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More words have been written about cornering on a motorcycle than any other topic.
So you might be forgiven for wondering why I'm going to add a few more!
The answer is that every few months, someone asks the question: "what's the best way to get round corners?" and mostly they get sensible advice but there are still differences of opinion on the
correct way to take a corner.
The general consensus these days is that the best way to deal with a bend that the rider can't see round (which is most of them here in the UK particularly if you consider the need to see the road surface
too!) is to go in deep and relatively slow, turning tighter and straightening the bend only when they see the exit. That's what I call "Point and Squirt" cornering, so further along I'll explain what it is and why I teach it.
But that's certainly not the way it's always been and there are still people who ride in what is a throwback style. Back in the late 70s and 80s, I was scouring the bookshops for information about riding.
Like many riders at that time I bought the "Blue Book" edition of 'Roadcraft' as well as a book from the IAM to help improve my riding. Unfortunately, whilst they had a lot of useful stuff, neither of these books really gave me or my contemporaries a lot of help on cornering.
In fact, the advice from 'Roadcraft' that stuck in my mind were the cornering diagrams which showed near-symmetrical maximum radius lines worked into the width of the road, starting wide, clipping a mid-corner apex and drifting wide on the exit), and the use of "throttle sense" to speed up and slow down (rather than the brakes) as the radius of the bend changed. The argument was that using the "maximum radius" line would improve stability in bends because the rider wouldn't have to lean over so far.
So for a number of years, this is what I tended to do, particularly as magazine articles written in the late 70s and 80s tended to repeat these points. And many riders today STILL ride in that fashion.
The first clearly written exception to the "wide in, clip the apex, wide out" line in my opinion was an article in a series called 'Survival Arts' (from 'Motorcycle Sport') which
showed a different line, with a deeper approach, turning later and tighter, and exiting away from the white line approach. Though I've had a few arguments with other instructors who said it was me that
got it wrong, a quick examination of both sources will show the 'Survival Arts' line is quite different to the diagrams in the "Blue Book" edition of 'Roadcraft'.
This 'Survival Arts' article appeared in April 1990. I was doing a lot of cross country courier stuff from Kent at the time, and with the aid of that article, I altered my cornering technique from what many riders would see as classic smooth cornering lines, to a "slow on the brakes approach, go deep in, turn late and quickly, and drive out upright" riding style. I found this dramatic change allowed me to deal far better with bends I couldn't see round.
In 1993 Keith Code's 'Twist of the Wrist 2' was published. I read it, and have to admit I didn't really "get it" first time round. As I've said before, the combination of Californian English and psycho-babble doesn't make it an easy read. It went back on the shelf until sometime in 1994, when I got online and started discussing riding with riders from all over the world.
Naturally bends cropped up and I explained my technique, calling it "Point & Squirt" when I was trying to explain it to someone on CompuServe, and I started to get useful feedback from US riders who'd done Code's California Superbike School as well as Reg Pridmore's CLASS in the United States.
So I re-read Code, rather more carefully this time. What struck me immediately was that the stability issue of keeping the bike upright as much as possible and using the quick steer that Code thinks very
important made immediate sense to me, and confirmed what I was already doing.
The second point Code made was the desirability of keeping the throttle open all the way through a turn. This goes diametrically against 'Roadcraft's' "vary throttle/speed with radius" advice.
Code's approach to turning into a bend ("turn only when you see the exit" and "steer once only") and definition of the exit ("where you can do anything you want with the throttle
- pull a wheelie if you want to") as well as his "entry", "turn in" and "exit" reference points and the "two step" way of looking for the various targets to
aim for, made sense of the various tasks a rider has to perform mid-corner too. [As it happens, the "turn only when you see the exit" advice IS in the later edition of Roadcraft but it's not
given any great emphasis and in my experience certainly gets lost compared with the priority given to "maximising the radius of the turn".]
Another useful source of information that came my way at that time was some "Slow, Look, Lean, Roll" training material for instructors belonging to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation in the USA,
years before Thames Valley Advanced Motorcyclists started using the selfsame approach to bends.
It was pretty obvious that my new approach to corner was actually very similar to Keith Code's system and the "Slow Look Lean Roll".
I called this technique "Point and Squirt", because that's exactly what you do. You wait till you see where are going next, then turn sharper, point the bike at the exit and turn the throttle harder to squirt the bike out down the road to the next hazard.
It's not a racing technique or all about big or sudden inputs as has been suggested, it's about making positive inputs to slow, steer and accelerate at the right moment
with lower mid-turn speeds and reduced lean angles, rather than trying to maintain a high momentum, big lean, wide line.
The main difference is seen on flip / flop combinations of bends which go first one way then the other, where I try to keep the bike as upright as possible and use a line that looks more like a Z than the
sweeping S approach to corner complexes, with more positive use of the brakes to reduce speed and then positive throttle to regain speed.
A big advantage of the wide line with a late turn is that any evasive action to a hazard turns you INTO the corner which is where you want to go. If you're on a line that cuts a
mid-turn apex, the hazard is likely to make you pick the bike up and run WIDE!
So for nearly 20 years I've been riding this way. I've got some notes printed off on my old Amstrad PCW9512 which date the very early 90s when I actually started to write up the 'on the road' benefits of
what would become "Point and Squirt", and since 1996 Survival Skills has been training riders this way too.
The first time I recall seeing "Point and Squirt" properly explained in a UK magazine would be by Andy Ibbott writing as director of the UK version of the California Superbike school in MCN - without laying a hand on it, I'd hazard a guess that would be very late 90s - at which time Survival Skills had been teaching "Point & Squirt" for 3 or 4 years. An excellent series of "Expert Riding" articles in 'Bike' magazine by Andy Morrison in the mid 2000s covered the same techniques very well indeed.
Interestingly the 'Bikesafe' videos in my collection from Thames Valley and West Midlands clearly show the police riders using the deep in, quick steer technique that is part of what I call "Point and Squirt"
So you might think that the "Point and Squirt" variant is now the accepted way of riding bends.
So why, illogically, does the commentary on the second still talk about widening the line and not working the tyres so hard?
And I rode with a very nice guy just recently in the Pyrenees on one of our summer meets. He's had his IAM pass for 20 plus years and is still active in his group. After one of our rides, he quizzed me on
the lines I was taking round the hairpins. I explained Point & Squirt.
"Nah", he said, "I don't like that... it's all stop/start and sudden jinks... I like to avoid touching the brakes at all and use wide sweeping lines because the bike's more
stable. It's how my two mates who are both ex-police riders ride too".
I've been told that "Point and Squirt" is just the Roadcraft line "properly explained", or 're-branded' as one critic put it - not that he'd actually done one of my courses!
But I don't accept that. Put the advice from the MSF together with Keith Code's reference points together as I've done with the "Bends" sections of my courses and you
have a comprehensive "what, where and why" system for riding any bend, something that Roadcraft clearly lacks. Roadcraft does not explain the advantages (or disadvantages) of the late turn
line, the diagrams that show the vanishing point technique actually illustrate a "hugging the white line" line which is the complete opposite to P&S, and that the only advice pertinent to
the deep in, late turn approach is hidden in a cryptic warning!
"Point and Squirt" isn't the only way to ride a corner. But in my opinion it's by far and away the safest way to approach a bend you don't know, or any bend where the exit is blind.
PS: it was rather gratifying to find that 'Bike' magazine in their April 08 edition had used most of the advice I'd given online in January to a rider with cornering difficulties in their "Refresh
your Cornering" article that month.
Coincidence?
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