Advice for New Car Drivers Needed!

Fellow Bikers I need your help and wisdom! I am due to give a short talk to a bunch of Driving Instructors centred around MC awareness, What I'd like to pass on to them is what, you REAL bikers, would like to know is getting passed onto their young brand spanking new learner drivers! I already intend to talk about the Bikers physche (spelling?) with regard to filtering, i.e. why we do it, how we do it and why they, as car drivers will never stop it, but how they can live with it. I shall mention our apparent invisibility at Junctions and how they can consider looking harder for bikers, but what else can I pass on to them, any polite, sensible ideas welcome! Please help!
Jim

 

How handy it is to have a biker like you (1 windsreen and whole pocket of sparkplugs, you do the math ), but by being 'too accomodating' they can kick up dirt along the road causing more trouble than giving us extra room.
A biker will have planned his manouvre well in advance of the driver seeing him and reacting, best practise is to maintain your current course and be predictable. In slow moving traffic it's different, of course.

 

Perhaps make them aware that they will notice the bad riders much more than the rest, the majority, and to therefore please not tar us all with the same brush and direct their anger and frustration towards us all.

 

For most irritating, chavvy kids I see in cars - driving is NOT a game... and passing a driving test does NOT mean that they're instantly good drivers. They need to understand that (for the first few years at least), they aren't going to be the fastest vehicle on the road and should accept this with a little grace. Obstructing other road users and driving dangerously will only lead to their cars getting damaged and wing mirrors being kicked off, apparently .

 

Whist I agree, there are also a percentage of people on bikes to whom this applies, who also ride like complete tossers, think they have the right to the road, are the fastest rider ever born and completly invincible. and as to the last sentence .

 

Have you been following me?

You'll have to realise that I can be a little facetious sometimes, but shhhhh don't tell anyone. I have an image to maintain

 

I was also thinking about Indicators. These are not only useful for other road users, but I find in particular for Bikers. Like Dave said predictability is what I appreciate. I'd rather know a driver is going to turn left or right (more so right) sooner rather than later. I will then maybe hold off that overtake a tad longer.
Make sure they indicate in advance and make sure they are working !! Car maintenance is equally important.

Also if they are going to miss a turn, MISS the turn, go further up to a round about or find somewhere where they have had time to check around them to turn around and come back.

To often have I seen a last minute slam on the brakes and a violent left or right turn. This a recipe for disaster...not only for Bikers, but for road users in general. MISS the turn and turn around.

 

The difficulty will be in giving infortmation and advice that will be assimilated, asking someone not to be excited about passing their test is unlikely to work. But using it as a lever to get the message across might, "Being able to drive solo is a great achievement and a major improvement in your indipendance but it also means you'll to be your own instructor" etc.

Most of what happens to drivers / bikers / whatever, is human behaviour and social conditioning, we all notice a bad car driver more than the courtious but we claim they're all bad, when in our cars we shake our heads in dismay as the guy stinking along between the traffic, but have all filtered far faster than we should of.

Trying to strong arm new drivers into respecting bikers faility on the road, or worse yet trying to make them subservant to us is never going to work. They're bigger than us and the law of the jungle says they'll win.
The advice given should reflect that we are smaller, but also faster and move manouvrable than cars which is why we make the course choices we do and yes, the first time a bike with a loud can filters past them they are going to have a small poo of fright, but there'll be plenty of other driving related experiences that will do the same.

The best advice possibly could be to just keep your eyes open, remember what you were taught about checking the mirror twice and over shoulder checks, indicating, etc. don't be a dick to other road users and you'll do fine.

 

I endorse all of the above comments, singling out particularly Hoppielimp's request to make use of indicators something which warns what the driver is about to do, not what he would like to do (it doesn't give him the right to make his manoeuvre) nor what he is doing right now and of course it's useless when he's already done it; we've all seen it though, haven't we? Could they also try to observe road surfaces and make allowance for the biker who needs to avoid a wet manhole cover / wet leaves / gravel and the like?

The most important in my opinion is for the instructors to try to stress the lessons emerging from the 'looked but didn't see' studies. Youngsters won't yet have any experience to draw upon (except the few who ride, maybe) and are unlikely to be good at judging speed and distance anyway, so this is going to have to be a 'tell them something memorable' issue. As always, there are so many things an inexperienced driver has to learn by rote, I fear young pupils are very likely to treat the 'Think Bike' lecture as they do the standard 'Mirror; Signal; Manoeuvre' instruction: as something you just do without necessarily acting upon the information you glean from doing it!

 

When driving in a line of cars don't unnecessarily apply the brakes when a bike overtakes you because there will often be more bikes. Braking simply closes the once ''available'' space for the bike behind the bike that just overtook you. New riders would benefit from knowing that when overtaking cars (following another bike) the gap the bike in front left you can 'disapear' if the car brakes leaving you stranded if you havnt anticipated the car slowing. In fact car drivers - DONT DO ANYTHING other than maintain present course and speed.
Oh and DONT use the fekin washers on the windscreen when a bikes behind, it gets right up my nose............ and in my eyes.

 

If you make mistakes (we all did) then learn by them, take your time & don't allow yourself to be overloaded with info/advice. Experience is everything. Enjoy it.

 

I wondering...maybe a Pillion Session...with intercom...so you can talk through and they can see first hand what Bikers see and what Bikers do...?

An experience is worth a thousand words...

 

Use your mirrors! And remember that you can actually turn your head too!

 

This will do nicely......

Think that just about sums it up.......

 

... and when on the back of a bike, the most commonly used word is "AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH"

 

Remember though that this talk is to Driving Instructors so I shouldn't need to be reminding them to teach Indicators lifesavers or basic stuff which they are already teaching well, I am giving them an insight to what we have to cope with that isn't so obvious, you know tricks of the trade stuff. Some great ideas on here though and I put the same post on the Fire Bike Facebook page and have got about another 40 or so suggestions so I should have plenty of ammo for the talk, keep it coming though!

 

There's a part of me that wants to walk into the meeting holding this up on a placard!