Ultimate Guide Emergency Motorcycle Braking

Basic Advice – Two Fingers

(Please note this differs from official DVSA or Police Motorcycle Roadcraft advice – see below. There is no official advice I can find to cover your brakes, even in response to hazards, although this is taught by BikeAbility to young cyclists).

Summary

When Upright

The advice is to ride covering your brake and clutch by resting your index and middle fingers on the levers. In an emergency, if upright, squeeze both immediately, along with the rear brake.

The engine may be left screaming. It doesn’t matter.

If you aren’t covering your front brake, (or have an automatic or electric bike), then immediately apply the rear brake while you are shutting the throttle and reaching for the levers.

If the front tyre skids, release and reapply more gently. If the ABS activates, maintain the braking pressure, and only release the pressure if the rear wheel leaves the ground and you feel you might capsize.

This advice could save you around 1 second reducing your impact speed by around 15 mph.

You’ll probably survive a 30 mph impact, but not one at 40 mph, so scrubbing off as much speed as possible is crucial.

From 60 mph, it could be the difference between stopping in time, and a 40 mph impact. As always ‘it depends’.

Braking obeys a ‘Square Law’.

In many, if not most collisions, it is thought you have < 2secs to react and brake.

When Banked

If you have to brake on a bend, you have two options.

1. Apply the rear brake only.
2. Bring the bike upright and apply both brakes – if you have room.

Practise is vital to make your response automatic.

Introduction

Firstly, for drivers who are non-riders, this may all seem unnecessary and over complex. In other vehicles, drivers just instinctively stamp on the brakes. It requires no skill or thought. The vehicle will almost certainly have ABS and ‘yaw control’, so even on a bend or on a poor surface, it should simply come to a halt. The driver usually stays in control, or rather the vehicle does, with the driver held in place by a seatbelt and with a steering wheel for support. However, obviously the laws of physics still apply if you’re going way too fast.

Motorcycles have two separate brakes, one front, one back, operated separately like a bicycle. (Some have linked brakes). However the rear brake is usually foot operated. The centre of mass is lower, so they can brake more effectively than a cycle. But it is far higher than other road vehicles. This restricts the braking to <1g whereas cars etc can brake at >1g.

Motorcycles therefore suffer more from weight transfer under braking, with the rear tyre becoming more likely to skid during braking, as the weight transfers forwards onto the front tyre.  ABS was only compulsory for bikes over 125cc from 2016, so small or older bikes are very likely to skid. A front wheel skid often results in a fall, but a rear skid doesn’t usually (as bicycles).

Under hard braking, the rear wheel can leave the ground, the bike can pitch forward and flip, and the rider can go over the handlebars. Some very modern bikes have pitch control. This works with the ABS to reduce the braking to prevent this. But usually it’s in the control of the rider, who at the time is experiencing similar forces to doing a ‘hand stand’.

So minimising braking distances in an emergency, unlike cars, requiries ‘muscle memory’ acquired though continual practise to prevent panicking and snatching the front brake; physical strength; a high degree of skill to modulate front and rear brake pressures; an accurate assessment of the likely grip available from the road surface.

This assumes the bike is upright. In a corner, using the front brake with the lower level of grip left after cornering forces, makes a skid far more likely. It also affects the steering, with ‘yaw’ potentially making the bike ‘sit up’ and run wide, and requires more lean angle. The rear brake doesn’t affect the steering, but is far less effective due to weight transfer

Advice

Firstly consider increasing your separation distance from 2 seconds to 3 seconds, as advised in Norway (which has a better safety record) and NSW in Australia.

This is also important as drivers often drive far too close behind riders, and the car in front can stop more quickly than you.

Bear in mind it’s usually ‘the unexpected’ that will get you, no matter how skilled and experienced you may be, or think you are.

Always consider covering your brakes, as a minimum in response to any potential hazard. Rest your index and middle fingers on top of the front brake lever. Have your foot ready over the rear brake pedal. Extend your left hand’s index and middle fingers and place on top of the clutch lever.

If you have to brake suddenly, roll your hand forward and release the throttle. Wrap your fingers around the lever and squeeze, don’t snatch the front brake lever, applying increasing pressure. If the wheel locks, immediately release and reapply more gently.

Press down steadily on the rear brake with increasing pressure, and again release and reapply more gently if the rear wheel locks. It will probably need to be gradually released as the weight transfers forwards and the grip reduces. Just initally dabbing the rear brake is an alternative, which needs less thought and skill.

You may not be able to fully close the throttle. If you can’t, pull in the clutch. The engine may be screaming, but it’s not important – stopping is.

The front brake is by far the most effective brake, so focus your attention on it, and your front wheel grip.

If the ABS comes on, keep the brakes applied and let the system bring you to a stop.

The machine will pitch forward alarmingly, the rear will lift and the forks will sink. You may find that your head nods forwards, and that you cannot see ahead (which might be a blessing).

Recommendations

These recommendations are based on basic theory and common sense, and minimising braking distances (Cossalter).

As a rider, if you think you will instinctively brake effectively in an emergency – please think again. You may be mistaken.

Forensic crash investigators have found that circa 50% of riders skid and fall trying to brake in an emergency.

Research has also found only 50% of riders can achieve Highway Code braking distances. But, with training and practice, many riders can stop in 80% of these distances. Braking effectively can easily be the difference between braking in time, and a serious impact.

You will likely be unaware of these figures, although the research is over a decade old. In some areas the police and others have been addressing the problem. Locally the Lincs police were running courses at Cadwell Park covering emergency braking with Hopp Rider Training. There are also other initiatives that we are aware of.

The problem has been hidden by the very poor accident investigation procedures used by the police. They will likely be aware of the problem due to the evidence at the scene where a rider has fallen and slid into a vehicle at ground level, and the scrape marks on the road. There is no specific cause of ‘fell whilst braking’. It’s swept up in ‘Loss of control’ which isn’t particularly helpful. In addition, the failure to brake properly will likely be hidden as it may be unknown.

So this cause will likely end up being reported as ‘speeding’ or ‘failed to look properly’. There are correct diagnoses of speeding, where the injuries the rider sustained show that the impact was at above the speed limit. But the figures are probably misleading, not helped by a recent survey using traffic cameras that motorcyclists are more likely to be speeding than other road users.

We are often seen as reckless, and our own worse enemies, with some justification.

It is clear that National and Local Government is not focussed on PTW safety. The decisions in continuing with hired E-Scooters despite 50 deaths, and over 500, maybe 1,000’s of serious injuries confirm this, and the official findings that they are 5 times more hazardous than a bicycle.

E-Scooters take twice as long to stop than any other vehicle, including bicycles. It’s braking yet again.

We’ll have to help ourselves.

Official Advice

None that I can find suggests riding normally  covering the front brake – but I might have missed it.

Bikeability, who work with the Dft on cycle training, promote covering the brakes on a bicycle. So why not on a PTW? Makes no sense not to.

I know it’s considered by some to make snatching the brake more likely, so it may have been deliberately ignored. I have seen no evidence to support this. With modern ABS, snatching would make little difference, based on our recent tests with KurvX dataloggers.

Also the two fingers near the pivot applied first, make snatching and locking less likely.

DVSA

The current DVSA advice is to close the throttle. Then apply the front brake before the rear. This makes no sense. Applying the rear brake as you are closing the throttle turns on the brake light probably 1 second earlier. This can be a life saver. You’ve also started to brake, which makes an even bigger difference with linked brakes.

Applying the rear brake immediately reduces the reaction time by a second or more, potentially reducing impact speed by circa 10 mph, 20 mph with linked brakes (which should be compulsory).

You can see from the above graph, from information just supplied by the DVSA, that ‘Effective Braking Techniques‘ is the most popular extra ERS module by a margin, which implies many riders are aware of their vulnerability in this respect.

The irony is that current training, (if compliant with DVSA advice), may increase the rider’s level of risk, and adversley affect outcomes

POLICE MOTORCYCLE ROADCRAFT

Closing the throttle first is missed (it was in the 1990’s DSA riding manuals as well). It may be obvious but could be forgotten in an emergency. It’s not like a car where you usually (not autos if you’re left foot braking) have to take your foot off the throttle to brake.

It’s also advised that you release the front brake and apply the rear as you’re coming to a halt. This looks to have been mistakenly carried across from normal braking, as it will likely increase braking distances, and at the point where the rate of deaccleration is at its greatest.

INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED MOTORCYCLISTS

The hand book I have is dated 2004, so the advice may have changed. It mentions having ‘your hand and foot poised over the control’, but again does not cover closing the throttle. This also does not appear under ‘What the examiner looks for’, which suggests emergency braking is not assessed.

The advice in a bend is to ‘sit the bike up and and brake hard‘, as opposed to police and DVSA advice to use the rear brake first. (We will be covering braking in corners in detail in another post).

This is a link to the IAM document ‘Full Control’, which includes advice on braking. It’s translated from Norwegian so somethings may have been lost in translation. I confirmed it’s the most recent version, but it’s from the 1980’s and doesn’t appear to include ABS.

https://www.iamroadsmart.com/groups/cornwallam/resources/document-library/docs/librariesprovider97/document-library/full-control

RoSPA

All courses comply with DVSA and Roadcraft standards, so it’s not clear which method they now advise. However, RoSPA have published the advice below in ‘Care on the Road’.

Despite being a RoSPA Instructor and a DVSA Post-Test trainer, and completing BikeSafe, no one has checked that I can stop in an emergency since my licence test in 1967 at 28 mph.

The current official advice I think is wrong, which is likely to result in avoidable SKIs.

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Emergency Straight-Line Braking

This assumes you have ignored the advice above, and are not covering the front brake.

• If either wheel locks, release that brake immediately and reapply with less pressure.

• If the rear wheel lifts off the ground, release some front brake pressure to stop the bike tipping forwards.

• Disengage the clutch as you come to a halt

• When banked in a corner, just carefully apply the rear brake.

Dry Roads – the advice is 10% rear brake and 90% front

Wet Roads – 30% rear and 70% front due to less grip.

(Vittore Cossalter – ‘Motorcycle Dynamics’)

Emergency Braking in a corner

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(We intend to cover trail braking and braking mid corner in detail in a later post).

CORRECT TRAINING IS VITAL

Research has shown emergency braking competence is not related to rider experience. If riders are not taught properly, many will probably never be able brake properly, putting them at high risk.

Practice Using a Phone App

You can use a free phone App such as iAccel Lite to test your braking ability. It shows initial speed, distance to stop and average braking g force, which should be 0.67g minimum to meets Highway Code braking distances. The theoretical limit is 1g after which most bikes will start to tip up. The best riders can stop in 80% of the published distances.

(As few Android users took this advice last year, iAccel is currently only available on iPhones. We’re trying to address this).

PRACTISE USING A DATA LOGGER

These are graphs from a KurvX datalogger from a test day at Blyton Park. The Kurvx system or any data logger can also be also be used for cornering feedback and training.

This has the advantage of being able to see the braking force applied by the rider through the braking cycle, and where improvements can be made. You can see from the second graph that the rider failed to apply the brake hard enough initially.

Practise, Practise, Practise

If your bike doesn’t have ABS, do not practice alone due to the risk of falling.

It is vital that you practice emergency braking repeatedly to create the required ‘muscle memory’, so your response become automatic. This should avoid an uncontrolled panic reaction, which currently means circa 50% of riders in an emergency lock the front wheel, skid and fall.

Even with ABS, many riders can simply fail to apply the brakes firmly enough, usually due to previous or current experience on bicycles.

If the ABS activates, the rider has braked too hard, or more likely initially too harshly. There is no evidence that ABS actually minimises braking distances, although it is a vital safety aid.

If the ABS does activate, releasing and reapplying the brakes will probably increase the braking distance.

We’ve tested the latest ABS technology, and it’s far better than it was. You can brake with the tyres screaming.

It’s better that your technique doesn’t activate the ABS, as you may ride a bike without ABS in the future, and will need the skills.

Gradually build up, braking harder as your confidence grows, always ready to release the lever immediately if the front wheel locks. Once the forks have compressed, and the weight has transferred, which probably takes around a second, you can usually squeeze the lever as hard as you can without the wheel locking.

In theory it takes 200 repetitions, after which the memory and reaction becomes permanent and automatic. This is easier to achieve safely and quickly on a track.

As most of the speed is lost at the end of braking, the difference between the best and worst rider as tested, is the difference between stopping in time from 60 mph, or a 40 mph potentially fatal impact.

Most track riders and racers already have this built-in, as it only takes a day’s racing or a trackday for this to become embedded into the rider’s behaviour.

If you change your bike, consider practicing again, particularly if it is an older machine without ABS.

Wet, slippery roads, or a poor road surface.

Wet roads need more care. Apply the brakes initially more gently. Once the weight is transferred onto the front tyre, it is unlikely to skid unless there is standing water. Again, 70/30 front/rear braking is suggested.

Always take care, and keep within your capabilities and confidence limits.

For more background information see:-

https://britishsuperbikeschool.com/2023/12/28/1-motorcycle-straightline-emergency-braking-response-to-mcia-ceo-tony-campbells-call-for-a-major-rethink-on-motorcycle-safety/

Feedback and opinions are welcomed.

Mike Abbott MBA, RoADAR (Dip), DVSA RPMT 800699, ACU Road Race Coach #62210

British Superbike School

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Web: www.britishsuperbikeschool.co.uk

May 2024

Revised Feb 2025