Life-saving lessons from Ducati

 

The motorcycles are getting hot and heavy out there.

In the span of a week, we had three potentially dangerous interactions with motorcycles, which is rather higher than normal.

All of them had a different attitude coming from the rider.

Honestly, I think we may be able to attribute it to the heat.

I used to commute to college on a motorcycle. It was not in Manila, so admittedly it did not include the craziness and borderline lawlessness of our local streets.

I have tried riding in Manila, but I do not do it on a regular basis.

Having said all that, I took the Ducati Riding Experience (DRE) training class just this last weekend—which was awesome and eye-opening.

If classes such as these and the more mainstream one that has been available from Honda for decades were more accessible, I think that the three incidents we just experienced could have been avoided.

The first incident involved what may well have been a disturbed individual who rode into oncoming traffic, then got very irate as he passed our vehicle when we actually slowed to make sure he had space to move in and avoid a head-on collision.

The rider slowed, then tried to stop our vehicle. When that failed, he drove alongside our car screaming, then took off his helmet and continued to shout.

As he got increasingly dangerous, we sped up and left. There were children in the car, and we had no intention of opening doors or windows.

 

Contrast this with a rider who squeezed in front of our family car (untinted) while my wife was driving.

The rider then slowed down, pointed, and looked like he was apologizing.

This may all be legit, but again, safety demands that you avoid engaging or opening the car doors or windows, especially if you are a young lady alone in a car.

The third incident was when a motorcycle slowed down beside us, then just decided to go forward in traffic and knock our mirror sideways.

It seemed like a conscious decision.

Now do not take this as an anti-motorcycle rant. I really do pity the people who have to ride in this heat and in this atmosphere.

It is dangerous and unhealthy, and it takes a huge amount of concentration to ride safely here.

Which brings us back to the Ducati Riding Experience. I have gone through several motorcycle riding and safety courses over the years in the Philippines and abroad, and as C! Magazine, we have even supported some.

They are truly lifesaving experiences that should be taken by all, even repeatedly.

With the Ducati DRE, one thing I did that I never had was to brake hard on sand.

This is something you are trained to avoid, if not fear, as the very little amount of contact your wheels have with the road gets even less useful when you take away friction by water or sand or grass or oil.

But because the modern bikes have anti-lock braking (as they really all should have in this day and age), what used to be a horrendously dangerous exercise was surprisingly serene.

Hard braking from speed would start either just before the sand or in the middle of it, so you had at least one or two changes from one surface to another.

 

All of these would have been recipes for danger before, but now they are not.

One thing motorcycle classes always teach you is too limit your risk so you can only be killed by one thing at a time.

The fact that braking hard is now handled with relative ease and training means that the rider can concentrate on other stuff—like avoiding a guard rail, a cliff, or an oncoming car.

It is a brilliant technology, but it does require learning (or relearning) what to do in an emergency.

The DRE was populated by a wide range of students, from returning riders such as myself, to those who only ever rode bicycles, to some scooter aficionados, to someone who just bought a Harley and was convinced (very rightly so) to get proper training.

By the end of the day, there were people both male and female, both young and old, who had dropped bikes and run over cones in the morning and were doing emergency swerves and hard brakes on the slippery stuff by the afternoon.

Care, ability and confidence were all significantly improved.

The Ducati program is awesome, well run, and professionally staffed, and the Philippine representative is a pioneer for the program outside of Italy.

Honda has been doing this kind of training for decades, and while it aims at more basic riding skills, it is also crucial in keeping riders safe and alive.

Everyone who provides this service should be thanked and commended. And the effects aren’t just for those on two wheels.

The risk assessment, avoidance, and limiting exercises that have been drilled in me when riding motorcycles have done their fair share of keeping me out of trouble on four wheels, as well.