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.

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 section is standing on.

The programs also put perception before this. You learned to read an intersection, 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 section. It needs a bit of brake and a change of line.

These moves are the last defense, 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.

Fourteen cards, shuffled: setting off, the pre-ride check, holding a straight line, looking behind, signaling, lane position, intersection strategy, path etiquette, the quick stop, the swerve, cornering, slow control, reading an intersection and finding your local rule. Drop them into the seven stages the programs actually use. The card then shows where each one sits in the real curricula and what breaks if you move it earlier.

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.

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 4.

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.

Ten stops. Eight straight, or go back.

Go back to the empty lot from badge three, before you try anything else in this section. Make ten ordinary stops from a rolling speed, both brakes, squeezed and not grabbed, straight every time. Get somebody to watch and tick each one that finished straight with no lurch. If you cannot get eight out of ten, that is where the practice is, and the rest of this section will still be here.