To ride along unscathed

Like all other road users in this country, motorcyclists too, aren't known for safe and sane riding. Statistics show that between 2001 and 2005, the accident rate for motorcycles has gone up while that of other vehicles (excepting three wheelers) has remained constant or actually decreased.

Today, with a great leap forward in motorcycle ownership over the last decade due to the availability of cheap Indian and Chinese motorcycles on easy payment terms, our highways look catastrophic, and it's only going to get worse.
What surprises me is that the number of motorcycle accidents aren't actually higher. Actually, all motorists must take their share of the blame and, given our average road manners, the accident rate could be worse for all vehicles on our roads. The worst culprits are private bus drivers.

But, given the present economic realities, two-wheeled transport is going to the most practical solution for middle and lower income levels in the years to come. As such, motorcyclists have a stake in their own safety. Few accidents means that more people, especially women, will be riding bikes if only to escape the rigours of public transport and road congestion.

A good image is essential for motorcyclists as subtle (or not-so-subtle) social nuances are at work here. In our motoring hierarchy, the motorcycle is still way behind the car, hence not acceptable to the well-do-do even as secondary transport. But the economic squeeze is changing all that, albeit slowly. Better-behaved riders means better acceptance for the motorcycle.
Better riding means better riding safety. Lacking basic riding skills is one thing. Reckless riding is another. Both are equally inexcusable. The training one undergoes in this country for a driving license is inadequate at best. When it comes to cars, it's a question of learning gear changes, signals and braking. Put a car into a spin on a wet road, and see how many people can emerge unscathed.

But the motorcycle license driving test is even more rudimentary. It consists of riding the figure eight slowly. The small motorcycles on our roads (mostly 125cc or less) are so easy to manoeuvre that even people who aren't sober have been known to do it. But riding on public roads during a lifetime is more than the simple matter of doing the figure eight.
Watch riders at a traffic intersection. When the light turns green, the revvy little machines are accelerated to the maximum, and there's a race to the next light or traffic block. It's nice to watch the bikes deftly weaving in and out of traffic, often with only a few feet's gap between vehicles. But what if you have to break suddenly? How many riders can stop their machines safely within skidding or crashing into somebody else?

Recently, I watched while passing the town of Opanayake as a motorcycle, ambling along at no more than 10 mph, crashed into the rear of a double cab which braked suddenly to avoid a pedestrian. No one was hurt but the rider's new machine was damaged. Clearly, the young rider either forgot to brake or touched the front drum brake only. It may not have been up to the job of stopping even at that slow speed as the bike was only a few feet behind the cab.

Most riders have no idea as to how to use both brakes effectively. What if the rider experiences wheel lock at high speed? How do you negotiate a bend at high speed? How many people have heard of counter-steering, which means that, in an emergency which will say make you want to go right to avoid an oncoming vehicle, the most effective thing to do is actually push the handlebar left? Funny as it may sound, pushing in the opposite direction is the best and quickest way to make the motorcycle go in the direction you want it to go. But this vital life-saving technique is never taught to our motorcycle riders.

We have driving schools but no riding schools. Motorcyclists are supposed to learn the art of using public roads by themselves, and the results show. One can argue that the existence of driving schools has not improved the way most of us drive four-wheeled vehicles; hence, riding schools too, are superfluous.

But this is the equivalent of saying that education and literacy are redundant because most people don't have a reading habit or don't read anything of value (more on riding safety the next time).