HOW TO ATTACK PANIC

What’s the Boy Scout’s motto? Be prepared. You should abide by that rule every time you ride because you never know what’s around the corner...

- Simon Roots

All too often, we take our riding skills for granted. We slip into little routines that make us vulnerable to nasty surprises, because our brains aren’t designed to cope with anything out of the ordinary. You could be having a ‘common or garden’ ride into work riding from your house to the office; you know the route – past the school, through the village, onto the bypass – but then suddenly someone pulls out in front of you. Bam! You react in the worst way possible and hit the brakes without summing up the situation rationally.

Panic is the natural reaction, and it takes over as soon as anything unforeseen crops up. It stops us from breathing properly, tenses our muscles and focuses our eyes on the problem – rather than the escape route. This is likely to make a bad situation even worse. But if you prepare and practice for emergency situations, your brain won’t seize. That’s why we practice fire drills and why pilots practice crash landings – to deal with situations when it matters. It’s unrealistic to expect your noggin to react in the right way if you’ve never come across a dangerous situation before, and relying on luck is no backup.

Now is not the time to ponder how quickly you can stop or to worry about whether you’ll make it around a corner. Now is the time to react quickly, positively, and safely, because, when the time comes, and who knows when that will be, there will be no time to rehearse. Keeping your mind sharp, focused, and always looking for an escape route should be permanent priorities. When the time comes to put your skills into action, you’ll have no more than a fraction of a second to react.