Cornering with confidence is one of the great joys of riding a bike.
Setting yourself up for the bend, picking your moment to lean the bike into the turn, then powering out smoothly and progressively elevates riding to an art, but there’s good science behind it too.
We’ll look at cornering in the five sections that the Institute of Advanced Motorists breaks the physics down into: Information; Position: Speed: Gears; Accelelerate in their new book, “How To Be A Better Rider, the essential guide”. STAGE ONE
Information: It’s all about observing what’s around you and using those all important visual cues to create a perfect plan to tackle the corner ahead.
The most important is the angle of the bend and you can read that by monitoring the vanishing point or “vision limit” in IAM-speak.
This is where the two sides of the road appear to meet, and if it is moving towards you, the bend is tightening up and you may need to slow down.
If it’s moving away from you then the road is opening up and you may be able to increase your speed.
You can get more advanced notice of the limit point by noting how the line of lampposts or trees curve away over the top of the roadside hedges or walls.
Other information you need to soak up is the condition of the road surface ahead, any potholes, manhole covers or lines of slippery mastic on your line?
Is there a car nosing out of a junction ahead? Are schoolkids running about? Feed these into the mix and you’ll be ready to move to stage two
copied and pasted from mcn
Now you've read the road ahead to get a good idea of what's in store, it's time to get yourself in the correct position to tackle it.
STAGE TWO
Position: This is making sure that you have moved yourself onto a line that gives you the best view of the road ahead.
That way you’ve got the most time possible to change your plan, to dodge that manhole cover, or even stop if a hazard like a dozy driver pops out from a side turning.
On a righthander your position should be in the left of the lane you’re in, but not so close to the edge that gutters or potholes become a hazard.
On lefthanders that’s towards the centre of the road with the added awareness that if you run wide you will be conflicting with oncoming traffic instead of a grassy verge or pavement.
It should be noted that the "system", information, position, speed, gear, acceleration, which is used for both cars and bikes applies to all hazards, not just corners. In the position phase of this, safty is always paramount and you should be ready to give up your position in case of oncoming trafic, for example.
![Cornering with confidence part 1 - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8mobileLQ.jpg)
![Cornering with confidence part 1 - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8desktopLQ.jpg)
