Is ramping illegal?

[Baggsy]

There is some objective truth to the statement. If you can increase the contact patch dimensions of properly inflated tires, without impacting your control of the vehicle, then you are able to brake and maneouvre better. Proper form in hanging off doe not impact your ability to control the vehicle.

I agree with you in theory.

But the muscle memory associated with hanging off,
would tend to be for getting through the corner as quickly as possible, and carrying the most speed.

Isn't that what it's used for on the track?

on a track you only stop once, when you're finished one way or another.

Do you ever practice emergency braking or swerving, while hanging off?

 

[confundo]

He doesn't need to....the vast majority of riders, many with more experience and skill than you, manage to ride every day on the street without having to hang off their bikes to a ridiculous degree to negotiate every turn....even ramps.

I'm pretty sure when you race cars round a track and take a car racing school they teach you quite a few new techniques....however practically none of those will be applicable to the street either under normal conditions.

Last thing...the only thing you should be practising on the street for...is driving or riding on the street. Not the track.

WOW

This whole post is a giant excuse to stay ignorant and a bad rider/driver. Been racing for years here, both bikes and cars...the vehicle control you learn on the track is applicable EVERYWHERE, ANYTIME you're in a vehicle.

There is nothing wrong with hanging off a bit on the street as long as doing so doesn't distract you from what is going on...eg: a nice curve on a country road...if you're doing it in a busy intersection it may take away from attention and visibility you have of other vehicles and happenings....but to say "good riders don't need to hang off on the street" is just ignorant.

 

[Rob MacLennan]

I agree with you in theory.

But the muscle memory associated with hanging off,
would tend to be for getting through the corner as quickly as possible, and carrying the most speed.

Isn't that what it's used for on the track?

on a track you only stop once, when you're finished one way or another.

Do you ever practice emergency braking or swerving, while hanging off?

Hanging off on the track builds that muscle memory, that you mention, and makes it possible to react automatically in a dangerous situation. The reaction becomes the generally right one (lean more, lean less, or maneouvre), instead of the almost always wrong one (hammer the brakes), when something goes wrong mid corner. What the skill is used for on the track doesn't matter, unless you're trying to win the Mount Pleasant 200. The act of hanging off, or minimally shifting weight to the inside, has given you a greater margin with which to deal with any issue that should arise.

Do I practice emergency braking while hanging off? No, because I'm not fond of lowsiding nor highsiding. Brake and avoid? Yup, after two advanced riding courses that included that particular skill. Out of more than a dozen riders (15?) I was the third from last to be pulled off the course, while ddusseld was the last. (People capable of performing this skill at higher speeds and lean angles were permitted to practice longer, in order to demonstrate its proper use)

 

[油井緋色]

Do you ever practice emergency braking or swerving, while hanging off?

Look up trail braking. You jabbing the brakes mid corner, no matter the lean angle, emergency or not, is a stupid idea.

As for swerving, I mentioned pages back the matter of decreased lean angles and decreasing radius turns while hanging off...you can replace decreasing radius with dead raccoon or whatever.

WOW

This whole post is a giant excuse to stay ignorant and a bad rider/driver. Been racing for years here, both bikes and cars...the vehicle control you learn on the track is applicable EVERYWHERE, ANYTIME you're in a vehicle.

There is nothing wrong with hanging off a bit on the street as long as doing so doesn't distract you from what is going on...eg: a nice curve on a country road...if you're doing it in a busy intersection it may take away from attention and visibility you have of other vehicles and happenings....but to say "good riders don't need to hang off on the street" is just ignorant.

Reading some of these posts actually hurt my head. Ignorance and humility lead to learning; ignorance and arrogance lead to spreading stupidity. Glad some of the more experienced drivers/riders chimed in.

And before someone gets the wrong idea: more experience does not mean seat time.

 

[ZX600]

I went riding last Friday night, hadn't taken a ramp for a long time and since I have a new bike I went to town on the ramps, as I am entering the DVP/LAwrence ramp (going south) as fast as I can go and leaning as much as my crappy suspension allows me to, I see a cop car parked right there, nothing I can really do at this point but to finish the turn, I never saw any flashing lights behind me so I assume they are either too lazy or it isn't illegal to take the ramps at 'certain speed'

Cue in the "cool story bro"

By the way I also realized that stuff I used to do and thought it was so cool, it is lame as hell, like ramping

 

[jc100]

WOW

This whole post is a giant excuse to stay ignorant and a bad rider/driver. Been racing for years here, both bikes and cars...the vehicle control you learn on the track is applicable EVERYWHERE, ANYTIME you're in a vehicle.

There is nothing wrong with hanging off a bit on the street as long as doing so doesn't distract you from what is going on...eg: a nice curve on a country road...if you're doing it in a busy intersection it may take away from attention and visibility you have of other vehicles and happenings....but to say "good riders don't need to hang off on the street" is just ignorant.

Not sure your comprehension is really up to snuff there.

 

[hedo2002]

WOW

This whole post is a giant excuse to stay ignorant and a bad rider/driver. Been racing for years here, both bikes and cars...the vehicle control you learn on the track is applicable EVERYWHERE, ANYTIME you're in a vehicle.

There is nothing wrong with hanging off a bit on the street as long as doing so doesn't distract you from what is going on...eg: a nice curve on a country road...if you're doing it in a busy intersection it may take away from attention and visibility you have of other vehicles and happenings....but to say "good riders don't need to hang off on the street" is just ignorant.

So we have you and 油井緋色, as well as Rob to a lesser extent, advocating for leaning off on the street, yet you can't even agree on when it is appropriate or not. Given that 油井緋色 says he leans off even at intersections. So if you guys who do it can't agree when it is appropriate then how is an officer without the benefit of the experience you have decide when it is appropriate and when it isn't?

 

[Rob MacLennan]

So we have you and 油井緋色, as well as Rob to a lesser extent, advocating for leaning off on the street, yet you can't even agree on when it is appropriate or not. Given that 油井緋色 says he leans off even at intersections. So if you guys who do it can't agree when it is appropriate then how is an officer without the benefit of the experience you have decide when it is appropriate and when it isn't?

For me it's not a matter of when it's appropriate. It's simply a part of my riding style that has become so ingrained, that it takes a mental effort not to do so. From a logical standpoint it's always appropriate because, as stated previously by ddusseld and myself, it increases that all important contact patch that improves traction in general. What may not be appropriate is the speed involved.

 

[bitzz]

I'll say it:
If you're riding on the street and you think you have to get a knee down: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
Trying to get a knee down in an controlled intersection is just stupid.

You want TT road racing?
Move to Ireland.

 

[jc100]

If you have to come to an immediate stop halfway through a turn because of an object in the road or some other obstacle is it easier while hanging right off the bike or while slightly shifting weight? Genuine question. Also I'm talking about an emergency stop....not something where you have the time to right your position.

 

[ZX600]

I agree with Rob that the riding style of hanging off is something that people that race or raced or did or does a lot of track days can not get away from (and that is a good thing) so I have come across objects on the road while I am hanging off and depending on where the object is located I may lean even more or use the brake slightly to stand up the bike and adjust my trajectory, it all depends of the situation.

If you have to come to an immediate stop halfway through a turn because of an object in the road or some other obstacle is it easier while hanging right off the bike or while slightly shifting weight? Genuine question. Also I'm talking about an emergency stop....not something where you have the time to right your position.

Emergency braking while on a high lean angle does not exist, its basically you either lean more until there is no more to lean and slide or you go over the object and most likely crash, same thing that can happen if you don't use your body position to lean.

But to specifically answer you question, I find it easier while I am leaning and not slightly shifting weight. I have less control of the trajectory of the bike when my spine is parallel to the bike

 

[ZX600]

knee down is not part of this conversation, body position is and that has nothing to do with knee down

I'll say it:
If you're riding on the street and you think you have to get a knee down: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
Trying to get a knee down in an controlled intersection is just stupid.

You want TT road racing?
Move to Ireland.

 

[Rob MacLennan]

If you have to come to an immediate stop halfway through a turn because of an object in the road or some other obstacle is it easier while hanging right off the bike or while slightly shifting weight? Genuine question. Also I'm talking about an emergency stop....not something where you have the time to right your position.

As I stated earlier if you're doing an emergency stop while leaned over, it's going to be either a lowside or a highside. Perhaps the bike snaps upright and you run straight off the corner, instead of being thrown, which could mean you run into a vehicle in the oncoming lane, hit a lamp post or, if you're lucky, ride over the curb and land in grass. In other words if you have to emergency brake in a corner and don't have the space to stand it up first, you were going too fast.

Controlled braking and avoiding an obstacle is something I find easier while hanging off because, as stated several times previously, my tires have more meat on the road. Bigger contact patch means more traction and traction = good.

 

[jc100]

Interesting. OK. I've had to brake in corners before but I don't hang off my bike, just small adjustments for normal road speeds. It always felt as though the centre of gravity didn't shift in too drastic a way (although of course it does shift) when I needed to slow quickly in a corner (not before or after) for something like a big patch of gravel that can't be ridden around. I just imagined that if you needed to suddenly slow down the less drastic body movement would be better for a situation like this. I did however always imagine that if you were at least hanging off your bike in the same situation the one bonus would be that you really don't have that far to fall to contact the ground and you're probably better prepared for the slide.

Regardless, it's worked for me, the tighter the corner the more I move off the bike but I've found at normal highway/road speeds with the roads we normally travel on, there's not much need to make drastic movements.

 

[Rob MacLennan]

Interesting. OK. I've had to brake in corners before but I don't hang off my bike, just small adjustments for normal road speeds. It always felt as though the centre of gravity didn't shift in too drastic a way (although of course it does shift) when I needed to slow quickly in a corner (not before or after) for something like a big patch of gravel that can't be ridden around. I just imagined that if you needed to suddenly slow down the less drastic body movement would be better for a situation like this. I did however always imagine that if you were at least hanging off your bike in the same situation the one bonus would be that you really don't have that far to fall to contact the ground and you're probably better prepared for the slide.

Regardless, it's worked for me, the tighter the corner the more I move off the bike but I've found at normal highway/road speeds with the roads we normally travel on, there's not much need to make drastic movements.

The physics of braking in a corner are pretty interesting. If you brake gently, or roll off the throttle, the bike tends to drop deeper into the corner (lean more). If you brake aggressively then inertia will tend to stand the bike up, making you run wide. Remember; you're slowing down at the road's surface, due to friction, but the top of the bike wants to keep going in the same direction, at the original speed. That direction is straight ahead, rather than around the corner.

Then you get into the physics of braking, itself. When you're straight up and down, travelling in a straight line, the force of friction is applied in the same plane as your movement (ignore the front tire as a rotational point for this; stoppies need not apply). As you approach the traction limit your tire can rotate, in order to maintain as much traction as possible while braking. A tire that's skidding doesn't have the maximum friction between itself and the road surface. Even if it does "break loose" you're going in a straight line, so there's not much bad to happen.

Now consider a bike in a turn. It has two things working against it. First, as you lean the bike over the contact patch between the tire and the road is reduced. Less surface area in contact means less frictional force, which in turn means less force to break that contact (cause a skid). The force is also at an angle to your direction of travel, so the tire cannot use rotation to deal with the force of braking. At least not as efficiently, since the force is not in the same plane. That makes it even easier to overwhelm the contact patch's friction. Under braking there's also weight transfer to the front wheel/contact patch, so there's more force present that could overwhelm that frictional force.

Leaning off maximizes the contact patch by allowing the bike to be more upright. That means more friction and less chance of overwhelming that frictional force while braking. It also means that if the road surface changes, due to something like spilled diesel, you might well have enough friction to ride through without crashing.

And yes, hanging off means less distance to fall if you lowside. That's why you try not to break in a corner, if you find that you're going too fast for it, but instead lean more and hope to ride it out. Worst case you lowside, which is generally a lot better than riding straight off or highsiding.

 

[jc100]

The physics of braking in a corner are pretty interesting. If you brake gently, or roll off the throttle, the bike tends to drop deeper into the corner (lean more). If you brake aggressively then inertia will tend to stand the bike up, making you run wide. Remember; you're slowing down at the road's surface, due to friction, but the top of the bike wants to keep going in the same direction, at the original speed. That direction is straight ahead, rather than around the corner.

Then you get into the physics of braking, itself. When you're straight up and down, travelling in a straight line, the force of friction is applied in the same plane as your movement (ignore the front tire as a rotational point for this; stoppies need not apply). As you approach the traction limit your tire can rotate, in order to maintain as much traction as possible while braking. A tire that's skidding doesn't have the maximum friction between itself and the road surface. Even if it does "break loose" you're going in a straight line, so there's not much bad to happen.

Now consider a bike in a turn. It has two things working against it. First, as you lean the bike over the contact patch between the tire and the road is reduced. Less surface area in contact means less frictional force, which in turn means less force to break that contact (cause a skid). The force is also at an angle to your direction of travel, so the tire cannot use rotation to deal with the force of braking. At least not as efficiently, since the force is not in the same plane. That makes it even easier to overwhelm the contact patch's friction. Under braking there's also weight transfer to the front wheel/contact patch, so there's more force present that could overwhelm that frictional force.

Leaning off maximizes the contact patch by allowing the bike to be more upright. That means more friction and less chance of overwhelming that frictional force while braking. It also means that if the road surface changes, due to something like spilled diesel, you might well have enough friction to ride through without crashing.

And yes, hanging off means less distance to fall if you lowside. That's why you try not to break in a corner, if you find that you're going too fast for it, but instead lean more and hope to ride it out. Worst case you lowside, which is generally a lot better than riding straight off or highsiding.

Thanks. I had most of that, was just wondering. The two biggest hazards I've come across while riding around a corner are:

1. Sudden large gravel patch. Can't ride around it, would prefer to be as upright as possible and going as straight as possible with as much speed scrubbed off if that's an option.

2. Oncoming driver in your lane. Need to adjust trajectory rapidly, usually makes the curve you were on a reduced radius curve for a short while (seems to blind right handers are the worst for this as you get the occasional oncoming assclown taking an extreme racing line into your lane).

There's others but I'm not usually going at warp speed and can cope with most obstacles, the two above are the more dangerous ones that I've found for street riding and that are unlikely to be track related events and I'm still not certain that hanging off (in an extreme manner...lets be clear) would help with any of these in terms of the likelihood of staying on the bike and staying in your lane.

 

[ZX600]

The more you hang off and push the bike straight the more straight the bike is hence achieving your preference to have the bike as upright as possible as in your point #1

 

[jc100]

The more you hang off and push the bike straight the more straight the bike is hence achieving your preference to have the bike as upright as possible as in your point #1

Yes, but then your C of G is out to whichever side you are hanging off which is what you want when you are actively cornering, but if you want to suddenly straighten the bike up AND go straight due to loss of friction of the tires on a gravel surface would you still want to be leaning off to one side of the bike? If you have time to straighten your body position up then yes, I'm totally in agreement with you. If you don't, I'm pretty sure you're in for a slide. Like I said, these are street scenarios...you track guys get ****** when there's debris or a spillage on a track that would cause this exact scenario as you're trying to get round a corner carrying the most speed with the best line possible and you're absolutely relying on the greatest amount of friction between the tires and the surface of the track and adjusting your body accordingly to get that friction advantage. Take it away, drastically reduce the size of your traffic lane, and add in an unexpected direction change or emergency stop and things change.

If I can see ahead of me that the way is clear and the surface seems fine I ride very differently than I do if I can't see those things. Usually I haven't done a pass to see exactly what conditions are like or I might be on a road I've never travelled on before so I won't just take a gamble on it being clear or it being a steady surface. Therein lies the biggest difference of riding on the street compared to the track....the unexpected and having to prepare for it while dealing with oncoming traffic and narrower traffic lanes.

 

[Rob MacLennan]

Thanks. I had most of that, was just wondering. The two biggest hazards I've come across while riding around a corner are:

1. Sudden large gravel patch. Can't ride around it, would prefer to be as upright as possible and going as straight as possible with as much speed scrubbed off if that's an option.

2. Oncoming driver in your lane. Need to adjust trajectory rapidly, usually makes the curve you were on a reduced radius curve for a short while (seems to blind right handers are the worst for this as you get the occasional oncoming assclown taking an extreme racing line into your lane).

There's others but I'm not usually going at warp speed and can cope with most obstacles, the two above are the more dangerous ones that I've found for street riding and that are unlikely to be track related events and I'm still not certain that hanging off (in an extreme manner...lets be clear) would help with any of these in terms of the likelihood of staying on the bike and staying in your lane.

What he said.

1) I've come around a corner on a rural back road up north, at supra-legal speeds, only to find that a section of good if worn roadway has suddenly turned to 200 yards of gravel that starts mid-corner. It's a tough one. My choice was to get the bike upright, nail the brakes at near lock-up, then lean again so that I could turn inside the radius of the corner and get upright again. The other option is to hit the brakes as hard as you feel is possible while pulling the bike down, so that you don't run wide, hoping to be able to get the bike more upright at a slower speed before you hit the gravel. Worst case is that lowside that I mentioned previously. Either can work, depending upon the situation.

This is years back, mind you, when traffic was lighter and enforcement more lax.

2) An obstacle is an obstacle whether it's a car, raccoon, or pedestrians (and I've encountered all three in blind corners). To my mind if you run into the situation that you've outlined and it's more than a slight butt-clenching moment, you failed back when you entered the corner. On the street my mantra is, "All corners are decreasing radius corners" because one of these days I'll be right. I don't care if I know every crack in the pavement on a particular road; the corners are all late apex. Perfect apexing is for the track. Late apexing a corner gives you a far better look at what is further down the corner. It gives you plenty of room and time to adjust to conditions. After that, my advice from the previous post applies.

As to extreme hanging off: Suppose that oncoming car is fully half in your lane, squeezing you to the inside of the corner. That corner is now a seriously decreasing radius one and you're going to have to lean hard, to get through it. Hanging off makes it that much easier, or at least possible.

 

[Baggsy]

What if you're coming off a blind off ramp and there is traffic backed up. That's been a common scenario that I've come across.