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Here is this month's safety tip that I talked about at the meeting..Remember if your passenger is not familiar with the
controls on your motorcycle, show them what the controls do. It may save both your lives one day...
Passengers Are NOT Helpless
Should something happen to the rider
The general impression amongst motorcyclists is that a passenger would be totally helpless when it comes to controlling
the motorcycle should something happen to the rider. Nonsense!
An accident occurred in Ohio, I believe, some years
ago where a deer attempted to jump over a motorcycle from the side and hit the rider, knocking him completely off the bike.
The man's wife was a passenger at the time and she managed to take control of the bike and get it off to the side of the road
and slowed it down so greatly that it simply fell over (into the grass.)
Well, you argue, since there was no rider
in front of her she was able to reach the controls.
In fact, even if the rider was still there having, for example,
simply collapsed from a heart attack, the passenger can almost always still gain control of the motorcycle.
Two controls
that the passenger usually cannot reach are the gear shift lever and the rear brake, but the three that he/she CAN reach are
the clutch lever, the throttle, and the front brake. (And, not incidentally, the engine cutoff switch.) Thus, the passenger
can steer the bike as well as control its speed.
Even with a rider backrest, a passenger can stand on his/her pegs
and lean over the rider to gain control of the bike. Cash and I have practiced this maneuver and demonstrated it to several
motorcycle groups at rallies and other gatherings.
It does not take a rider (or anyone at all on the bike) to balance
a motorcycle moving at any reasonable speed. Because of trail there is an automatic attempt by all motorcycles to get vertical
and steer in a straight line. In other words, though there will likely be some wild gyrations of the bike as it finds its
way to a stable posture, there is TIME available to the passenger to get control of that bike.
First order of business
is to slow it down. Second order of business is to steer it to as safe a place as possible before it falls over, because fall
over it will.
Before it falls over that engine cutoff switch should be turned off.
The passenger is certainly
not helpless. Perhaps it would be a good thing to let him/her know it and even practice (at a dead stop, engine off, on the
side stand) assuming control, no?
Following is a picture of Cash and myself using my GoldWing in a Co-Rider Safety
Demo showing her taking control of my bike even though I was still in the rider's saddle and there is a backrest between us.
Note that she was not standing nearly as tall as she could have should she have needed to because I was not as far out of
the way as I was in the demo.
[Need I add that this is another reason why a person who prefers being a passenger and never intends to ride a bike
by themselves should be encouraged to attend the MSF?]Please note that if she lays on the rider she tends to keep him on the
bike. A good thing if traveling at 70 MPH, no?
This is an article from the "GWTA Touring News" magazine March 2004
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