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Old 03-10-20, 03:55 PM
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Carbonfiberboy 
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Bikes: CoMo Speedster 2003, Trek 5200, CAAD 9, Fred 2004

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Originally Posted by tyrion
It's good semantics. It's useful and accurate to call this countersteering. Even if you're not moving the bars past the straight-ahead alignment to change lean angle*, you're still moving them in the opposite direction of your desired lean angle change.

*I think at high speeds you are usually moving the bars beyond the straight-ahead alignment to increase lean, but at slow speeds you might not. This is much easier to analyze on a motorcycle where you can explore this physics for hours on a winding road or a track.
I once had to bring a doubter with me on my BMW. Hands off the bars, then pull backon the left grip with one finger, bike goes right. It's easier to see on a stable machine that's going 40 or so. What you're doing is moving the wheels out from under the CG. Once one is in a corner, I think if a bicycle's geometry is perfect, one could take one's hands off the bars and continue on your line. But many bicycles aren't perfect and so we see bikes which will oversteer and understeer. I have not confirmed this latter conjecture however, nor am I responsible for your mishaps in attempting to do so. I did have a riding buddy go completely off the road on the outside on a brand new custom bicycle, well known local builder, because it badly understeered.

I've been on a bicycle which oversteered, a relatively new Giant. A friend lent it to me to make a long somewhat technical descent and I had a heckuva time with it. I remarked on it later and the owner had no idea what I was talking about. We get used to how our bikes handle.
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