Why this is the last badge and not the first

1Look

Seven programmes, same place in the list

Seven separate organisations, in four countries, who did not copy each other. Every one of them put these two skills at the end, and none of them put them anywhere else.

2The idea

Where they actually sit, with the numbers

In the motorcycle course, stopping more quickly is exercise seven of fourteen and crossing an obstacle and swerving is exercise thirteen. The riding test at the end has four items, and the third and fourth of them are the quick stop and the obstacle swerve. They are the last things taught and the last things measured.

The cycling schemes do the same. And one US state legislature, writing the minimum contents of an e-bike course into statute, lists four pillars — general safety, emergency manoeuvre skills, rules of the road, and the law. Emergency skill is named in law as a thing a course must contain.

3The idea

And here is the reason, which is not about danger

An emergency move is not a special move. It is an ordinary move done harder and faster than you have ever done it. A quick stop is the stop from badge three with everything turned up. A swerve is the straight line from badge three plus the looking from badge four, done in about half a second.

So the order is not caution, it is arithmetic. You cannot brake at the limit if you do not yet brake smoothly, because at the limit you find out what your habits are. Everything you did in the empty lot is what your hands will do without asking you. That is the thing this badge is standing on.

4The idea

The other reason, which is that seeing it early is cheaper

The programmes also put perception before this. You learned to read a junction, a parked row and a path before you learned to get out of trouble, because the trouble you see three seconds early does not need any of this badge. It needs a bit of brake and a change of line.

These moves are the last defence, not the first. A rider who uses them often is telling you something about how early they are looking, not about how good they are. The best outcome for this whole badge is that you learn it properly and then almost never need it.

5Build it

Put the course back in order

Try putting the quick stop at stage two and see what the card says comes apart. It is not that it is dangerous to learn early. It is that there is nothing underneath it to attach to.

6Decide

A friend has just got a machine and wants you to teach them the emergency stop first.

7Look

What a screen can and cannot give you

The organisation that wrote the motorcycle course sells its own online version, and states plainly that it is not accepted as a licence waiver by any state’s licensing authority. They had every commercial reason to say otherwise.

8Find them

Which of these does this badge sit on top of?

Tap the ones that count.

9Say it

The rule for every drill in this badge

Every move in the next five lessons gets learned at walking pace with nobody around, and gets used once at speed with no warning. Say the line before each one, because the temptation with all of these is to try the fast version first.

10Do it

Before you leave this page