Road Badge › When It Goes Wrong › Two ways round a thing

A teenage rider steering around a pothole on a suburban road, looking well ahead past it.

Two ways round a thing

Small thing, small move. Big thing, big move.

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Step 1 of 10 All lessons

1Seen at thirteen feet

A boy riding along a green-painted bike lane, helmet on. A fist-sized chunk of broken concrete is lying in the lane a few strides ahead of him, in the shadow of a parked white van. — The broken curb, directly under your line, thirteen feet out.

You are riding a bike lane at a steady speed. A fist-sized chunk of broken curb appears from behind the shadow of a parked van, about thirteen feet ahead, directly in your line.

Too close to brake for, too small to be worth a whole change of direction. The cycling schools built a separate skill for exactly this, and most riders have never heard of it.

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2Motorcycling has one move here and cycling has two

The motorcycle course calls it swerving and teaches one manoeuvre. Cycling curricula split it in two, because a bicycle can do something a motorcycle cannot: move the front wheel sideways without moving the rest of itself.

The rock dodge is for a small object spotted late, where your line must not change. The snap turn is for a real change of direction — a car pulling out, a door, something across the whole lane. Different threats, different moves, and using the wrong one is worse than using neither.

3The rock dodge, and why it works

The instruction is almost physical: quickly flick the front wheel around the object — the wheel weaves quickly to one side, then the other, while your bike and your body maintain a straight line. A snap left, a snap right, and you are past it. Your shoulders do not move and neither does your line.

And here is the part that makes it a real skill rather than a trick: the back wheel is allowed to hit the thing. Front-wheel contact is what puts riders on the ground. Rear-wheel contact over the same object is far less likely to cause a crash. So the rock dodge does not try to save both wheels. It saves the one that matters.

4Snap, snap, straight on

A rider's-eye run down a lane with small objects appearing at random on your line, spaced a few bike lengths apart. Two keys snap the front wheel left and right; a third steers the whole machine. Your line is drawn behind you as you go. Get past the objects with the drawn line still straight.

Try it first with the steering key, the way most people would. Watch what your line does, and then look at how far into the next lane you have wandered by the fourth object.

5The snap turn, which has four steps and two warnings

For a genuine change of direction:

Flick the wheel briefly the opposite way to where you want to go.

Turn your head towards the turn and look where you want to end up.

Keep the inside pedal up.

Let the machine lean, and go where you are looking.

The two warnings are written in capitals in the source and both belong to this course. Never touch the brakes once it is leaning — the back wheel lifts and slides out. And tires with a knobbly off-road tread may not grip sidewalk, which is a live warning for a lot of fat-tire e-bikes. Learn it slowly, and never learn it at speed.

6A car noses out sixty feet ahead.

Pick one.

Yes, and you did the two things in sequence rather than together. Sixty feet is stopping room, and stopping is the move with the fewest ways to go wrong. If it runs out, the brakes come off and then you go round, which is the whole of the rule.

The first one is the right tool for the wrong size of problem — a rock dodge moves a wheel, not a rider, and a car is not something you get past by a hand-width. The third one is the mistake the manual is written against: brake before or after, never while swerving. Doing both asks one tire for two jobs, and it cannot do them.

7What the test actually measures

A stopwatch on a folding table next to two parked bikes, with two chalk lines marking out a braking test. Nobody is in this picture. — The swerve test from above: a timing zone, an obstacle line, and the side lines.

That is the fourth and last item of a riding test that is four exercises long. There are painted lines, a measured distance and a stopwatch, and it is the reason nobody claims a screen can certify this.

8Which of these belong to the rock dodge?

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 3.

Three. A flick of the wheel, and the rest of you goes straight through.

Three of those turn the bike instead of the wheel, which is how you end up leaning at it.

9One line that covers both moves

Say it out loud, in your normal voice

Wheel round it, or all of me. Never both.

Say it before each practice run so the choice is made before the object appears. The moves themselves are quick. Deciding which one you are doing is the slow part, and it is the part you can do in advance.

10Before you leave this page

Snap round the markers without weaving.

Lay a line of beanbags, chalk marks or paper plates along your riding line in the empty lot, four to six feet apart, the way the school drill sets it up. Ride the line at a steady speed and snap the front wheel round each one. Your witness stands at the far end and ticks a run only if you got past them all with your body going straight down the line and no weaving.