Road Badge › Look Behind, Ride Straight › Why looking back can swerve you

A teenage rider looking back over their left shoulder while riding, the front wheel starting to drift off line.

Why looking back can swerve you

Lock the elbow and your line stays put.

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Step 1 of 10 All lessons

1The look and the drift

A boy riding slowly along a painted line on empty tarmac, helmet on, his head turned right to look back over his shoulder while the front wheel has wandered off the line. — Head turned right, front wheel already off the line.

Ride along a chalk line and turn your head to look over your right shoulder. The bike drifts about a foot and a half to the right while you are looking.

That is not carelessness. The bike went where your shoulders told it to go. Turning your head turns your body, and the bike follows your body.

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2The gate that every program puts right here

The UK national cycle training scheme has two criteria at the end of its traffic-free level: look behind over each shoulder while pedalling in a straight line, and pedal one handed in a straight line. Then it writes the gate in plain words — demonstrating that whole level is a prerequisite for going out on roads at all.

It looks like the smallest skill in this course and it is the one everything on a road is built on. You cannot join traffic until you can take your eyes off where you are going, and a hand off the bars, and still be exactly where you were.

3The mechanism, and it is not about balance

The training article says it in one line: a bicycle is steered as much by the hips and shoulders as by the hands. Twist right, and you drift right. Your arms connect you to the handlebar, so a torso that rotates takes the bar with it by a few degrees, and a few degrees is all it takes.

One American source offers a second explanation about the balance organs inside your head and the fluid in them moving when you turn. We could not find research behind that one, so we are flagging it rather than teaching it. The shoulder explanation is the mechanical one, and it is the one the fixes actually work on.

4Three fixes, and the middle one is the one to learn

An American cycling school teaches three of them.

Relaxed: arms loose and slightly bent, turn only your head. Fine for a very quick look.

Stiff arm: lock out the elbow on the side you are looking and tuck your chin down to that shoulder. The locked arm physically stops the shoulder rotation reaching the handlebar.

Full rotation: sit up, take one hand off, turn the shoulders.

Learn the stiff arm first. It is the one that works for a real look rather than a flick, it does not need a hand off the bars, and it is the one that turns a foot of drift into none.

5You look right and the bike goes right too.

Pick one.

Yes, and it fixes the cause instead of the symptom. The drift comes from your shoulder turning the bar, so a locked elbow puts a rigid straight thing between the two and the rotation stops at your neck. Your head still gets all the way round, which is the part that was the point.

Both of those make the look worse without making the line better. A smaller turn of the head means you see less, which is the entire reason you were looking. And gripping harder does not stop your shoulders rotating — it couples you to the bar more firmly, so the bar gets more of the twist rather than less.

6Where the twist stops

Two riders in buckled helmets stopped side by side across a street, both looking back over a shoulder.

Same head position in both pictures. The only difference is one straight arm, and it is the whole difference between a foot of drift and none of it.

7Turn the shoulders

A rider seen from above on a straight line. A slider turns their head and shoulders round. Toggle between loose arms, a locked elbow and a hand off the bar, and watch how much of the shoulder rotation reaches the handlebar and how far the line bends.

Push the slider all the way with loose arms first, so you can see how little rotation it takes to move a front wheel.

8Which help you hold the line in a look?

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 4.

Four. Lock the elbow, tuck the chin, and the bars stay where you left them.

Two of those make it worse. Gripping harder steers; looking less far sees less.

9Two things before every look

Say it out loud on the practice runs

Lock it. Chin down.

Say it out loud on the first twenty looks and the arm starts doing it before your head turns. After that it stops being a technique and becomes just how you look behind.

10Before you leave this page

Ten looks each way. Watch the line move.

In your practice space, ride a chalk line and look over your right shoulder with that elbow locked and your chin to your shoulder. Then the same over the left. Ten each way, with somebody watching the front wheel and telling you honestly whether the line moved.