Tips for Safety for Motorcycle Riders #6

Active safety: Practice braking

Emergency brake
When anticipation didn't succeed, or you didn't notice a hidden danger, you sometimes come into a situation where an accident would happen when you wouldn't act.
In many cases, braking may save you.

Most people cannot, by far, brake as hard as their motorcycle could.
Practise, practise, practise!

Braking, grip, weight
Braking has to do with grip, and grip has to do with your tires and the weight that presses on the tires.
The more weight on a tire, and the stickier the tire, the harder you can brake.
Therefore, the weight of the motorcycle itself doesn't matter: on a lighter motorcycle, the tires have to do less work to bring the motorcycle to a stand-still, but at the same time, the lesser weight makes that the tires *cannot* work as hard as on a heavier motorcycle.

So, the weight of the motorcycle itself doesn't matter, but the distribution of the weight does.
On a downward slope you only have to touch the rear brake slightly before the rear wheel locks: there is so little weight on the rear wheel that a little bit of braking stops it completely.

Technique for an emergency brake
During braking, you sort of have the same situation: the weight "travels" to the front wheel.

For most motorcycles (except for cruisers and long touring machines), the technique is therefore as follows:

1.- pull the clutch (so your rear wheel is no longer engagaed, and can't "push" the motorcycle anymore)

2.- stay away from the rear brake (when you brake hard, all the weight is on the front wheel; that means that trying to brake with the rear brake will inevitably result in a locked rearwheel, and you don't want that)

3.- start with using the front brake, to "prepare" your motorcycle for braking, and then Pull. Practise and pull harder, until you hear a tiny whining noise from your front tire. Then, you brake at the maximum. You really can pull hard!

4.- In case of a light (sports-) bike, take care for stoppies (which means that the rear wheel lifts from the ground). In case of an unwanted stoppie, gently loosen the front brake (so don't let go abruptly).

Cruisers: the rear brake as well
Cruisers and long touring machines should use their rear brake as well: they don't get all the weight on the front wheel during braking, so the rear brake really helps there.

Practise
You might consider to practise using the rear brake slightly when you start braking. It helps preparing the motorcycle for hard braking. After the start of the braking, you let go of the rear brake.
The problem is that using the rear brake then becomes a habit which you will also do in an emergency situation, and in such a situation it is very hard to let that brake go.

Braking in a corner
Definitely practise braking in a corner!
The procedure is the same, but you also have to push your motorcycle into the curve while braking (with your knee, and by pushing with your left hand in a corner to the left, or your right hand in a corner to the right, to the handlebar. Of course, you can't brake as hard as on a straight, but you still can brake harder than you would think if you never practised.

Site: lazymotorbike.eu