Motorcycle Roadcraft the Police Rider's Handbook to Better Motorcycling [Paperback]

having done some limited training with the london metropolitan police riders i started to appreciate just how much better than me a class 1 trained police rider really is. throwing my bike into a series of tight lefts and rights on public roads i never once managed to shake the PC behind me - i was on a gixxer 600 with over 100bhp and he was 30yrs older than me on a BMW tourer. my respect was upped enormously.

the same policeman told me to read roadcraft and i can truly attest that this book will not only make you safer, it will make you both a faster and safer rider and the combination will put a smile on your face all day long. the content is a bit dry, but for anyone that loves their bike and loves feeling like the king of the road, then the effort should prove extremely rewarding.

save your life and brighten up your weekend all at once, read this manual.

I prefer the lessons I learned in Nick Ienatsch's Sport Riding Techniques. The book is a basic road usage guide but provides no insight on difficult maneuvers that I was looking for. Be advised that the examples used assume left side driving that "colours" the advice but also hightens your awareness of what you are reading.

Personally, I feel there are three aspects to a well-formed belief system around police riding... 1. Roadcraft / street strategies - how you conduct yourself on the road to maximize the probability of not being in an accident or other threatening situation... vehicle positioning, situation and traffic assessment, etc. 2. Well-practiced vehicle-handling skills - obstacle avoidance, braking, slow-riding & balance, etc. all worked sufficiently and recently enough that they have been committed to procedural (muscle) memory. 3. A personal training ethic to keep the highly perishable skills of points one and two honed, current, and available. I don't believe you can be a safe and proficient rider without spending equal time on all three points. This book deals exclusively with the first aspect.

"Motorcycle Roadcraft" discusses one approach to the mechanics of optimizing awareness over the road. It's a "system"... it's a point of view... it's a collection of street-level strategies for staying on the right side of the event horizon of crashes and unplanned/reactive vehicle-handling in response to hazards. It's not the only way to do it, but it is the best considered one I have found to date. Operators get hurt when they get surprised and one explanation of roadcraft might be that it is an efficient process for organizing your awareness of your environment that reduces the probability that you will be surprised. Until you get into this, you will be surprised as to just how far you can take this and particularly if you do a little further research on physiological and psychological limits on the operator's ability to organize his knowledge of his environment. Reading this book in conjunction with observing a talented operator do a running commentary on his work flow really drives the concepts home.

"Roadcraft" seems to be an essentially UK point of view on riding that has been called "street strategies" on this side of the pond though everything I've observed about the UK approach is that it is significantly more systematized and more deeply considered that anything I've seen out of the US. I've certified to the Advanced level with police in the US. They do a very good job in terms of drilling on/mastering the most essential vehicle-handling skills... slow-riding, braking, obstacle avoidance and pairs/group riding. However, I feel a gaping omission in the US system is a nearly complete lack of roadcraft work, at least in the training I've taken or am aware of, and this is where the Brits appear to really do it right. Just as the essential vehicle-handling skills and associated teaching methods have been studied and honed by the police on both sides of the pond over generations of motor officers and instructors, the Brits have applied this same approach to roadcraft.

Learning to ride proficiently isn't like learning to apply physics proficiently... there isn't just one answer. What works... what is "optimum" is continuously evolving and always a matter of opinion, some credible, some not. This book, and in fact any single book or learning method or point of view, does not eliminate the immense value of competent instruction under the watchful eye of a knowledgeable and experienced instructor. The acquisition of riding skills (any skills) is an open-ended journey of scholarship, practice, questioning, improvement and collaboration, and while this book is in my opinion very well considered and expressed, it shouldn't be the only brick in the foundation of your knowledge. But I suggest it should be one of them. If Julliard taught riding, this book would be in the curriculum.

There is nothing on vehicle-handling itself in this book, but that is what the basic and in-service training are for. There are also some very useful thoughts on the value of a personal training ethic, though that is a bit distributed.

Ride safe.

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