If you react instinctively you probably won't recover
By James R. Davis
Most of us do not need to test limits, but it still happens that you might someday find yourself leaning too
far into a curve and hearing/feeling your peg start to drag. What should you do about it?
Well, let me start by telling you what most people, I believe, instinctively try and what is dead wrong! They immediately
roll off the accelerator and lean away from the dragging peg. These are BOTH wrong things to do because each action either
lowers the bike (rolling off the accelerator) or increases the lean angle and as a result the peg will no longer be gently
scraping the asphalt but will try to gouge a trough into it.
There are three things that can be done as soon as you hear/feel a peg scrape:
 |
Increase throttle - (but note that you are
already close to sliding and ANY increase in speed can be all she wrote)
|
|
Counter-steer away from the dragging peg - (widen
the turn)
|
|
Shift body weight towards
the dragging peg - (that is not a misprint) |
Each of these actions tends to straighten the bike up. Any one of them will 'cure' the problem and is sufficient by itself.
You can, of course, do two or all three of these things at the same time.
Note, however, that doing the wrong things, it seems to me, is instinctive and that you need to mentally prepare to do
the right things in advance. But that is exactly why you are reading this tip - to determine what experience has shown others
is the right thing to do without having to 'discover' by trial and potentially fatal error for yourself.
Let's see if this makes that third suggestion clearer as it is your best choice. Here is a diagram that on the left
shows a motorcycle that is about to drag a peg in a turn and on the right it shows what happens if the motorcyclist leans
INTO the turn. (It lefts the peg off the ground.)
