Originally Posted by
base2
PeteHski Well, If you don't care to know how to avoid an unexpected pothole or that last second ride ending bit of road debris at speed...I don't know what to tell you.
The biggest skill in a motorcycle endorsement class is how to utilize counter-steering. The test is designed to achieve basic competence for your own safety. A single failure. A single cone touched. You fail. You will not be licensed to ride a motorcycle today. The skill is a real thing.
...And you're right. Steering should be unconscious. 6 year-olds do it. Many adults ride their entire lives effectively with the skill of a 6 year-old and get along ok.
But, if you are the unskilled 6 year old adult, you are going to panic, freeze, hit that thing, or run off your line simply because you don't have a conscious practiced understanding of how to recognize the hazard and consciously effect the necessary correction.
That's the difference between rider and operator.
Somehow I appear to be able to do these things without having ever attended a motorbike course. Maybe if I had stopped riding when I was 6 and then started to ride again as an adult things would be different. Learning skills like this as an adult is a somewhat different process. I see this with skiing. Kids learn intuitively, adults don’t!
But my point is that any decent bike rider will subconsciously counter-steer regardless of whether or not they ride motorbikes.