on a motorcycle — the unknown unknowns (the things we don’t even know we don't know) represent the ultimate operational hazard.

Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and military theorist who lived and wrote during the Napoleonic era. His great work, 'On War', wasn't simply a manual for winning battles. Clausewitz was interested in why military plans so often failed to unfold as neatly in reality as they appeared on paper.

One of his key ideas was that warfare is conducted in a state of uncertainty. Information is nearly always incomplete, sometimes contradictory, frequently misleading, and always subject to change. Commanders have to make decisions without knowing everything they would ideally like to know and are frequently mislead by unreliable data. That became known as the 'fog of war'.


2.. The Fog of Riding
Road safety advice is full of apparently-sensible statements about observation. Look further ahead. Keep your eyes moving. Improve your observation. “Just look harder.” You might call this an active search for the “known unknowns”; “I don't know if a car is behind that hedge, but I know a Vision Blocker exists”.

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of that. The problem is the assumption that often sits underneath it. The implication is that this information is simply there, waiting to be collected, and the conclusion that's usually drawn if we fail to collect that information. If we didn't see the hazard, we probably didn't look properly. Or maybe we weren't paying attention. Perhaps we should have looked harder, longer or more often.

As we've seen in the previous articles, it's a remarkably crude model of human perception. But even when we accept that we can't process everything that could be seen, it's easy to forget what we can't see — out of sight is very often entirely out of mind.

And this is where Clausewitz becomes particularly interesting. His 'fog' wasn't simply darkness or poor visibility. It encompassed the uncertainty created by the “unknown unknowns”.

3. Incomplete and unreliable information
That describes the data that we process when riding rather well. Limit Points and road surfaces are deceptive. Hedges and walls hide places vehicles emerge. We can look at a junction and see a vehicle waiting there. But we don't necessarily know whether that's the only vehicle. Looking harder cannot reveal information that isn't available to our senses. A parked van may conceal a pedestrian. A bend may tighten up unexpectedly or conceal an obstruction. A vehicle approaching from somewhere outside our current field of view cannot exist in our visual world until we see it.

In other words, there are many parts of the riding environment we simply cannot see, but the absence of information is itself information. We can use that positively: “what does the fact that I CAN'T see tell me about what I should do?”

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4. The unpredictability of others
After observation, the other foundation of conventional road safety is 'anticipation', the process of working out what others will do around us. Clausewitz famously wrote that “war is an act of human in*******se... a continuous interaction of opposites”. But when road safety uses expressions such as “what you can reasonably expect to happen” to frame the actions of another road user as a predictable variable, it's ignoring the fact that each and every road user is ultimately unpredictable because they too are operating in their own version of the informational “fog”.

We can't predict whether a pedestrian will see us, and if they see us, whether they will step off the pavement or wait. We can't predict whether a particular driver has seen us or what they think our speed is, and we cannot know what they're intending to do, or how they will react if something unexpected changes their analysis of the situation...
..such as the unexpected appearance of our motorcycle.

5. Shifting from “Expectation” to “Tactical Framing”
Our riding environment is essentially unpredictable, but the moment we encounter another road user, the degree of upredictability rises significantly. Clausewitz emphasized that every action in war causes a reaction, creating a volatile feedback loop. In traffic, a driver's behaviour is entirely fluid and shifts the moment they notice us. The phrase “what you can reasonably expect to happen” is a comforting fiction. It treats the road like a choreographed dance, assuming everyone else is responding to the same tune. But we cannot predict a logical outcome in an unpredictable and illogical environment.

That means changing how we frame the information phase entirely. If 'conventional safety says: “anticipate what they will do next based on clues”, 'Clausewitzian safety acknowledges sees the fog and says: “do not try to guess their intent but use your position and speed to dictate an outcome where their choices cannot physically harm you”.

Instead of the fragile guesswork of “what should happen”, use anticipation to predict the Worst Case Scenario. Having first accepted unpredictability, then it's possible to build a 'tactical perimeter' of space and time that keeps us safe — no matter what chaotic situation awaits us.

6. Reducing operational uncertainty
If we can't predict exactly what everybody else is going to do, that doesn't mean we cannot give our ride some structure. This is where advanced riding systems become useful. Whether we use the 'Police System' IPSGA or my own preferred Search–Evaluate–Execute approach, the underlying principle is that we attempt to impose some structure on an environment we cannot completely understand:

i. Search isn't simply looking for information about hazards — it's about looking for clues that essential information is missing.
ii. Evaluate isn't about predicting exactly what another road user will do — it's about recognising what remains uncertain.
iii. Execute isn't about performing the 'correct' manoeuvre for the visible hazard — it's about allowing making changes early enough to preserve time, space and options and sufficient margin to change the plan should the prediction turn out to be wrong.

The system isn't a sequence of steps to be followed in order, but a way of managing uncertainty and avoiding committing ourselves to a situation we can't safely control. That is the Clausewitzian lesson.

SUMMING UP
I know some people dislike the military analogy but substitute “the road ahead” for “the enemy” and swap “the fog of the road” for “the fog of war” and you'll see that there are clear parallels; we are making decisions in an environment where we can never have all the information we would like to have.

Riding is therefore all about making decisions from partial information and it explains why we are sometimes caught out. But so is every other road user operating in the same fog. Accepting that helps explain why they sometimes do unexpected things.

To base a survival strategy on what a “reasonable person” would do is a massive tactical gamble. It assumes a baseline of human competence and attention that the real world routinely fails to provide.

We cannot manage chaos; we can only manage the space between us and deploy a strategy that manages the 'Worst Case Scenario'.

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28/09/2026

*** COMMENT *** What are the risks being faced by delivery riders?
[Based on an item from yesterday's Elevenses live webcast]

Back at the end of August, here on Elevenses I reported on a vote in the London Assembly to call on Government to tighten up the rules for delivery workers. I published the item as a post on Facebook. The resulting comments showed a clear split between those who thought that the 'gig economy' delivery rider shouldn't be allowed to work on L plates, and those who thought things should stay as they are to allow people to earn a living and for the convenience of customers and food outlets.

Meanwhile, several of the responses called for evidence that the gig riders were actually a road safety problem.

It's a fair question, so I took at look at the research.

Let's start by explaining who operates in the food delivery industry. Many are part of the ‘Gig Economy’. In other words, they are self-employed, often temporary, workers. This type of work often suits many people as it gives them the flexibility to work for different employers and at times to suit themselves. On the flip side, since food delivery drivers get paid per each individual job and therefore, they usually need get through many deliveries a day to make it worth their while. A few are employees of the company they work for.

So what evidence is there?

Multiple international studies and traffic safety statistics have indicated that food delivery riders represent a distinct road safety challenge.

For example, a study by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) found that 70% of food delivery riders confessed to breaking traffic regulations during their shifts. The paper identified key illegal behaviours: stopping inside yellow boxes (57%), running red lights (16%), using mobile phones while actively riding (15%), and riding in the opposite direction of traffic (7%).

OK, that's not the UK and that might be grounds for saying "that's not what happens here".

So I looked at a paper in the Journal of Transport & Health published in October 2025, which examined the results of 32 prior studies, covering a total of 38,682 last-mile workers.

The results were interesting in as much as the researchers found the same issues affecting riders across those different studies and the common fact was the working conditions; as they are paid by the job, not on an hourly basis, there is great pressure to get as many jobs as possible done in as short a period of time as possible.

And this showed up in the same issues appearing in multiple studies across different countries. Poor working conditions (e.g., economic insecurity, algorithmic control, time pressure) were consistently associated with negative psychosocial outcomes, including stress, fatigue, burnout, and reduced mental well-being.

Meanwhile, riders of powered two-wheelers were found to have higher crash and injury risks than riders of bicycles (or other 'light vehicles'), primarily due to higher speeds and greater traffic exposure. The study identified 'psychosocial stressors 'related to "algorithmic management" via the apps the delivery workers use, and that the piece-rate pay structure was found to "significantly influenced safety and health-related behaviors, linking high stress and workload to riskier riding/driving practices".

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That's still not the UK so let's put some home country facts on the table (along with the fast-food delivery of course.)

For starters, here in the UK, it is estimated that around a third of all road traffic accidents involve someone who was driving for a work-related reason. Clearly that's ALL work-related activities, not just gig-riders.

As regards the gig riders, a recent University College London survey specifically focused on this issue, interviewing drivers, riders and their managers. They found that:

1. 56% of those interviewed said that the time pressure of gig forces them to travel over the speed limit.

2. 21% of interviewees, said they would run red traffic lights for the same reason.

3. The survey revealed that 57% of those whose work was mobile phone app-based found that the app had caused them distractions whilst driving/ riding.

4. Around 75% of both employed and self-employed riders said they were monitored by the company to see how quickly they were doing their jobs.

They also found gig workers were more likely to report that they had damaged their vehicle than hourly-paid employed delivery drivers (67% as opposed to 25%) and more likely to suffer injury to themselves or a third party to the collision, than their employed counterparts (11% compared to 6%) although I would point out the word used is 'report'. There's no guarantee that all damage gets reported.

The UCL study built on research conducted in 2018 which found that self-employed drivers and riders in general were more likely to be involved in a road collision. Report lead Professor Nicola Christie (UCL Centre for Transport Studies) said:

“This research shows that despite previous work that highlighted the pressures gig economy drivers and riders face, nothing has changed in the sector."

Rather than framing riders as inherently reckless, the empirical data demonstrates that the piece-rate gig economy model introduces specific structural pressures that systematically compromise road safety.

Research from IAM RoadSmart indicates that 22% of partner restaurants offer zero road safety training meaning many newly-hired riders lack proper urban defensive riding skill..

I'll finish with a caution and an observation.

First, the caution. These results do not necessarily indicate worse personal riding habits than private motorcyclists. Any motorcyclists are among the most vulnerable of road users at the best of times, and while studies like this suggest they are involved in significantly more crashes than non-working riders, they also exposed to greater risk thanks to their longer hours on the road and their greater exposure to heavy traffic. That could account for the numbers. Nevertheless, all the indications are that the pressures combine to make the job of a self-employed food delivery driver/rider a dangerous one.

Second, the observation. Motorcycling generally is frequently singled out as a road safety 'problem' because of the high risk to riders in the event of a crash, but the UK Department for Transport's STATS19 data does not explicitly isolate 'food delivery' from motorcycle crash data., nor for pedal-cycle deliveries as it happens. The rapid expansion in the number of gig riders directly increases the population volume of vulnerable riders and so this lack of data really matters.

This is a major hole in the data, a similar hole to two others I have reported recently:

i. a failure to identify either electric bikes or ICE motorcycles being ridden without a licence

ii. a failure to record motorcycles which are stolen and involved in KSI crashes

This data is crucial if we're to formulate a road safety plan for PTWs generally and to my mind the question that motorcycle advocacy groups should be asking is simple; "how can a coherent road safety plan aimed at PTW operators be formulated if we don't really know what problems we're trying to solve?"

References:

A comparison of characteristics between food delivery riders with and without traffic crash experience during delivery in Malaysia
Rusdi Rusli, Mazlina Zaira Mohammad, Noor Azreena Kamaluddin, Harun Bakar, Mohd Hafzi
Case Stud Transp Policy. 2022 Oct 14;10(4):2244–2250.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9561398/

The human cost of fast deliveries: A systematic literature review of occupational risks and safety outcomes in last-mile delivery workers
Useche, Traficante, Llamazares & Marin
Journal of Transport & Health, Volume 44, October 2025, 102133
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140525001537

Road collisions more likely for takeaway delivery riders working in the gig economy
UCL News November 2022
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/nov/road-collisions-more-likely-takeaway-delivery-riders-working-gig-economy

Food deliveries soar but insufficient training and standards is putting thousands of gig economy workers at risk
Press release October 2025
https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/iam-roadsmarts-media-centre/pressreleases/food-deliveries-soar-but-insufficient-training-and-standards-is-putting-thousands-of-gig-economy-workers-at-risk-3411271

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28/09/2026

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27/09/2026

You just missed ELEVENSES LIVE
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27/09/2026

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26/09/2026

*** SKILLS ON SATURDAY *** Who is responsible for safety when filtering?
My 'COMMENT' item on Wednesday was about an AI camera being put in on a Cornwall bypass to catch drivers performing illegal U-turns (there are signs specifically banning the manoeuvre) which, according to Motorcycle News, "pose a serious risk to bikers".

As I pointed out on Wednesday, we motorcyclists are happy to defend passing a line of slow-moving or stationary traffic as a fully legal manoeuvre (just so long as we stay our side of the solid centre line) but that doesn't mean we can do it without plenty of caution.

The MCN story claimed that the manoeuvre is dangerous because there's so "little time to react" but if that's the case, I'd argue that we're riding far too quickly. Since it's the speed differential that's the problem when we have "little time to react", how about reducing speed to allow more time to see what's happening and react, and to reduce stopping distances? Remember - halving speed reduces stopping distance to around one-quarter of what it was. An alert rider should be able to stop in 10 metres or less from 25 mph, so that is plenty to be doing down the outside of a near-stationary queue. And even if you don't stop, reducing speed massively reduces the impact. It's no coincidence that most riders killed in urban junction collisions in London were speeding, according to Met Police data.

Anyway, that was my input, but back came a reference to the case of Davis vs Schrogin. I first found this case on the Motorbikes Today site, and the comment linked to the Road Traffic Law pages.

I've run various versions of this particular article for well over a decade now, but it always seems to rear its head whenever we look over the thorny issue of who’s responsible in filtering accidents, since search engines repeatedly turn up old stories.

The article was originally penned by Simon Bradley, a “former endurance racer, Nurburgring riding coach and occasional advanced instructor”.

Essentially, the article stated that the law on filtering was been changed by a case heard in the Court of Appeal back in 2006. He says this:

“…in the case of Davis vs Schrogin, the judge found that “a filtering motorcyclist passing stationary or very slow moving traffic could not be to blame if a collision occurred if the rider had no chance to take avoiding action”.”

Bradley then jumped to the conclusion:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, filtering past stationary traffic is no longer a grey area – it’s completely legal”.

Unfortunately, this statement is far from accurate as the legal eagles on our discussion board back in 2007 explained.

First of all there’s been no “change in the law” as the article claims for the very simple reason that there is and never has been any road traffic law that defines filtering as an activity.

Filtering and other road users’ response to filtering motorcycles is laid out in the Highway Code. The Highway Code says in the section entitled ‘Road users requiring extra care; Section 211 Motorcyclists and cyclists':

“It is often difficult to see motorcyclists and cyclists, especially when they are coming up from behind, coming out of junctions, overtaking you or filtering through traffic. Always look out for them before you emerge from a junction; they could be approaching faster than you think. When turning right across a line of slow-moving or stationary traffic, look out for cyclists or motorcyclists on the inside of the traffic you are crossing. Be especially careful when turning, and when changing direction or lane. Be sure to check mirrors and blind spots carefully.”

Note this is guidance to drivers, not a ‘law’. So if there’s no specific law defining what’s legal and what’s not, either in terms of how motorcycles should filter or how drivers deal with filtering motorcycles, how do courts judge what happened when cars and bikes collide? The answer is at least partly in terms of each road user behaving in a way that a competent driver / rider could be reasonably expected to drive or ride.

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Over to former law student ‘Biker Breaker':

“Magistrate’s court, crown court and county court do not provide binding judgments, even on themselves although judges will look at previous decisions if the case is sufficiently similar.

Higher court judgments, such as the Court of Appeal, are binding on themselves and lower courts except for the House of Lords who can change their minds any time they want unless contravening statute or, nowadays, EU law and judgments.

“Until this happens, or the law changes, the last judgment stands except [where] it can be shown that the case has enough differences to claim it should be decided on its own facts [and] not be bound by precedent… If the manoeuvre was felt to be sufficiently different, the judge can distinguish it from the previous case by pointing out the relevant differences and not be bound by it.”

Case law sets a precedent but a precedent that only applies in identical circumstances and the assessment of an individual case will depend heavily on statements and witnesses. In other words, each case will be judged on its merits.

As I wrote last time I covered this case, what worried me was the article being written in such a way as to imply riders have a right to overtake stationary traffic and rely on the court finding against the driver. The fact is that being on the right side of court case does nothing to maintain our own safety. If an injury is on the cards if things go wrong – and filtering accidents lead to more injuries and fatalities than most riders seem to realise – then avoiding getting into a situation you can't get out of seems a sensible option.

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