Ready Kids › Road Badge › Badge 4 › Lesson 4.4
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Signalling, and no surprises
Signal a hundred feet before you turn, check behind you before you move across, and make every change of line one a driver could have predicted.
1Look
A hundred feet is further back than you think
The distance
A suburban street seen from a driver's windscreen well back from a rider, the rider's arm already out to signal, with the turning they are signalling for still a long way ahead of them.
That is roughly six or seven parked cars’ worth of road between the signal and the turn. Most riders signal from about one.
2The idea
What Illinois asks for
The law asks for a hand signal a hundred feet before you turn, and it names an arm position for each of the three things you can signal: left, right and stop. The distance is the part riders get wrong, and it is the part that does the work.
A signal is meant to be seen and then acted on. A driver behind you needs time to notice it, work out what it means and lift off. Get somebody to show you all three arm positions on the machine, and practise them where there is nothing to hit.
3The idea
One hand means one brake
Riding one-handed in a straight line is its own skill and it is practised on a range before anyone signals on a road. On a heavy machine at speed, taking a hand off changes what you can do with the machine for as long as it is off.
One hand on the bars means one brake. So the order is: signal early, get the hand back on the bars, then turn. The signal belongs to the approach. The turn itself is a two-handed job.
4The idea
Look before you signal, not after
The instruction from the people who train e-bike riders is to keep 360 degrees of awareness, and that includes behind you. Before you move across, look over your shoulder and find out what is actually there rather than what was there a minute ago.
Most riders wander off their line the first few times they look behind. That is normal and it goes away with practice, which is another reason the practice happens in an empty lot. Look, signal, then move, in that order, every time.
5Decide
You are about to move out around a parked car, with a car somewhere behind you.
Pick one to carry on.
6The idea
The one time a sudden move is the right one
The rest of this badge is about being predictable: adjust your speed early, adjust your position early, communicate, be courteous and cooperative about it. A driver can plan around a rider doing an obvious thing.
The exception is the swerve, and it is a practised skill rather than an improvised one. Rider training and e-bike programmes both say to practise emergency manoeuvres — quick stops and swerves — in a lot. A swerve you have practised is a tool. A swerve you have not is a coin toss with a kerb.
7Find them
What happens before you move across?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
8Your turn
The hundred feet
Where the signal goes
A street with a left turn at the end of it. Drag the point where you put your arm out. The card shows what the driver behind sees at that moment, how long they have to react, and how much road is left for you to get your hand back before the turn.
Drag it later and later and watch the driver’s time run out before yours does.
9Say it
Three words, in order
Say it out loud every time for the first week of riding
“Look, signal, move.”
Saying it keeps them in order under pressure, which is the only time the order gets dropped. After a week it stops being words and becomes what your head does at a turn.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
With the motor off and the machine held upright in the drive, take one hand off the bars and hold your arm out while somebody counts to five. Do it on both sides. Then get whoever rides with you to show you the three arm positions for left, right and stop.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Look, signal, then move. A hundred feet of warning and no sudden moves.
Next lesson: Search, evaluate, execute