Safety Driving Tips for my Fellow Motorcycle Riders

At age 5, eager to ride a bicycle, I've learn how to ride by myself. From then on, at an early age of 13, I eventually drove a clutch-based off-road motorcycle. It was the most amazing feeling of a first time rider. I could say at an early age, it's not safe and advisable to drive on highways, but I did and even race to a speed of 100 Km/hr on 5th gear. I really love motorcycling, though aware of the dangers of it if mishandled. So let me share you some safety driving tips based on my experience.

The general rule is, always be a defensive driver, always wear helmet.

If someone overtakes you, don't chase to take back your place as if you were in a race. I know from experience, young drivers have high adrenalin drive, and that is trigerred when someone overtakes them. It's crazy, but it feels good when you outran him, though you almost put your life at stake in the process, and you realize you have no trophy to expect even if you win. Good thing I graduated from doing this after I reached my 30s.

When doing overtakes, always think for backout plan for failed overtake. Sometimes the vehicle we are overtaking suddenly speeds up, or if not, the one on the opposite lane speeds up, that way you could still brake and go down to your lane.

Don't ever follow behind, especially a four wheeled vehicle that is doing a fast overtake. There is a likely chance that it would run out of overtaking space and would suddenly merge back to the right lane, leaving you vulnerable to speeding opposite lane or worst it backout and brake suddenly to fall behind, leaving you no space to do an almost full stop. In short, always leave a safe space between speeding vehicles.

Don't ever do overtakes on curves, be it sharp curve or not even if you could see there's no vehicle approaching. Because if you do, chances are if someone or an animal crosses the street, you would have to do a sudden brake, we all know that the strongest stopping power is on the front wheel, but you can't do full front brake because you are in a curve, neither you could brake the rear without yet braking the front, doing so would slip your rear wheel off the road.

Avoid swerving or going sandwich between vehicles. Chances are if one of the vehicle suddenly spotted a pot hole or anything bumpy on the road and would swerve to avoid it.

Know the Limit of your Motorcycle Stopping Power

Most of the accident happens due to overestimating their motorcycle stopping power. Most of the motorcycles which has just one (1) front brake plate (except bigger bikes with two (2) front brake plates), has less stopping power, yet these light motorcycles gains velocity so fast but when it needs to stop suddenly, it just can't like bigger bikes do and other four wheeled vehicles. If you want to speed up, keep a safe distance in proportion to your speed and stopping power.

It is assumed, you, being a licensed driver, for your safety, to always follow the basic traffic rules which I don't need to mention here. Remember, a driver without helmet is considered an organ donor when accidents happened.

I've written these based on personal experience on light motorcycles (underbones), up to heavy ones (sports bike). I crashed twice during my 20 years of motorcycling and I got no helmet (hard-headed too), but luckily I survived the crash. This time, being a family man, I decided to upgrade to four wheeled vehicle.