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What he names "fishtailing" is what is known as "highside" in motorbike circles. When the rear wheel loses grip, it and the entire frame except the front fork m
by lstodd 17d ago
What he names "fishtailing" is what is known as "highside" in motorbike circles. When the rear wheel loses grip, it and the entire frame except the front fork moves sideways. When the rear wheel inevitably retains grip, the resulting force violently flips the whole. On a bicycle this is rare and survivable, on a 200+kg mc not very much so.
In a turn you either apply energy if that is at all possible (usually), or just steer. It is recommended to accelerate inside a turn, because that way you can better control grip on the rear due to not accidentally engine-braking (not applicable to bicycles), and because thrust on the rear wheel helps the bike into the turn (applicable to bicycles).
Braking in a turn is a last-effort thing, taken only if you are certain that it'll lessen damage from otherwise imminent crash.
Biking is traction/grip control at all times. Traction is always shared between steering and brake/accel. You do not want less control in a turn, and loss of traction means loss of steering.
So you do not ever brake in a turn.
You decelerate on a straight before it. If a turn goes bad for whatever reason, that means that a) you made a mistake entering it at the speed you did, and b) now you choose what to crash into, and then execute the crash while hoping that your protection holds, which might include hard front brake and a steering input so that you lowside feet (and bike) first into the obstacle. But not before.
So the first lesson of bike-riding is being aware at all times of available traction.
95% use of fronts follows: you only use them on straights, and there they are much more efficient than rears because the whole mass of you and bike enhances front wheel traction. cf. the wheelie.
- david-gpu 17d agoI would separate cycling from riding motorbikes entirely. They are different enough in terms of mass, speed, and especially acceleration. As an example, pedaling while turning is often a bad idea because of the risk of pedal strikes, so acceleration inside a curve is often out of the question. And braking obviously reduces the grip available for turning, so braking while turning is only done in an emergency situation. But if you are going to brake while turning, using only the rear brake is suboptimal on a bicycle.
- ifwinterco 16d agoAnd you don't normally need to consciously countersteer on a push bike because of some combination of 1) lower speed and 2) much higher body mass relative to the bike, but countersteering is absolutely essential on a motorbike
- david-gpu 16d agoCountersteering is important on a bicycle too when you need to quickly dodge something, for example. But yeah, the stakes around riding are so much higher on a motorbike.
- timc3 16d agoOn a bicycle if you can modulate the brakes so it never loses grip and you adjust your balance you can use both brakes in corners - I’ve been doing it most of my life, sometimes at speed and have done it on extremely steep slopes to avoid trees and obstacles. It’s possible without the rear wheel being on the ground at all, just never lock up or lose traction on the front wheel but that takes (sometimes painful) practise. It doesn’t feel as good as decelerating before, and is most definitely not as safe as you clearly explained.
- lstodd 16d agoWell, IF. If you have enough skill you can a do stoppie in a turn, turn around and shoot off the way you came from. But this is bordering on stunt riding, not something to be relied on for day-to-day riding where you have to have enough margin to account for being not very focused, road having various low-friction crap that fell off a truck, crazy pedestrians, car drivers asleep etc.