My first countersteering

[Keith Harding]

" I panicked when a car pulled out in front of me and I grabbed the brake rather than squeeze gently"
That's always gonna happen, I guess. I'm very envious of people who can do the 'squeeze gently' thing in an emergency situation; I have a feeling that I'd probably end up under the bike like you, Retrorider.
Practice Practice Practice, I suppose.

 

[dr_cerebro]

and never hit the front brake in a corner...

Yesterday, a friend that used to ride with us, got pannic during a curve and hit the front brake. His Yamaha R6 quit leaning and he crashed directly to an electricity pole out of the curve. He's in bad condition, several fractures (femur, hip and spine), but he will recover.

 

[Beiciwr]

This thread makes an interesting read.
When I started biking in the late 1970s I don't think the word 'countersteering' existed; I certainly never heard it used. Good riders just learnt to do it sub-consciously. Having come back to riding in the last decade, I can now exploit it more because I'm more aware of what it is. (But gotta say that countersteering is less marked on the Bonnie than on my last bike, which had a much higher centre of gravity.)

 

[Blkbny]

I suspect the issue is that 'Back in the Day', we went directly from riding bicycles to what would be considered small motorcycles today.

We had been countersteering our bicycles for years and it was a natural progression to the motorbike.

Now folks are mounting first bikes that are bigger than anything we could imagine 40 years ago and missing, or have forgotten, the riding foundations we learned in our youth on bicycles.

Perhaps the first day of a motorcycle training course should be done on a ten-speed...