Gravel, grates and rails

1The slot that lines up with you

Close and low on a road gutter running into a metal drain grate whose slots run the same direction as the road. A bicycle front wheel is right at the edge of it, lined up with the slots. No rider is in this picture. — The slots running the same way as your wheel.

Your line runs along the gutter towards a drain grate. The slots in it run the same way your wheel is going. Your front tire is about three feet from the first opening.

That grate is not a hazard to a car, or to somebody walking, or even to a bike crossing it sideways. It is a hazard to exactly one thing, and it is the width of your front tire.

All lessons

2The one instruction that covers nearly all of it

Gravel, wet paint, a metal plate, a steel crossing, wet leaves, a grate: the technique for all of them is the same, and the manual says it about grates in four words. Relax, maintain a steady speed, and ride straight across.

Unpack that into what your hands and body do. Upright, straight, steady, and nothing else happening. No braking while you are on it, no turning while you are on it, no accelerating while you are on it. Get all of your slowing and all of your steering done before the edge of the stuff, and then just cross it.

3Where it collects, which is predictable

Loose gravel and sand built up along the outside edge of a bend in a country road. — Gravel drifted along the outside of a bend, with wet paint and steel alongside.

The motorcycle manual gives this as a where-to-expect instruction rather than a what-to-do one: dirt and gravel collect along the sides of the road, and especially on curves and on ramps. Knowing where it will be is worth more than knowing how to ride it.

4Two things that are worse than they look

The grate with parallel slots. A road authority puts it plainly: be extra careful where the openings run parallel to the road, because a wheel can get stuck in them. This is the strongest single argument for not riding in the gutter, which you met back in badge five, and it is why the position had a minimum distance from the curb built into it.

And wet metal and wet paint. Crossings, plates, rails, painted lines: all of them are slippery wet, and all of them are exactly where you are least expecting to need grip. There is no wet braking number in this course, because the sources do not carry one that stands up. What you get instead is: brake earlier and leave more room.

5Rails, with two angles

Cross tracks at a right angle. That is the target, from a road-safety authority, and it applies to railway lines, tram lines and anything else with a groove in it. Where a full ninety degrees will not fit inside your lane, the motorcycle manual gives the floor: never less than forty-five degrees. Ninety is the aim, forty-five is the minimum, and anything shallower is a groove your wheel can drop into.

Two more from the same source. Rails are slippery when wet, so go slowly. And if the signals show a train coming, stop at least fifteen feet back and let it be somebody else’s problem.

6Wet rails cross at a shallow angle.

Pick one.

Yes, and the look behind is the half most people leave out. Changing your angle is a change of position on a road, so it needs the same routine as any other one: look, communicate, see them respond, then move. Then straight, upright and steady across.

The first one is how front wheels go into grooves. A shallow angle plus a wet groove is the exact combination the warning is written about. And the third puts hard braking and a slippery metal edge in the same half second, when the whole rule is that nothing else happens while you are on it.

7Find the angle

A set of rails crossing a road at various angles, with a lane drawn either side. Drag your approach line to set the crossing angle. The game shows whether you have made ninety, made the forty-five floor, or are still too shallow, and whether your line fits inside the lane. Some of the layouts have no line that works, and those ones offer a fourth button.

Three of the layouts cannot be solved with any angle that fits in the lane. The fourth button on those is the get off and walk button, and it is a correct answer, not a give-up.

8Which are true while you are on it?

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 3.

Four surfaces, and the answer is the same: straighten, soften, and go across square.

Two of those hold a lean or a brake on the bad bit, which is where grip runs out.

9The permission, out loud, in your own voice

Say it out loud, in your normal voice, not as a joke

This one I'm walking.

The authority’s own instruction is that if the manoeuvre seems risky, you dismount and walk across. The reason that instruction gets ignored by people your age is not that it is hard. It is that it looks bad for about four seconds. Say the line now so that it is a sentence you have already used.

10Before you leave this page

Stand on the worst surface. Say the plan.

Last one, and it is the whole course. Get the person who has been watching your drills and walk to the worst a hundred and fifty feet on the route you ride most — the rails, the grate, the gravel on the bend, whichever it is. Stand on it. Say out loud what the surface is doing, what you would do about it, and whether you are riding it or walking it. Then do the one you said, with them watching, and let them tick it. Both answers count, and that is the last thing this course has to teach you.