Change your default mode to ‘safe’

Training helps riders replace instinctive panic reactions with safe, controlled responses, enabling them to tackle challenging terrain with confidence and reduce the risk of accidents.

- Jedrie Harmse reports.

Our innate response to danger is either fight or flight. However, when you encounter a dangerous stretch of dirt road on an adventure motorcycle, there is nowhere to flee but forward.

When suddenly confronted by an obstacle that screams danger, a rider's natural reaction, or ‘default mode’ is to clamp down on the handlebars, grip the tank tightly with their knees, and hit the brakes.

These are precisely the actions most likely to leave a rider in a heap of pain and humiliation, and the reason why riders need proper training and regular practice.

“The goal of our training here at Country Trax is to change riders’ default mode,” says Jan du Toit, owner of the Country Trax Off-Road Riding Academy in Amersfoort, Mpumalanga.

“Through our training, we want to change the rider's natural response so that they can make safe decisions in the milliseconds available before either white-knuckling their way through trouble, or slamming into it.

“It becomes especially important when a rider is tired. That is when we want their default mode to be the safe mode.”

TRAINING FOR SAFETY

Du Toit’s training philosophy centres on keeping riders safe through training, enabling them to enjoy their motorcycles without constantly worrying about falling. “During a three-day off-road course, we effectively fast-track the experience that a rider would otherwise accumulate over many years into those three days,” he says.

“It is easy to open the throttle and enjoy the experience and exhilaration of a speeding motorcycle. The danger is that most riders who do that have never learned how to perform an emergency stop. They do not know how to turn quickly or avoid an obstacle, particularly on a dirt road,” says Du Toit.