Riding when you are not right

1Watch

The machines by the fence

The decision in that frame is not about the party. It is about the mile of road between that fence and everybody’s front door.

2The idea

The adult course gives this a unit of its own

Motorcycle rider training does not tuck impairment into a footnote. It gets its own unit, alongside braking and cornering, and it is taught as content rather than as a lecture. Adults sitting that course are told what alcohol does to a rider, and then left to do the arithmetic.

This lesson is that unit, on a machine that weighs 30 to 60 pounds and holds its speed all the way to the junction. Nothing here is about whether you should be drinking. It is about what happens if you get on a machine afterwards.

3The idea

What the trauma centre found

A New York hospital studied its own e-bike and scooter patients. About one in five tested positive for alcohol. In that group, alcohol went together with worse brain injuries and with lower helmet use, which is two things arriving at once rather than one.

That second half is the part riders miss. Alcohol does not just make the crash more likely. It quietly removes the thing that decides how the crash ends, because the helmet is the first decision to go when the arguing part of the brain has clocked off.

4Look

The one vehicle you can walk away from

That machine can stay exactly where it is until tomorrow. It is the only vehicle in this whole course that you can lock up, walk away from and collect in the morning, and that is a genuinely useful thing to have noticed in advance.

5The idea

It is not only about the rider

Nationally, in 2020, thirty-four per cent of fatal crashes involving people on bikes had alcohol in them from one party or the other. Either party. Some of those are the rider, and some of those are the person driving the car.

So it cuts both ways, and it is another reason the evening rules from earlier in this course exist: lights on, bright kit, and the assumption that the driver has not seen you. On a Friday night, that assumption is doing more work than usual.

6Decide

It is late, you are not right, and the machine is chained to a fence a mile from home.

7The idea

Tired belongs on the same list

The safety course puts impaired and distracted in the same sentence for a reason, and fatigue is named on the distraction list beside phones and music. A rider who is genuinely exhausted has the same lengthened response time as a rider reading a message.

The test is the same for all of them: if you would not want to be the rider who has to stop suddenly, you are not riding. That is a decision you can make honestly at a fence, and almost never make honestly at 30 miles an hour.

8Say it

The call you would rather have practised

Three short facts and one request, in that order, and no explaining. It is a much easier sentence at eleven at night if your mouth has already been through it once at four in the afternoon.

9Find them

Which of these mean you are not riding home?

Tap the ones that count.

10Do it

Before you leave this page