Survival Skills

*** FOCUS ON FRIDAY *** A foundation for coaching — M6 Framework 4
I've been working in rider training for more than three decades (which is a terrifying thought) and something I've noticed is that even when I was training up as an instructor, what I was learning was built on a pair of pretty sound foundations.

The first was the riding syllabus: the body of knowledge that defines what a competent rider should know and be able to do. Even back in the mid-90s, the DSA (as they were back then) had just published 'Official motorcycling: CBT, theory and practical test'. There's a copy on my bookshelf. And of course, Motorcycle Roadcraft had been around since the 70s. I also have the old 'Blue Book' version from my earliest days on two wheels. They all provide structured guidance on topics like observation, planning and machine control.

The second was what the instructor should know about training: the methods and qualifications that explain how to teach. I took a week-long course in rider training with the old CSM training school (an excellent course, incidentally) and I had a pair of books on driving instruction technique to use as a reference; two wheels or four, the main points on communication, coaching, assessment and learner development cross over.

Together, these two pillars — the 'body of knowledge' and the 'coaching techniques' — answer two essential questions:

“What should riders learn?”
“How should instructors teach it?”

Yet between them lies a surprisingly under-explored area — a missing layer that rider education has never fully articulated. What is largely absent is a structured body of knowledge that explains:

1. why riding techniques work
2. how the riding environment produces specific outcomes
3. why riders make predictable mistakes
4. how perception, physics, behaviour and context interact as a system

In other words, we have extensive guidance on what to teach and how to teach, but very little that explains why riding works the way it does.

This is the gap the M6 Framework was designed to fill.

WHY THIS GAP MATTERS — Every instructor carries a mental model of riding. Some parts are grounded in training. Others come from experience. Some are accurate. Others are inherited assumptions that have never been examined. These models shape every explanation an instructor gives, they influence how techniques are described, how errors are interpreted and how decisions are justified.

When the underlying model is incomplete, the explanation is incomplete — and the rider inherits the same blind spots. The result is predictable; riders who perform techniques well in some circumstances but struggle where the information or techniques they have learned turn out to be incomplete or incorrect. It's a consequence of a missing logic layer.

WHAT'S A 'LOGIC LAYER'? — In the context of rider education, the logic layer refers to the structured understanding that sits between riding techniques and coaching methods. It is the body of knowledge that explains why riding works the way it does — the mechanisms, relationships and constraints that make techniques effective, predictable and transferable.

It is not a syllabus (what to do). It is not a coaching method (how to teach). It is the reasoning that connects the two. The logic layer includes:

1. how perception becomes interpretation
2. how interpretation becomes action
3. how machine dynamics respond to rider input
4. how environment and surface conditions shape outcomes
5. how misunderstandings become predictable errors

When this layer is missing, instructors teach procedures without the principles that govern them. Riders learn what to do, but not why it works. This is how myths persist, how fads spread, and how entire training cultures end up debating topics like counter‑steering and trail braking decades after the underlying mechanisms were already well understood.

MISUNDERSTANDING ARISES WHEN THE LOGIC LAYER IS MISSING — The clearest evidence of the missing logic layer in rider education is found in the recurring debates that never seem to die. These debates are not really about technique. They are about explanation. They reveal what happens when instructors are given a technique to teach, and a method for teaching it, but no framework that explains why the technique works.

Two examples illustrate this perfectly: counter‑steering and trail braking.

1. Counter‑Steering — When the Mechanism Is Missing
One of the clearest demonstrations of the missing logic layer in rider education comes from the long‑running debate over counter‑steering and its place in the UK training syllabus. For decades, counter‑steering has been treated as mysterious, advanced or unnecessarily technical. The DSA — and later the DVSA — actively resisted calls from trainers to include counter‑steering in formal rider training.

Trainers argued, quite reasonably: “We teach riders how to go. We teach them how to stop. So why are we not allowed to teach them how to change direction?”

The agency’s counter‑argument, supported at the time by police motorcyclists, was that the theory was “too complicated for learners” and that riders would “pick it up as they went along”.

Crash data suggested otherwise. And it is difficult to imagine a simpler practical procedure than “Push left, go left. Push right, go right”.

Yet the institutional belief that counter‑steering was “too complex” had a profound, unintended — but entirely predictable — consequence; trainers themselves were never taught how counter‑steering actually works.

Many instructors in the 1990s — and there are still some surprisingly inaccurate explanations around today — could ride competently without being able to articulate the mechanism that actually turns a motorcycle. Riders were told they “lean the bike” or “look where they want to go”. Instructors avoided the physics because they had never been given a clear model.

And so it's hardly a surprise that counter‑steering became a long-running topic of debate rather than a settled fact. As late as the mid-2000s, when discussing a trainee who was having difficulty cornering with an experienced trainer I worked alongside, I mentioned counter-steering. “Oh no”, he replied. “I tell them to lean the bike.” He confidently told me this was because the trainee might go on to ride a cruiser with high bars, and he explained that bikes like that “couldn’t be counter‑steered because the rider couldn’t push down on the handlebars”.

He was absolutely serious. The counter‑steering story maps perfectly onto the M6 progression:

Myth: “Counter‑steering is too complex for learners / cruisers can't counter-steer.”
Mechanism: A motorcycle changes direction through lateral force applied via the bars.
Mistake: Trainers avoid explanations and allow trainees to develop their own theories that feel intuitive but are mechanically false.
Method: Teach deliberate bar input as a simple, repeatable procedure.
Mindset: Treat steering as a controlled, intentional action — not a mysterious instinct.
Margin: Riders gain predictable, reliable control in emergencies and high‑demand situations.

My colleague was absolutely confident he was right because no-one had ever explained the underlying principles to him. The problem was never the complexity of counter‑steering. The problem was the absence of a framework that made the mechanism explicit. This is what happens when the Mechanism is missing from the teaching schema. The Myth persists, and the Mistakes continue to be made.

2. Trail Braking — When a Partial Truth Becomes a Complete Technique
Trail braking has become fashionable in some training circles, but the explanation often lacks the essential context: grip is created by the interaction of both the tyre and the surface, and public‑road surfaces are inherently unpredictable.

The popular narrative also overlooks a critical fact. The claimed “extra grip” produced by weight transfer under braking is not spare capacity that can be spent on cornering. Almost all of it is immediately consumed by the braking force that created the weight transfer in the first place. Without this understanding, riders are encouraged to believe they have more grip available than they actually do — a misunderstanding born directly from the absence of a clear explanation of why the technique works.

When instructors teach trail braking as a universal good — without explaining the grip equation or the role of surface variability — they are not teaching a technique. They are transmitting a partial model.

Partial models are dangerous because they work…
…until they don’t.

The M6 Framework reveals the missing structure:

Myth: “Trail braking gives you more grip and more control.”
Mechanism: Weight transfer increases available grip, but braking immediately consumes it.
Mistake: Riders brake too deep at high lean on inconsistent surfaces.
Method: Use entry‑phase braking as a surface test, not a performance enhancer.
Mindset: Treat grip as a finite resource, not a bonus.
Margin: More predictable corner entries, fewer surprises.

Trail braking is not inherently unsafe. But teaching it without the underlying logic is.

THE CORE TAKEAWAY
The M6 Framework doesn't seek to reinvent knowledge or repackage coaching skills. The M6 Framework:

1. organises riding knowledge into a coherent structure
2. reveals where misunderstandings come from
3. helps instructors diagnose their own explanations
4. prevents myths from being passed on
5. turns isolated techniques into an integrated system
6. strengthens the rider’s mental model, making skills transferable across situations

It is a tool for understanding before teaching. It fills the missing middle in rider education; the logic layer — the structured understanding of why riding works the way it does. Without this layer, instructors teach techniques and coaching methods, but lack the conceptual architecture that makes those techniques coherent, transferable and resilient.

*** VIDEO NASTY *** No tyre is any better than the road surface
No motorcycle tyre, regardless of how grippy the manufacturer says it is, will stick to the road if it doesn't have something to bite into...

..as this unfortunate rider discovered.

Tyres rely entirely on the microscopic friction created when rubber meets the rough texture of asphalt. When a rider hits a low-friction substance, and here it's what looks like a diesel spill, that crucial mechanical connection is instantly broken reducing traction to near zero and causing the bike to slide out mid-corner before the rider even has time to react.

The clue is the black streak on the surface. The rider ahead spotted it and so did the rider behind. Both took evasive action. Maybe the rider in the middle didn't because he was too close to the rider ahead.

Whatever the reason, as soon as the tyres touched the spill, down the bike went.

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*** COMMENT *** Science Of Being Seen on the BBC - it must be true!
A couple of months ago I reported on how Motorcycle News had led with an article that exclaimed that 'ground-breaking' (I believe that was the word) new research had just solved the "Sorry Mate, I Didn't See You" SMIDSY collision between driver and biker at a junction. It was actually a rehash of some of the same elements of science research that I first documented in my 'Science Of Being Seen' presentation created for Kent Fire & Rescue, and Jim Sanderson's 'Biker Down' rider safety course.

Yesterday morning, Hallam rang me up to tell me about a BBC Sounds item, called 'The promise of psychedelics' in the 'All In The Mind' series, which featured mathematician Kit Yates tackling the question of "why do we often miss what’s right in front of us?" and as the programme notes say "we hear about inattentional blindness and what we miss from the world around us".

The segment is short, starting at about 13:25 into the show when they start to talk about how we perceive the environment around us. This starts with an audio clip, as it happens because it appears (and this is new to me too) we are even very selective with our hearing. I won't spoil the hook to the show, so tune in an listen. A little later at around 17:00, we get onto more familiar ground of visual perception as Kt Yates explains the issue of why there are issues with objects right in front of us not being seen.

He takes us through an explanation of human visual perception that could have been lifted from one of my own presentations.

The section about 'inattentional deafness' is interesting because that's a concept I hadn't heard of. Then the show gets onto the issue of how "you don't know what you're missing", which is at the heart of SOBS.

Professor Kit Yates is introduced as "having been thinking about this for years", and it's led him to write a new book.

He argues that's what's missing shapes daily choices, that the information we use to understand the world has gaps, and those gaps matter.

He mentions the difficulty of proof-reading, something of which I'm very aware and have also mentioned here in these articles.

And he talks about how the brain "constructs reality for us" and how it "hides the joins for us" because it would be jarring to experience "all the unevensess of reality".

And he explains how the brain evolved to create a "coherent" picture which isn't necessarily reality. And then he says:

"One of the most vivid examples is when we pull up to a junction, our eyes, they don't smoothly move across the scene. They do these jumps called 'saccades' and in between the jumps, because it would be so dizzying watching this blur across as our eyes move, the visual system turns off our visual processing."

And he explains we think we've seen the whole scene but in fact we've seen a series of snapshots. "In between those snapshots, things can happen and we can miss things. So there are a lot of accidents called SMIDSYs, and some are definitely caused by people thinking they have seen everything around them."

This is EXACTLY the explanation I have been giving for saccadic masking - that's the 'blanking' phenomenon - since 2012 and the first SOBS presentation.

And he says how important it is to build in redundancy and "take a second look" though I would argue that the risk is that this second look simply confirms what's there (or isn't) in the first look, and the proper answer is to slow down the scan, to shorten the saccades and increase the number of fixations to enhance the fidelity of the scan.

I'll leave you to listen to the rest of Professor Yate's explanation, the Invisible Gorilla and the distraction caused by the attention-diverting nature of hands-free phone calls, but suffice to say, it solidly underpins exactly what I have been talking about on SOBS.

Maybe a few more of the SOBS sceptics who still believe that the entire problem of the SMIDSY is the driver "not looking properly" will begin to realise that they don't see everything in the world around them either.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002xp4h

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All in the Mind - The promise of psychedelics - BBC Sounds …And why do we miss what’s right in front of us?

*** TIPS ON TUESDAY *** Fresh Start: Surface
In Week Nine of the 'Core Skills' series, where I return to the essential riding foundations and rebuild them from the ground up in a fresh way whilst using a brand-new structure too. Last week, we turned our attention to the concept of traction and the connection between tyres and tarmac. Today we take a Fresh Start look at the other half of the grip equation, and the role of the surface.
,

THE MYTH — “I know how surfaces behave and when grip is low.”
Last time out, the article on grip talked about how the road is a patchwork quilt of different surfaces, many of which change the level of grip available to the rider. Whilst in practice, some riders forget this, push too hard and leave no margin in the bank to recover from a loss of traction, most riders do understand that road surfaces vary and will happily discuss grippy versus slippery surfaces.

Then in practice they go out and crash, because the road surface changed in a way they weren't ready for.

So just why does this happen? It's the difference between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. The vast majority of riders know that tyres will skitter around on sand or gravel, slip on mud or wet metal covers, and that an anti-skid surface will offer more grip than ordinary tarmac — but what often surprises riders is the reaction of the motorcycle itself.

The average rider's understanding of grip on a poor surface is therefore based largely on assumption rather than experience. The problem is this.

1. Almost all riders know surfaces vary.
2. Almost all riders have experienced minor grip disturbances — they have ridden on wet roads, crossed paint lines and across a wet metal access cover, and many will have felt the bike twitch.
3. Few experience serious grip loss, and few have lost control completely. In terms of moments when the tyres worked as expected, crashes resulting from a major loss of grip are relatively rare.
4. Therefore they underestimate both the severity and abruptness of grip changes. They underestimate how little warning the transition can provide, and how abruptly the bike will react when the tyre loses the support of the surface whether that's under braking, during acceleration or when cornering.

Even fewer riders will have ever deliberately explored the limits of grip by pushing the machine hard enough that the tyres approach the point of sliding. They won't usually know how much grip a surface offers because they have never asked enough of the tyre to find out.

And when the tyres do let go, it's often a surprise, even if the machine's stability is rescued by rider aids.

THE MECHANISM — “The tyres just let go.”
In reality, road surfaces are far more complex than the labels we attach to them and riders don't just lack experience of grip limits. They lack experience because the bike often gives them no reason to suspect the limits have moved and underestimate how little warning there is of the transition from 'sufficient grip' to 'not enough grip'.

One of the reasons riders overestimate their understanding is that tyres are extraordinarily good at masking grip changes. For example, although a wet road may only have just 70 or 80% of the grip of the same surface when dry, it will usually 'feel' completely normal to the rider so long as the rider is within the limits of available grip. It's difficult, if not impossible to feel, the reduction in margin.

Thus there's no feedback to the rider even as the tyre is approaching its limit.

Then when demand rises — maybe there's a need to brake, or to change direction by adding a little more lean, perhaps the rider decides to add more throttle to accelerate out of a corner or complete the turn out of a side turning — the rider unexpected meets the limit.

Even if the surface itself offers good friction, the tyre can only use that grip if it stays in contact with the road. On broken, rippled, potholed or stepped surfaces which include traffic-calming measures, the tyre can 'skip' and unload. If this coincides with a demand for grip, a bike can still slide on a surface that should in theory offer good grip — the tyre simply isn’t touching it consistently. Modern suspension smooths out a huge amount of irregularity, which is why riders often fail to appreciate how bad the surface really is.

In either case, the bike feels composed even when the tyre is on the verge of losing grip, then the motorcycle reacts before the rider is able to recognise what is happening. So the surprise isn't merely the loss of grip. It's also a result of the speed at which the machine transitions from stable to unstable. From the saddle, the crash seems almost inexplicable.

THE MISTAKE — “Searching for 'red flags' and ignoring ambiguous surfaces.”
Treating a road surface as a single, static environment when it actually contains several different surface conditions is a recipe for a sudden surprise. But the true danger of the road surface isn't where the rider encounters the obvious traps; the white paint and metal access covers, the just-resurfaced road of loose chippings, the slick patch of mud beside the farmer's field, or the gleaming rainbow of diesel spread across the lane on the roundabout.

It's easy to train to spot those kind of red flags. The problem is that when riders don't see them, the brain ticks a box, assumes the road is benign, and quietly shifts into autopilot.

The most serious mistakes happen because riders fail to recognise that the baseline grip has shifted. Two stretches of tarmac that look identical may offer dramatically different grip. I learned this for myself on a big one-way system in London which had just been partially resurfaced. The change happened mid-lean and it went from newly-surface and good trip to old surface with not-nearly-so good grip. But the point where the surface changed was almost invisible. It wasn't until I went round the same one-way system a few minutes later, and specifically looked to see why the bike had suddenly twitched mid-turn, that I spotted the tell-tale seam between the two surfaces.

The mistake is to continue riding for the grip you had, not the grip you have now. Unfortunately, for the rider, the bike simply will not communicate that transition until it crosses the threshold of grip. With the bike feeling settled, it's easy to unconsciously downgrade the surface risk assessment, to confuse a lack of warning from the motorcycle with confirmation that the surface remains much the same.

When the unspotted transition arrives under the wheels, and the machine twitches or starts to slide, the shock triggers a series of primitive survival responses, what Keith Code has called 'Survival Reactions'.

You stiffen your arms and freeze, you chop the throttle or grab the brakes, and the physical inputs become completely incompatible with the state of the surface. This inappropriate response overloads a tyre that might have easily tracked over the compromised surface if the rider had stayed loose.

Or you target fixate and stare directly down at the hazard rather than where to go to stay out of trouble, and fail to make the subtle machine inputs that would have manoeuvred the machine out of trouble.

It's a mistake to believe that modern tyres and electronics have “solved” surface variability. No tyre can create more grip than the road surface offers (covered in the article on grip) and aids like ABS and traction control are a safety net, not “get out of jail” cards.

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THE METHOD— “Learn the surfaces. Read the clues. Ride for the change of grip.”
Start by building a mental library of surfaces. You cannot ride for the grip if you don’t know how different surfaces behave. This means deliberately learning which surfaces offer good grip and poor grip, which surfaces are predictable and which surfaces aren't. Learn where different surfaces are used. You cannot ride for the grip if you don't know where you are likely to encounter them. The more surfaces you understand, the fewer surprises you get.

Some surfaces are construction artefacts — tar seams, patches, potholes, metal covers, painted markings, rumble strips, speed bumps and the camber of the road itself.

Some surfaces change as a product of the environment — blown sand near the coast, slippery sap under trees in full leaf, polished surfaces near the heavy vehicle entrance to a factory, first rain after a dry spell, drying lines or wet surfaces under trees with mud near farm gates after a damp morning, tarmac that turns greasy or even melts in summer heat, leaves in the autumn, or surfaces that ice-up as the sky clears on a winter evening.

Some surfaces are affected by contaminants — diesel, petrol, and oil spills can slosh‑out on bends or build-up at bus stops.

Some surfaces have become worn-out or uneven — bumps and ripples, polished patches where the stone chips have been torn out, potholes where the surface has failed completely.

Some surfaces don’t look dangerous — they look unfamiliar. Cobbles, brick setts, and certain traffic‑calming materials all fall into this category. They are visually ambiguous: they don’t look like tarmac, but they don’t look like hazards either. A new rider may have no idea how slippery wet cobbles are, and continue using the same speed, lean angle, braking force and throttle that worked moments earlier of ordinary tarmac, unaware that their safety budget has been slashed.

The really dangerous surfaces are the ones where the clues are ambiguous; a change in the stone chip aggregate, a slightly different colour of tarmac where two resurfacing jobs meet, or a subtle shading under trees that might be a pothole, an accumulation of loose gravel or a damp patch. These are all clues that the available traction has changed.

Here are three of the most important clues:
i. anything that looks shiny when wet — metal covers, catseyes, white lines, tar seams, polished patches, wet leaves or oil‑soaked areas — will offer far less grip than the surrounding tarmac.
ii. a rainbow sheen or dark glossy streak — a classic sign of diesel or oil, which creates a thin lubricating film that the tyre cannot bite into.
iii. a change from dry surface to one that looks damp — especially after a long dry spell, the first moments of rain can be treacherous: the first rain lifts oil, rubber dust and grime into suspension, creating a temporary slick until prolonged rain washes it away.

These are subtle clues, not dramatic hazards, but they are often the only advance warning that the grip ahead is about to change. Make your surface assessment not just a continuous process, but part of the overall process of managing a specific manoeuvre or creating a response to a particular threat. It's no good planning a line around a roundabout if you don't consider the possibility you might encounter diesel just out of sight. It's no good planning a line around a corner if you don't consider the possibility that a farmer might have left a hidden trail of mud from a farm gate. It's no good planning to brake to avoid a vehicle turning across your path at a junction if you have failed to take into account the wet metal access cover just ahead of you.

If the surface ahead is ambiguous, inconsistent, or poorly lit, assume the grip will be worse than the grip you have now, then find a way manage that.

Whenever possible, choose a position that offers a view of the surface and choose a speed that offers sufficient time to assess what you see. This is how you plan ahead. Then choose a line that keeps lean angle modest and offers the space to adapt if the initial route turns out to be compromised. This applies to all manoeuvres that require the tyres to deliver grip, not just cornering Don't focus on the 'perfect' manoeuvre, build in 'wiggle room'; engineer in a margin by easing off braking force, lean angles and drive via the throttle if the surface is ambiguous. Aim to stay loose on the machine so if the machine twitches, you're expecting it and won't lock up or freeze. This is not over-cautious riding, it's engineering in a margin.

In particular, avoid planning throttle or brake inputs mid-corner in case the timing happens to be across a surface transition. Remember this when considering 'trail braking' as a technique; it's rare that the rider can see deep into the corner, but if the brakes are carried into the bend, that puts you at the mercy of a change in surface.

Respect the limitations of rider aids; they may help keep the bike upright where rider control alone would fail, but they cannot create grip where the surface offers none. They can only manage the grip that exists. it.

THE MINDSET— “Expect variation. Interpret clues. Predict failure.”
While you want to approach every manoeuvre with the intention of performing it well, you can never forget that every change of speed or direction relies entirely on the grip between the tyres and the road surface. This is the 'tactical heart' of surface‑aware riding. Any manoeuvre that ignores this simple fact — whether it’s negotiating a roundabout, turning into a bend, braking for a red light or an emerging car, or accelerating away from a junction — may fail if the level of grip falls below what the bike demands. The surface can change without warning, and the bike will feel normal right up until the moment it doesn’t. A surface‑aware mindset therefore means riding with a quiet expectation that the grip you have now may not be the grip you have in the next few metres.

THE MARGIN — “Unused grip saves you when the surface won't.”
Margin is the buffer between what the tyre is doing and what the surface can suddenly take away. It isn’t about riding slowly; it’s about preserving capacity for the next change in grip. A rider with margin leaves lean in reserve on corner exits where polish and spills accumulate, leaves adequate following distances to brake progressively when the car ahead slows down, keeps the machine as upright as possible when crossing dubious-looking surfaces, and avoids committing at splate braking into roundabouts where rumble strips, patches and unseen contamination can collapse the tyre’s support. They treat puddles with caution because they hide potholes, debris and reactivated oil. These habits aren’t caution for its own sake — they are deliberate ways of keeping unused grip available.

Margin on the road is not simply extra traction. It is protection against being wrong. You may be wrong about how much grip exists, where contamination lies, where a repair starts, where a damp patch ends, whether the Shellgrip continues, or whether a polished surface is actually dry. Surface classification is never perfect, and the tyre never knows what comes next. The rider with margin can discover the surface; the rider without margin tests it — and the road tends to mark those tests harshly.

The principle is simple: ride with enough unused grip, time and line that the surface can change its mind — and nothing bad happens.

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