counter steering
 

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I never got taught this in my CBT! I almost refused to believe it but under closer inspection it appears to be true. Amazing if you ask me, question being is if you travel at great speeds does this come more into effect?

Yep
 

It works at any speed over walking pace like the article says.
Get on your bike get up to about 30mph and personally I like to push the bar the way I want to turn.So just gently to to get the feel of it push your lefthand and you,ll feel the turning,then try it on the other side.Once you get used to the effect gently use going into a turn and the bike will drop in nicely.Myself I tend to do all the countersteering with my lefthand,pushing to go left,pulling to go right!
You,ll just have to try it out and see what works best for you.
Al theturtleshead

You unknowingly learnt to do it as a child riding your bicycle and have been doing it ever since !

The bit about bicycle races is rather specific IMHO. It assumes the wheel/tyre won't grip or ride over the obstacle. In a motorcycle sense, imagine a kerb or berm touching the rims/sidewalls. Turn the bars and the leverage brings you off the wall and into open space where you can counter steer. If our big, knobblie tyres smash through, ride up or ride over you just keep steering normally for the speed you are at. Racing pushbike bike tyres have a lot of gyroscopic effect, but not much grip or weight, so won't always react the same way in that specific circumstance. Mostly they work exactly the same way of course.

Andy

well just had a go, and it worked. i guess it has been locked up there in my sub conscious for years but applying it even more lines the corners up nicely like al said.
cheers guys/gals :thumbup1:

Well, that's you in trouble if you ever get a sidecar :mchappy:

Andy

It's funny isn't it, I don't think we realise we're doing it, I certainly didn't and so like Tommy I went out and did it deliberately, and aside from the obvious "OH MY GOD, I'M GOING TO CRASH INTO THAT CAR" feeling it's true, we do do it.

As for the bicycle thing, that's a nightmare in a close peloton, your wheels are all overlapping, so you can't ride up over them, one wrong move and you're all down - just watch the Tour de France.

There are a couple other ways to affect a bike's turning or stability.

In the first instance counter steering is the first thing to happen, this is turning the bike after that everything else is cornering. If you ride with no hands on the bars and turn the bike by moving you weight towards the inside of the turn you will see the bars counter steer all by themselves

yeah that whole knee thing worked a treat. shame i didnt kno about it sooner but only been on two wheels for 6 months. its crazy that the cbt misses such things out.

I am getting sort of tired of repeatedly reading about "countersteering" .From all the fuss about the so-called phenomenon I get the impression that it is seen as some sort of voodoo magical way of steering a motorcycle or other two wheel conveyance in an alternate fashion, a secret not revealed to the uninitiated,gained only by meditation/cation and spiritual introspection.
Pshaw ! I defy anyone to steer a motorcycle in any other way than is dictated by the physics involved in moving a gyroscope ,which is the front wheel.From highschool physics it is remembered that a force aplied to the axis of a gyroscope will cause it to move in a plane in a direction at a right angle to the applied force. Nothing magic , very predictable. Pulling the right side handlebar back causes the wheel to want to fall in to the left, and you are banked already and turning left due to the tire camber and radius of the wheels scribing slightly different arcs on the ground.
The only unpredictable part is getting riders to understand how to use this physics principle. That is the function of skinned knees when you are a kid learning to ride a bike. In the same way body input ,or body-English , and throttle control are simply other ways of imparting the required forces to the bike chassis to move the front wheel.Transfer that gained knowledge to motorized riding and you are well on the way.The truly skilled at this turn out to be the racers who use all these techniques and can slide around under power at will.
"Countersteering" really is only a semantic exercise, wordplay. Do boat owners waste as much time talking about "countersteering" because they push the tiller right to make the ass end of the boat try to come around to the front via the right side in order to make the boat turn left? I've wasted too much time
Lets just keep things realistic and simple and speak about just steering.

Not the best example I've ever read, a boats tiller has a rather small gyroscopic affeck, belive me my riding is better than my spelling:D

my thread my rules. let the conversation continue guys.

I may be the only one here who doesn't get this at all.
I've been going round corners for years and the only time I fell off was when the chain came off and wrapped itself round the back wheel.

So let me get this straight.
Counter steering - to common sense this means to go right you steer to the left.
That is you turn your front wheel to face the opposite direction to that which you want to go.

Tommy said, via How stuff works, "That's because motorcycle riders must push the handlebars to the left to make the vehicle turn right and vice versa"
So - you pull with your left hand and push with your right hand, however gently, the front wheel changes direction from the centre position.
It was pointing straight ahead at the twelve o'clock position, now it is pointing at 11 o'clock - and you turn right.

Yeah?

So these are counter steering then?

http://www.individualsole.com/wp-con.../10/teamj7.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y20...Blog2/GPT1.jpg

http://www.gros-gros51.com/News/imag...k/SE9B6785.JPG

http://www.webbikeworld.com/women-mo...-team-lg-2.jpg

Semantics
 

Lets just day you,ve overcooked it coming into a bend way too fast,you,re understeering and about to head onto the otherside of the road into oncoming traffic.
Most people don,t use all the tire and grip available too them and as I understand it,s this scenario that kills a lot of bikers.Now if you know how to tweak those bars and get the bike right over using all the tire 9 times out of 10 you,ll come out of it none the worse for wear!
As far as I,m concerned countersteering is not just for racers,it,ll save your life and get rid of your chicken strips.
Al theturtleshead

And that answers my question, does it?

I did a bikesafe course run by the Met Police andwas told by a traffic investigator that most bike crashes not involving other vehicles, happen when a rider doesn't make it around a corner that on investigation, could have been ridden at often twice the speed of the crashing vehicle. When we panic, we tense up an stare at the object we don't want to hit / side of the road we don't want to go. This is why we see so many bunches of flowers on isolated oak trees on the outside of a bends.

I had it happen to me once; overcooked going into a corner and thought I was ****ed; thought, oh **** it, lets try the look round the corner, push on the bar thing and easily made the corner. Most of the time your bike is way more capable than you, it's panic that kills us.

Duh for me- I had the wrong word in one sentence in earlier post ,now corrected.
Nice pictures of all the racers, Rossi, Hayden et al- and yes they were all to a man applying the physics and as some would have it "countersteering" , a sensation only they could experience sitting on the bike and setting up for the corner .But being the experienced riders they are they did not have to think about it one microsecond.
This is why the inexperienced riders on streetbikes get into problems , they have not gotten to the point of where they can do the reaction without thinking about it.It has to be an instant reflex.I personally make no claim to being anywhere near
as skilled as Rossi et al. Nor I did suggest it (c'steering) was only for racers, they were just an example of riders who have learned how to manage a motorcycle the best way. These techniques for motorcycle control are for every rider.
The thing for all new riders to do is practice fast directional changes by getting onto an empty road and doing zig zags, get the feel for how it works when you push or pull on one side of the bar.And as Albert suggests learn to lean to the maximum available to get thru corners quicker than at the slow speeds that might previously have scared you . By all means carry on the discussion about steering.

Bicycle Wheels
 

Dear OnlyMark, you seem to be very doubtful. Please take a bicycle wheel to feel the force! You need to hold a wheel out infront of you, each hand holding an axle end--as if you had knelt down infront of the bike and taken the wheel out. Is this clear? Now remove one hand, balancing the wheel on the other hand. Spin the wheel up quite fast. hole the axle ends in each hand again. NOW------try to turn the wheel as if to turn right and the "bike" will throw itself down to the left. This is counter steering. Don't try it on a small wheeled scooter! It'll lay itself on it's side and flip over the front wheel! Hope this helps, Linzi.

No
 

No I wasn,t answering you,re question.Secondly if you never fall off you cant be trying very hard!!!
Al theturtleshead

Try this...

As you approach the corner, keep your weight bias on the inside bar, lean the bike over as you normally would and gently push forward (feels like forward and down) on the inside bar. Can't think of a simpler way to explain it. Probably subconciously doing anyway.

You should be able to circle roundabouts with one hand pushing on the inside bar leaving the other hand free to flip the bird to the cager trying to cut you up :mchappy:

what i have taken away from this...
 

...is that you sub consciously move the handle bar in the way mentioned earlier, push left to turn left etc. But being more aware of it and adding a little bit more tension to your right arm and slacking your left makes for a better right turn, couple that with digging your right knee in to the tank , which raisers your centre of gravity higher, gives extra control. I have been using this technique over the past few days and have noticed a real clean up with my corner taking, and feel generally more confident with taking sharper bends at a little higher pace. As a 'green' rider its easy to get your CBT and piss off with out knowing jack about bikes. Weight distribution is a key factor, and one could argue that it is this 'shifting of balance' that makes biking such a memorable experience, sorry to repeat but it allows you to be a fluid part of the movements of the machine. It will be interesting to see how the topics covered are effected by luggage cases and the like, over uneven ground....hmmmm sounds like my sunday afternoon is gonna be interesting!