Let’s face it. Motorcycling is a dangerous activity. If you have training, gear, and experience motorcycling might be less dangerous than if you have none of these, but the fact of the matter is you never know when something unexpected is going to happen. A truck could run a red light and smash you to bits. That lady eating with both hands and steering with her knees might drift into your lane too fast. Hell, you might even get hit in the face by a bird and go down on an isolated stretch of highway. And let’s not even get started on forest rats — I mean — deer.

You can do one of two things: continue riding as if nothing can touch you and forgive any preparations, or do the most you can to mitigate your risks and prepare your a potentially serious or fatal accident.

I’m a “preps” kind of guy. I try to find a balance between doing the things I want to do and being as ready as possible for unfortunate circumstances. On one hand, you can’t be crippled by fear and not do the things you want, but on the other hand you have to a plan.

Here are some of things I do to prepare for the worst.
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“When I ride, I keep my head on a swivel,” my Motorcycle Safety Foundation course instructor told me over four years ago. He went on to describe how his eyes were always darting around, and he was constantly looking behind him and to the sides. It sounded super vigilant, and super safe. I wanted to be super vigilant, and super safe, so that’s what I did.

A few years (and a few thousand miles) rode by, and I realized that I didn’t really feel any safer with my head spinning around, eyes fleeting everywhere. Quite frequently I would look to my right, then my left, and notice that traffic had locked up their brakes in front of me. I found that the more anxious I was with my riding, the more fatigued I became. I started to relax my body more while riding, and that included how I looked at the world around me. My eyes and head stopped moving so much, and while my eyes were mostly straight ahead, I never fixated on any one thing for too long.

I seemed to ride better, anticipate things more accurately, and react to situations more quickly. I chalked it up to experience and riding with more confidence.

Little did I know that my day job would explain how I could see everything by looking at nothing.
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Riding in the rain on a motorcycle happens to just about every rider. The difference is that some of us ride in the rain on purpose, while other motorcyclists get caught in a downpour by accident. If you’re the former, here are some tips for keeping your pants dry during foul-weather commuting.

• Gear up. The most important thing, obviously, is wearing waterproof motorcycle gear. You’re going to need:
  • Textile pants with a waterproof liner
  • Waterproof motorcycling boots — regular waterproof boots aren’t a good option because they are usually not tall enough to prevent upspray (more on that in a minute). Furthermore, they may not hold up in a crash as well as boots built specifically for motorcycling. Also make sure your boots have a gaiter on the inside to help keep water out of the openings along the side of the boot. I personally prefer buckles to zippers, but if your boot has a zipper make sure there is a gaiter behind the zipper, too. I wear Sidi On Roads (available at NewEnough).
  • If you are really concerned about staying dry — or you motorcycle during the colder months — you should buy a separate set of waterproof overpants. I own a jacket and pants set of Frogg Toggs Elite Highway (Amazon.com). It makes a huge difference when riding in torrential rain. It is also important for keeping me safe and warm when it’s cold out. You may stay dry when your waterproof textile jacket gets waterlogged, but the wind of riding at highway speeds plus a low ambient air temperature will make you cold in a hurry. It’s uncomfortable at best, and dangerous at worst.
• Tuck your clothes in when going out in public. Fold your pant hem flat against your leg. Put your pant leg inside your boot. If you don’t do this, water upspray from the road my find its way past the various hem contraptions of your motorcycling pants and soak your “real” pants. This is particularly irksome if you are wearing jeans. Demin will rapidly transfer any water absorbed at the hem up your pants. I figured out “the tuck” the hard way after wondering why my knees were wet — it was from my jeans absorbing water on a three-hour ride in the rain.

Let’s be honest: motorcycles don’t have much going for them in the event of a crash. Braking distance is longer for a motorcycle than that of a car, stability is compromised at lower speeds, and then there’s that whole “fly off the bike” thing if you collide with an object.

The two big advantages motorcycles have over automobiles are acceleration and size. You’ll need them both when an automobile attempts to change lanes into you. Here’s what I do to avoid lane incursions.
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Week two of growing my beard (and participating in the Ars Technica beard growing event).

It’s still filling in, but I’ve passed two important milestones:

1) My face is warmer inside of my motorcycle helmet. The beard is definitely blocking some of the wind that bounces off of my chest and up into my helmet.

2) I am now combing my beard out after showering.

I’ll probably let it grow another week or two and then tighten it up a bit with my Norelco G390.

If you ride street a lot, you may have encountered this type of driver before: someone who rides their brake pedal as if their life depended on it. Accelerate, brake. Go downhill, brake. Go uphill, brake. On-ramp, brake. Brake, brake.

It’s frustrating and dangerous at the same time. Motorcyclists need every bit of advanced warning to avoid trouble. If someone brakes all the time it can lull you into a sense of complacency or make you so nervous about the car in front of you that you get tunnel vision.

The most important thing to discern is why this person is braking. Is the car in front of them also panic braking? Do they look lost? Are they trying to signal you (I’ve had cars to this to me to “help” when a law enforcement officer is in front of them)? If they are just being stupid or timid, you have a Braker on your hands.
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I wrote about how I merge onto the highway on my motorcycle last month. Now that you’re on the horse, we’re going to discuss the dismount. Here’s how you can stay safer when exiting the highway.

You really have to look out for two things when leaving the highway: cars also trying to exit and your turn entry speed.
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It can be a struggle to keep your helmet visor from fogging up at this time of year. Your dome, nice and snuggly warm from your house, makes contact with the cold air outside. For some of us, putting a warm face into a cold helmet stored on the bike makes things even worse.

All of a sudden you’re caught in a Catch-22: if you raise the visor to clear the fog your face gets cold. If you lower the visor to keep your face warm the visor fogs.

What can you do? Here are a few tips that work for me, and a few things I’ve tried that didn’t work.
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“Congratulations,” my Motorcycle Safety Foundation course instructor told me after finishing my class. “You are now qualified to ride slowly around a parking lot. Stay off of the highway.”

After feeling confident enough to putter around my neighborhood and surrounding suface streets, I took to the highway. I live a good 15 – 25 miles from the majority of my friends and my place of employment. The highway is vital for me to get anywhere on two wheels, and before long I was zipping along with the rest of the world.

I often prefer riding on the highway to surface streets. Yes, the stakes are higher: crashing at 65+MPH is going to result in a more spectacular get-off than, say, 40MPH. However, traffic flows (usually) in the same direction on the highway, and I don’t have to worry about people making left hand turns in front of me like you do a surface street intersection.

Still, you have to deal with lane incursions, rapid deceleration due to accidents or emergency vehicles entering the highway, and worst of all, on-ramps and off-ramps.

Here are a few tips to staying safe when approaching an on-ramp.
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Tires are pretty important on an automobile. They help you do everything from speed up and slow down, maintain traction, and helps to keep your car at its optimal fuel efficiency. The nice thing about a car tires is that, generally, there are four of them. Motorcycles are immediately handicapped by only having two tires. To top it off, motorcycle tires are much more narrow than a car’s tire. This results in a smaller contact patch with the road, which affects braking and handling.

Worse yet, if you have a blow out or catastrophic flat on a motorcycle you are pretty much hosed, especially if it’s your front tire.

It is critical to make sure your motorcycle tires are inflated properly, and boy was I surprised to learn how rapidly and frequently my tires lost pressure.
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