Bonneville America Forums Forums Rider Safety Forums Riding Technique Laying it down vs braking

Here is a snippet from Proficient Motorcycling for those of you who still consider laying a bike down an alternative braking procedure.
"There was a time when motorcycle brakes and tires didn’t perform very well, which led to the standard quick stop technique known as “laying it down.” Many riders from the good old days think that this is the best way to stop a bike in an emergency.
Even though motorcycle brakes have evolved remarkably over the years, this archaic method lives on with more than a few of today’s riders out there who think that “laying it down” is still a reasonable option. Sadly, some of these riders continue to pass on this technique to newer riders in the guise of sage advice. The way I see it is that if the tires can grip and the brakes are able to dissipate energy, then why not use them to their
fullest? The “laying it down” method gives up on any hope of stopping with the motorcycle on its tires and instead relies on chrome, plastic and metal sliding on pavement to somehow slow the bike down. It’s interesting to note that some riders will often state that they had to lay it down to avoid a collision, when in reality they simply skidded and lost control.
While there may be a few rare situations where strategically laying a motorcycle down may make sense, it is better for riders to focus on proper braking skills that keep the rubber on the road. It’s also important to use strategies that avoid the need to use emergency braking skills in the first place".

I've only "laid her down" once (by choice anyway), and that was on my old Z750 softail

Through my own stupid fault I had a choice of either a 50 mph smash into the rear end of a stationary lorry or go for the kerb.

I'm still here so I must have gone for the kerb

The weird thing is, while I was sliding along on my back, I thought "At least my headlight hasn't smashed", then I immediately heard the tinkle of a headlightlight smashing. I don't know why I was concerned about the headlight, it was nothing special

had I not trusted my brakes, I would have laid it down. A light tap on the driver's door is all that happened. That and a lot of colorful words directed at the cager.

Words of Wisdom as heard in my generation, "Always ride the bike" or something to that effect. If you have to lay it down let the bike make that decision for you. The point at which one makes a strategic laydown is always a guess. And the guess is most always too early. The limits of traction and one's mental acuity (read SIPDE) are in play. No amount of braking or handling skill will overcome being a dumbass squid or one whose ba is above zero.

Yep, this all sounds pretty logical, alright.

Though, I still say that what stuntman Bud Ekins does on his Bonneville at the 4:00 mark of this clip, still looks pretty darn cool ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk-4aVdu5z4

There is only one situation where you need to lay it down.
It happened to me when I was a teenager.
There was a local deliquent named Damien that lived up to his name.
He strung barbed wire neck high across the trail.
I locked up both wheels and slid under it.
Got him back, though. He was riding his bicycle down the road,
I came up behind at about 40mph and smacked him in the head.
Knocked him off his bike and almost broke my hand.
Ah, memories.

No. Here's number two.
The only time for me was after having the bike apart for some reason, and I forgot to adjust the rear brake rod ( rear brakes only on that bike) before hitting the road in front of my house for a test run. I realized there was no brake just when I was in need of a LOT of brake, right before a dead end ninety degree turn.
So, the decision to drop on the short side and try to lessen the inevitable impact was made.
Sliding into the wall tires first was better than front end first.

I just hope my instincts would kick in well enough ahead to make the right decision. Tough call, that one can be... and not a lot of time to think about it.

This sobering story found in another forum... while 'slightly' OT, is nevertheless pertinent to the thread.


"I used to think that I was a pretty smart rider and that by keeping my bike well maintained, never mixing motorcycling and alcohol, and religiously following ATGATT (All The Gear, All The Time) would keep me from harm....that all changed this morning.

It was a rare, sunny, gorgeous dry day here in eastern PA. The kind of day that left no doubt in your mind when you got up that the commute would be done on two wheels instead of four. I got on the usual boots, gloves, helmet, and ventilated (and armored) jacket and pants to head out at 6 AM on the 40 mile commute to work. The first 12 miles are the most beautiful asphalt roller coaster before you hit the slab and I was making great time through every twist and turn without a single car, so far so good.

The back roads transitioned to a minor country highway before the turnpike and it was looking like a good start to the ride as I was headed south on these nice wooded sweepers. I saw another bike headed north towards me coming off a gentle curve, I noticed a couple vehicles on a side road coming up on my left....and that's when it all went bad.

I was a couple hundred yards from all of this when this big Ford F-150 pickup (the kind with the monster front end) slowly pulls out from my left to make the turn southbound right in front of the oncoming bike. The bike was not traveling at an excessive speed (about 60mph by my guess). The truck kept pulling out slowly, saw the bike, and stopped dead in his lane with his wheels on the dividing line. The truck obscured my view of the bike but I saw a big swerve, the bike glanced off the truck, crossed my lane, and hit the grassy slope of the lawn on my right. The bike stopped but the rider was thrown another 50 feet up onto the grass.

I immediately pulled over to check on the rider and the first words out of my mouth were 'Oh ******'. He quietly responded 'Dude, not now' so at least I knew he was conscious (the squeamish should read no further).

The reason I said 'Oh ******' was that he was on his side with one leg in the air and the part of his leg below the knee was 95% amputated with blood spurting out. I yelled to the other motorists to call 911, grabbed a belt out of my saddle bag, and did my best to use it as a tourniquet. As near as I can tell his leg had been crushed between the impact of the bike with the front bumper of the truck. The impact had also tried to push his femur out his right ****** cheek and it wasn't pretty. As I tried to get the bleeding under control, fortune smiled on this poor ****** and an EMT on his way to work stopped less than a minute or two later.

A couple radio calls, another EMT stopping on his way to work, and a whole 15 minutes later brought an ambulance. Throughout this whole thing I'm holding this tourniquet and the EMT's are trying to cut off his clothing and determine the extent of his other injuries. He was thrown up on a grassy lawn so he had no road rash, no head trauma and no apparent internal injuries. He was amazingly lucid (and totally in shock I'm sure). The EMT's got a neck brace on him, we got him onto a back board, and into the ambulance. When I had two seconds to breathe, I then realized that all the good gear in the world would not have made *one bit of difference*.

The young guy was riding an old Harley Sportster, combat boots, leather jacket, NO helmet, and that's about it. His leg had been severed above the boot by the truck's bumper, no good gear could have lessened this trauma. He didn't hit the pavement, no road rash. He hit the grass sliding so no head trauma. If I had been in his shoes with the gear I had on, I would have been in the exact...same...condition.

My first instinct was to throw blame on the clueless pickup driver that pulled out in front of him. The thing was though that the driver pulled out slowly and if the Harley rider was more alert he might have had more options. The police officer also claimed that this bike had passed other motorists earlier on but there are legal passing on this road so no judgment there. I saw a bit of braking, a violent swerve, then BOOM. In looking at the bike it had mediocre tires and Harley has never seemed to put a premium on winning any 'shortest stopping distance' contests.

Did the truck driver pull out in front of the bike? Definitely. Did he see the biker? Maybe, but it only registered at the last minute. Was the guy riding too fast? Maybe. Could he have stopped in time? Maybe. The road curves a bit but the sight lines aren't that bad. The biker is a local guy on his way to work and would have known the road well.

This story appeared an hour later in the local news: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=231590
How many of you would have, reading this story at face value, think 'Dumbass rider, no helmet, got what he deserved'? Being the cocky self righteous ****** that I am I know I would have. I would totally have put the blame on the driver and think that wearing all the right gear and having a great bike that it would never happen to ME. Being there gave me a completely different point of view.

I felt sorry for both guys. Sorry for the pickup driver that probably didn't see the biker (or contentiously register him) and will have to live with the life altering injury that his actions caused. Sorry for the biker that was tooling along to work on a beautiful summer day who now will only need to buy one half of a pair of shoes. Plenty of blame to go around....no winners.

I'm sorry for the long winded diatribe but it has been a tough day and I wanted to share this thought...Even with all the best gear, a great bike, and competent rider, it can all go to ****** with a moment's inattention.
- Never let your mind wander
- Cover those brakes when you see a car at an intersection
- Assume you're invisible to other drivers

As a personal note it has made me consider that a few hundred bucks might not be a bad investment in First Responder or EMT training at the local college along with a better first aid kit for my bike.

Stay safe, please...

Steve"

Man, that's a grizzly story. Do you know what ultimately happened to the guy?

There are things that can happen on the road that no amount of gear can protect you from. ******, you can be a car with a roll cage, crumple zones, and air bags and still get killed. That doesn't reduce the value of wearing good gear. If he had hit the pavement instead of the grass he could easily have lost a lot of skin. If he had hit head first instead of back first he could easily have busted open his skull.

I know the intent of the story was not to disparage the wearing of gear, but rather to encourage situational awareness. Just wanted to point that out.

In December of '08 I was riding along and entering a curve to the right...I was at about 35 mph when I noticed a white Dodge Neon full of kids exiting the drive of an In and Out Burger joint to my left. They we going to make a left turn onto the roadway into my path. They crossed two lanes of Southbound traffic and then into the Northbound lanes and would have hit me on the left side if I had not applied the brakes heavily. So heavily that the bike went down on the right side really smoothly. By the time it went down I was at 20 MPH or less and I avoided the collision. I ended up against the curb on the right side of the roadway at night with traffic coming up behind me in two lanes. Luckily a lady with a big GMC Suburban stopped behind me and shielded me from the on coming traffic. The bike was still running. I reached up and killed the engine but the bike was resting on my right leg. I could not get up. She and her son and a pair of passing by teens pulled the bike up and got me out from under. We got the bike to the edge of the road and up on the kickstand. I was in some severe pain in my right ankle, left wrist, and had some bruising on on right leg in a few places and my riding jacket was torn on the right elbow and shoulder. Those armor pieces did their job. The double fabric pants also were torn and a layer of fabric was gone buy my skin was whole although bruised badly. My left wrist was sprained. Generally I was shaken up pretty badly but able to move albiet kinda slow.

Damage to the bike was to the end ball of the right brake, right highway peg was scraped down some, top edge of right saddlebag was abraded pretty good and I had a new scrape on the right side of my helmet. Other than that I was good to go. I rode the bike home 4 miles. The next day I could hardly walk on the right leg. I ended up going to the hospital and then I learned that the right fibula was broken and I ended up in a cast for 12 weeks. It never healed right and in August of '09 they installed a titanium rod into my right leg with 7 screws. Another 12 weeks in a cast and I still am having issues with swelling and tenderness and pain at times in the right ankle.

The alternative was to allow the neon to smack me on the left side and I am sure that the injuries would have been more serious than I suffered. Oh, by the way, the Neon stopped 1/4 mile away a kid got out to see what had happend to me and then they sped away.

I needed to have straightened up the bike by steering left and then applied the brakes but I would have hit the Neon anyway so I really have not any solution to this situation. Sometimes ya gotta just take your lumps.

Laying it down was your only option because you were cornering you couldn't brake. Totally different story if you were travelling straight.

It pisses me off that those kids did a runner.

I had to use a "controlled crash" once when some old lady in a Buick decided that she should wait until I was almost in the intersection before pulling out from a stopsign. That was on an old flathead HD that had really poor brakes. The America and Night Train are the only bikes I've owned that have decent stopping power, and I still ride with the philosophy that if you stay away from trouble, you are less likely to get into it.

Thanks for this Keith - good wisdow to draw from this on many levels!

I was faced with this emergency situation last week. Some stupid cager must have dropped their cell phone and slammed on their brakes at a green light. The road we were on was freshly paved and my brakes locked. I thought I should lay it down when I saw a way out. I let go of the brakes and swerved and avoided an accident. I read in "The Upper Half of a Motorcycle" that we should be in the habit of always scanning for a way out. We leave a smaller foot print giving us more options, the shoulder of the road, a turning only lane, in between 2 cars. I'm glad I didn't lay it down. I love my bike too much.

I'm glad you found a way out, Silas! And btw, welcome!

The aticle you read is correct. Anytime you are in a traffic situation you want to be extra vigilant. Keeping track of the vehicles around you and as much of the road ahead as possible. I am glad you found and exit and came out unharmed. Becareful out there.

Lay down on purpose? I don't know if that's within my reaction instincts. I hope not anyway.

I did a tank slap get off many years ago, but it seemed I had no choice. The arresting officer asked how fast I was going, for a "foot peg scraped the asphalt for 262 feet." I told him, "I dunno, 30?" Not bragging - just amazed at surviving it. I was fairly 20 something immortal back then. Not so much anymore.

While I have no experience or data to support this notion, I've imagined a scenario whereby I would leap up off my very sturdy midship pegs to try and and jump over a car suddenly in my path. It would seem necessary to have the balls of your feet on the peg to pull this off, if even feasible. I figure the car's windshield or side window may be a kinder gentler ride than the grill. Maybe that extra X inches of glass shatter deceleration would reduce a fatality to a 'mere' maim or dismember? Hope I never have to figure it out.

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Random safety thought that popped into my head -

secondary road - long line of vehicles coming at you - car #4 can't see ahead but makes a left anyway. It tends to make me ride to the right in that scenario and get some headlight out there, but that's probably not a surprise to y'all. This happened to my kids many moons ago. Both were OK as Granny had them in car seats. One was X shaped heavily bruised from the car seat straps, the other bit her lip at impact. Granny almost needed a tranq dart shot to calm her down. Both cars did what they were designed to do and crumpled down to offer some impact absorption. So as far as "we never used passenger restraints and rode around in cars with bridge girder frames and no harm became us" saying goes, all I can say is you were lucky. My ex & I received a phone call stating our daughters had been in a head on collision. No other info as to their post accident condition was available. We were a half hour away. A very long half hour ride indeed.