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Section check: When It Goes Wrong
Six lessons, six decisions. Get one wrong and it will tell you which lesson to go back to, and you can come again as many times as you like. Finishing this section means you got all six right, not that you scraped a pass. The Road Badge itself comes after all eight sections.
Step 1 of 6
1Decide
A friend has just got a machine and wants you to teach them the emergency stop first.
Yes, and you can say why in one line. A hard stop is a normal stop turned up, so there has to be a normal stop underneath it first. Nobody in seven programmes teaches it any other way, and getting to it takes sessions, not months.
The first one is the good instinct and it still doesn’t work. A rider who grabs at the levers in a panic on day one has just learned to grab, and that’s now the habit sitting under everything else. The third isn’t teaching at all – be careful isn’t a skill and can’t be practised or witnessed. Go back to 8.1.
Pick the right one to carry on.
2Decide
Something steps out while you're mid-way through a bend.
Yes, and this is the one rule in this section that three separate sources agree on. A tyre that’s already busy holding a lean has nothing left to give a brake. Standing it up first costs a fraction of a second and gives you the whole tyre back.
Think about what the tyre’s already doing. Cornering is using up grip. Braking asks for more of the same grip, and there isn’t any spare, so what you get is the back wheel sliding out from under you. Go back to 8.2.
Pick the right one to carry on.
3Decide
A car noses out of a driveway across your lane, twenty metres ahead.
Yes, and you did the two things in sequence rather than together. Twenty metres 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.
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 isn’t something you get past by a hand-width. The third is the mistake the manual is written against: brake before or after, never while swerving. Go back to 8.3.
Pick the right one to carry on.
4Decide
You're alongside a parked row and a door starts to open two car-lengths ahead.
Yes, and two car-lengths is exactly the case where you still have the good option. A hard straight stop uses the tool with the fewest failure modes and doesn’t put you anywhere new. The lane behind you is the one thing you can’t see, so it’s the last place to send yourself.
Look at where each of those puts you. Swerving left moves you from a problem you can see into traffic you can’t, and the driver behind has no idea it’s coming. Speeding up bets the whole thing on how fast somebody else opens a door, which isn’t a number you have. Go back to 8.4.
Pick the right one to carry on.
5Decide
A dog comes off a driveway at you, barking, about three metres away.
Yes, and it’s the answer the cycling handbook gives in its own words. Stopping often stops the dog. A firm voice does a surprising amount of the work. And the machine is a wide metal barrier you happen to be holding, which is the most useful thing about it in that moment.
Both of those need something you don’t have. Outrunning it needs a machine faster than a dog and full attention forward, and you’d be looking sideways. Kicking needs one foot off a pedal and your weight on a machine that’s now steering itself, three metres from an animal. Go back to 8.5.
Pick the right one to carry on.
6Decide
A set of rails crosses your road at a shallow angle, and the tarmac's wet.
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, 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. 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’re on it. Go back to 8.6.
Pick the right one to carry on.
Section done: When It Goes Wrong.
Every question right. Seven more sections and the Road Badge is yours. Show a parent this screen tonight, and tell them one thing from this section you did not know before.
Back to Road BadgeSection 8 · When It Goes Wrong
8.1Why this is the last badge and not the first8.2The quick stop, and the pedals that are not where you think8.3Two different ways round a thing8.4You get one of them, not both8.5The dog, and two manuals that disagree8.6Gravel, grates, rails, and the last skill in the course★Section check