Breaking in a curve? NO?

I haven't ridden a bike yet and I'm taking the MSF course next week before I receive my FZ6R and I have an important question. From what I've read, you must not break while in a turn or you will crash.

What if you HAVE to break due to someone in front of you slamming their brakes OR if there is a stoplight in the curve (there is one like this by my house)? So is it true that you can't break in a curve or stop in a curve?

MNDZA said:

I haven't ridden a bike yet and I'm taking the MSF course next week before I receive my FZ6R and I have an important question. From what I've read, you must not break while in a turn or you will crash.

What if you HAVE to break due to someone in front of you slamming their brakes OR if there is a stoplight in the curve (there is one like this by my house)? So is it true that you can't break in a curve or stop in a curve?

Click to expand...

Totally false.

As long as you don't have your knee on the ground and you are smooth and evenly apply the brakes you'll be fine. Racers trail brake right up to the apex of the corner and then gently release the brake as they apply the throttle. Just remember that the controls on your bike are analog not digital. As one instructor said, " You want the F the brakes the way F a woman, you need to finesse them."

The MSF book describes the concept of "traction pie" - how much of your wheels traction is consumed by various things your bike is doing. Once you've eaten all your pie, you start skidding. Cornering consumes traction, as does braking, so doing both at the same time leaves less pie for staying upright. Specifically, braking with either wheel (but moreso the front) takes traction away from the rear wheel, making it more likely to skid out.

MSF also says you should straighten the bike before braking, and the course teaches you this. That always seemed to me a bit of an artificial/unrealistic scenario, as it could cause you to ride into oncoming traffic in a right hand turn.

All that being said, braking in a turn won't cause you to instantly crash. While you should plan your entry speed such that you don't have to brake, I've found the need to brake in turns upon misjudgement and I didn't crash. I don't wail around turns that often (partly for that reason), so I guess I had a fair amount of traction pie remaining.

Rear braking is preferable in a turn if it is necessary to lose some speed.

Thanks for the quick responses and useful info. I look forward to my MSF class so I can see how all this works on the bike instead of only reading about it.

IN the MSF class they will instruct to get the bike upright before braking such that you are braking in a straight line of travel. I presume this is the simplest/safest way to brake in a corner which is why they teach that way. You of course can brake while cornering - the front brake will change your line more than the rear brake - experienced riders will use trail braking as mentioned.

Edit - guess I was made redundant while I typed.

I'm not buying everything the MSF teaches. A lot of it is outdated.

I'll say this, a lot of what it takes to ride a motorcycle well does not come very naturally. To do ANYTHING correctly on a street motorcycle, you have to do it smooOOOVly.

EDIT -

check out chicagolandsportbikes.com

gentle is the key.

You can not grab a handful of brake and stay up, no. You can slow down some. I have been practicing it on purpose, if your gentle the bike actually turns in more while you stay at neutral or barely barely acell throttle.

Dont go closing the throttle and jamming them on or anything, but you can slow down.

I think they put it best when the instructor said follow the rules we teach you as best you can... preparing for turns not planning on breaking in a turn etc...

This way when the ship hits the fan you can feel your way through...

So basically if youre not entirely relying on your break on a turn you can smooth out the turn with your rear brake... If you give a littl etoo much mustard and slip you have given yourself enough room to recover throgh the turn etc...

MNDZA said:

What if you HAVE to break due to someone in front of you slamming their brakes OR if there is a stoplight in the curve (there is one like this by my house)? So is it true that you can't break in a curve or stop in a curve?

Click to expand...

I was initially paranoid about this scenario too. The MSF will have you practice a maneuver where, while in a turn, you straighten and then brake. I don't feel this is very realistic in the real world as you will probably run off the road or onto oncoming traffic. You can brake some, just less as lean angle increases. If you find yourself in a situation that requires heavy braking while turning, it's an indication you're either not looking far enough ahead or driving faster than conditions allow you to see.

cv_rider said:

The MSF book describes the concept of "traction pie"

Click to expand...

Has anyone read James Davis criticism of the "traction pie"? While I think the traction pie is a great way to initially describe the concept, it's not strictly accurate.
Traction Pie - Dumbness Personified

Stinking awesome link man. thanks.

Denver_FZ6 said:

I was initially paranoid about this scenario too. The MSF will have you practice a maneuver where, while in a turn, you straighten and then brake. I don't feel this is very realistic in the real world as you will probably run off the road or onto oncoming traffic. You can brake some, just less as lean angle increases. If you find yourself in a situation that requires heavy braking while turning, it's an indication you're either not looking far enough ahead or driving faster than conditions allow you to see.



Has anyone read James Davis criticism of the "traction pie"? While I think the traction pie is a great way to initially describe the concept, it's not strictly accurate.
Traction Pie - Dumbness Personified

Click to expand...

DaveOTZ said:

I think they put it best when the instructor said follow the rules we teach you as best you can... preparing for turns not planning on breaking in a turn etc...

This way when the ship hits the fan you can feel your way through...

So basically if youre not entirely relying on your break on a turn you can smooth out the turn with your rear brake... If you give a littl etoo much mustard and slip you have given yourself enough room to recover throgh the turn etc...

Click to expand...

IMO, this really does not reflect the real world for anyone who isn't just a total newb trying to survive their first 5,000 miles. There is just so much more to it and so many situations when none of this holds true.

Consider for a moment the fact that a bike is more inclined to turn when the front forks are partially compressed. That's just ONE major issue.

this horse is already beaten but yes you can brake in a curve... in fact on my home tonight i practiced my emergency braking in curves and on the straights

This will be MSF Range Exercise # 14 - Stopping Quickly In a Curve.

As mentioned by another member, in order to stop quickly or if you have to engage emergency braking during a curve, straighting out the bike will provide you with the most effective way to stop quickly because it will provide you with the most traction.

I think if you watch Wavex's video of him crashing his FZ6 due to cornering too fast, you can see that he immediatlely had straightned his bike out during the curve so that he could give himself the maximum amount of braking power before he went off the road. So what if most of it was on the shoulder with gravel, main point is that he got away from the lean. This essentially saved himself from serious injuries because he managed to slow down enough where he was able to ride out the crash, well almost.

i remember them saying yes you can brake but you need to straighten up as soon as possible so your suppose to ride on the leftt side of the lane to give you less of a blind sport at the end of a curve

VEGASRIDER said:

This will be MSF Range Exercise # 14 - Stopping Quickly In a Curve.

As mentioned by another member, in order to stop quickly or if you have to engage emergency braking during a curve, straighting out the bike will provide you with the most effective way to stop quickly because it will provide you with the most traction.

Click to expand...

I don't think anyone can/will debate that.

I was under the impression we were talking about applying the brake(s) while cornering which is very different than attempting to bring the bike to a complete stop. Thre is a big difference between Cornering and Stopping.

VEGASRIDER said:

I think if you watch Wavex's video of him crashing his FZ6 due to cornering too fast, you can see that he immediatlely had straightned his bike out during the curve so that he could give himself the maximum amount of braking power before he went off the road. So what if most of it was on the shoulder with gravel, main point is that he got away from the lean. This essentially saved himself from serious injuries because he managed to slow down enough where he was able to ride out the crash, well almost.

Click to expand...

Was he really cornering "too fast" or did he crash because he perceived that he was cornering too fast and failed to continue TURNING.

He "got away from the lean" That's not a good thing when you're trying to make a corner

He saved himself? Sounds like he drove off the road to me and is lucky to be alive.

IMO (and I was not there), the only thing he could have done worse is to not have slowed down at all AFTER making the decision to cease turing while in a turn. I'm guessing he would agree.

Are you really suggesting when you come in too hot you should stand the bike up and brake in a straight line? Perhaps in limited situations. Just based on my vague memory of the video in question, he should have looked and leaned. IIRC he mentioned the fact that he was upset with himself for not simply making the turn as it was doable at his speed. I could be remembering wrong.

Although the real advice is to ride at a pace you can handle, I'd hardly suggest that braking in a straight line toward a cliff is a good way to go when you get spooked.

What am I missing here?

PS - for the record, I crashed as a n00b by GRABBING the front brake in a decreasing radius turn (about 3/4 through) a fraction of a second after fixating on the edge of the road. Total rider error...could have rolled on through with significantly more speed if I had known what I was doing. US129...

Denver_FZ6 said:

Has anyone read James Davis criticism of the "traction pie"? While I think the traction pie is a great way to initially describe the concept, it's not strictly accurate.
Traction Pie - Dumbness Personified

Click to expand...

I've always been somewhat fond of the "traction pie" concept - it's visual and the phrase itself is oddly amusing, to the extent that the basic concept it conveys it pops into my mind as a corner comes up. It helps me be aware that if I needed to swerve or slow due to an unexpected thing around the corner, that I better be consuming all my traction due to high speed cornering.

Now I must disagree from James Davis' critique. The main basis of his critique is that you can't have both acceleration and braking consuming traction simultaneously - fine. That doesn't lesson the concept. Secondly, he points out that the physics is wrong because of the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle is equal the square of the hypotenuse. I started skimming at that point, and I'll assume his physics for analyzing your traction are correct and that MSF bypasses that.

Even granting him his two main points, the idea of traction pie is still with me and it still has bearing on my riding style, almost two years after first hearing about it. It helped instill a safe riding behavior. I think that was all it was ever intended to do. It wasn't intended to help you calculation how many g forces you could manage in a corner - possibly useful information on a skid plate, totally irrelevant on a real road. So I'd call James Davis the dummy for totally missing the point on what traction pie is about.

MMmmmm...piiie

I like both explanations. SportRider did a similar analysis and actually plotted out the forces being applied over the course of a hot lap on the race track. They talked about the need to always be at the absolute edge of traction in order to turn competitive laps. The top guys have the best tires and are on the edge of traction almost all the time and hit the same line within inches everytime. Impressive. I'll try to find the article.

EDIT --





Here is the full text

a little confidence in your own abilities isnt bad either.. you will figure out some things that msf either told you no or never told you.. braking durring cornering is one of those thing that isnt really taught, but is very very useful.. do not grab at the brakes.. oh boy will it hurt like hell... oh and dont expect to drop 20-30 mph the first time you do it eaither.. (unless your on a track)... a little "slow down" braking is something you learn over time...

DefyInertia said:

I'm not buying everything the MSF teaches. A lot of it is outdated.

I'll say this, a lot of what it takes to ride a motorcycle well does not come very naturally. To do ANYTHING correctly on a street motorcycle, you have to do it smooOOOVly.

Click to expand...

I tend to agree, but will also add that 'outdated' may not be exactly the right word either. Keep in mind that the majority of riders taking the MSF course are riders with very little to no experience. Therefore the instructors, who in most cases are simply average riders like most of us, not professionals or even pro/am's, have just a few days to make impressions and try to instill habits that will get these riders through the early stages of their riding 'careers'. They also have to remember that we live in the most law suit happy country the world has ever seen. Nothing, absolutely nothing can be done with out keeping that in mind.

A while back I got into a discussion with some folks on a Yahoo! group about the use of the front brake. To a person they all felt that the front brake was an evil thing and many reported that they had been instructed to not use it except in an emergency situation. One even claimed to have been through police motorpatrol training and reported that his instructor stopped several students and screamed at them "IF I SEE YOU USE THAT FRONT BRAKE AGAIN I'LL REMOVE THE @%^&*$ LEVER!!!" As someone with a long history of off road riding and racing I was floored by these feelings and statements and could only feel sorry for these people who really have no idea about what I consider basic motorcycle operation, even if they can claim to have thousands and thousands of miles under their belts.

IMHO, the MSF course should be expanded and require ALL students to start riding small dirt bikes in a field and on dirt 'roads'. This is the fastest, easiest and least painful way of exploring the limits of traction and how a motorcycle will react in specific control situations. Pie charts and graphs are merely brain fodder and cannot take the place of actually getting the real sensation of 'feeling' a motorcycle as it begins to lose traction, or how various control inputs effect how the motorcycle reacts to it.

Bruce

It could be argued that it is more practical to tell someone, especially a new rider, not to do brake in a corner otherwise they will crash rather than explain all the ways it can be done appropriately.

IMO for a new rider it is better to tell them to do all their braking before a turn and not brake in a turn rather than have them brake incorrectly in a turn and cause a crash.

Fear of crashing can be a good motivator.