How To Corner On A Harley Without Being AFRAID
Ride with me as I discuss how to corner on a Harley without being afraid. I ride my Street Glide Special and discuss the 7 deadly sins of cornering on a motorcycle. I also discuss some rules for life -- when you encounter an unexpected corner as you travel the straights of your life.
Today we are going to discuss how to take corners – the correct way to do it. What you can do to make it safer and how to stop the fear creeping in. How to corner on a Harley without being afraid.
I’ll go through 7 common cornering mistakes that riders often do and show you what to do instead. Watch the video till the end where I share the most advanced tips including a way around the problem of Harley’s not having much lean angle – lets see if we can get around that hurdle. Last but not least I’m going to throw in a life lesson just for the fun of it.
You can safely say there is no motorcycling without corner’s – maybe on a drag strip? I’ve found over the years that cornering, once you understand the mechanics behind it and have practised some techniques – it becomes the most fun part of riding your Harley.
We are riding on the road with all of the associated hazards and restrictions so I’m not going to discuss how to take the racing line because that’s not always appropriate and I’ll show you why later on in the video.
A lot of corning mistakes can be overcome just by doing things smoothly, accelerating smoothly, using your brakes smoothly and of course not going into a corner too fast – but I’m leaving that one out because that’s boring. Lets discuss some other things around corning.
1. One of the worst mistakes Harley riders make is target fixation. This is where you focus on an object or obstacle on the road and lose sight of the path ahead – or where you want to go. Potentially this will make you drift towards the obstacle, and you might hit it or crash.
The reason Harley riders do this is because of stress or your survival instinct. – if you haven’t practiced looking where you want to go. You naturally want to stare or focus on a perceived danger or threat because subconsciously you think you need to keep your eyes on it to stay safe – but the opposite is true – you want your eyes on the path around it.
A classic example of this is head on collisions late at night on dark country roads. Your tired and you fall into a hypnotic focus on the lights coming toward you. DON’T do this.
You need to consciously practice looking where you want to go – the clear path ahead – remember both lack of experience and higher speed or momentum will exaggerate or make it harder to break target fixation.
2. Closely related to the last mistake is when you don’t look through the corner. Your looking just ahead of the front wheel and this is similar to target fixation because your are looking at the wrong part of the road.
Your Harley will go where your head points NOT your eyes – your head. So you need to turn your head in the direction you want to go. Looking through the corner at the exit. You still need to check for hazards like gravel and pot holes so you can glance down – ahead - quickly with your eyes - but generally your head and vision is pointed to where you are going. Try it – you’ll be amazed at the difference.
3. The third mistake, is not counter steering. People seem to get confused with the concept of counter steering. Very simply you apply pressure to the handle bars in the opposite direction to the turn.
So if I want to turn right I push forward on the right handle bar – this actually pushes it to the left. That means my front wheel will turn left a little and the bike will “fall” or lean to the right. The faster you are going the harder you will have to push. AND The quicker you want to turn in the harder you will have to push
4. Which brings me to the fourth mistake which is turning in too early in a corner. If you turn into early you are making the curve in the corner longer and at speed this will cause you to run wide.
So that was the first four ways to take fear out of corning your Harley. Check out the last three tips in the video. They are more advanced and there’s a lot of extra detail in the video.
Life also has it’s corners and bends. You think you are on a straight road and out of nowhere a corner appears. I discuss this and some great life lessons that you can apply to make your life better. Check out the video and let me know in the YouTube comments what you thought of it and which of the tips is your favourite on how to corner on a Harley without being afraid.