Motorcycling
...fety Foundation offered a basic rider course for new riders. This course incorporated classroom discussion and hands on practice. The motorcycle course offered answers to my safety questions. I decided to sign up and pay the one hundred and seventy dollars to take the course. On the first day of the motorcycle class, we discussed safety factors. Safety gear was one of those factors. Safety gear could mean the difference between life and death. It is recommended that you wear all of your gear all of the time. Some accidents are simply unavoidable (Hough 27). Sooner or later, your luck will run out and you will have an accident. Wearing your motorcycle gear will best protect you when this happens. A Department of Transportation approved full face helmet, will best protect your head. To protect your body it is best to wear a motorcycle jacket with elbow, shoulder, forearm, and back armor. Motorcycle approved boots are a must, as well as, a good pair of riding pants. Now that you have all of your gear, you should be able to handle an accident with little to no injury. Sight distance is another important element in motorcycle riding. At any given speed, sight distance is the minimum distance needed to stop any motorcycle. This means you must look ahead of you and be prepared to react to any situation that may arise. What makes sight distance so hard is that most riders can not accurately judge distance. When riding a motorcycle, the pavement and other objects just zoom right by you. A trick for measuring sight distance is to make time measurements. Pick an object out in front of you and count how long it takes you to get to that point. Then you can actually judge your speed to sight. Looking ahead twelve seconds is a good rule of thumb to remember. The sooner you see a hazard the better your odds are at avoiding it. In order to use sight distance all of the time, you must always ride your own ride. It is very easy for a new rider to get into trouble trying to impress someone else. If you are out with a group of riders do not let them push you into a situation in which you are not prepared. A rider’s natural reaction is to show off their skills so other riders do not view them as unskilled riders. You always want to make the decision when to brake, when to roll on the gas, and what speed you should be going. Just remember why you are riding to begin with. I am sure it is not because you want to impress other people. Ride your own ride all the time. Eventually, something will pull out in front of you because there are tons of different booby traps waiting to spring the trap on an unexpected motorcyclist. For a motorcyclist, booby traps exist every where. These booby traps consist of potholes, bumps, loose gravel, edge traps, grated bridge decks, shiny steel plates, slick plastic arrows, and spilled diesel fuel (Hough 33). The best way to avoid these booby traps is to use sight distancing, and scrutini...