But what about the rider who has gotten through that phase, the intermediate and advanced rider for whom those basics have long since been assimilated? What causes them to go down?
Unfortunately, there's often not a clear answer. An experienced rider is operating his motorcycle at a very different level-including perhaps much higher speeds. He is exerting far more nuanced influences on its controls at the same time that he is interpreting very subtle cues from the bike. And he's doing all that while interacting with the road itself in a far richer way. Combine all that and suddenly the things that can go wrong have dramatically increased in number at the same time that they have become far more difficult to discern.
There are some things that stand out, however-causes that seem overrepresented in crashes by the cognoscenti. Among them would be things like cold tires, inattention, over-confidence, pressing too hard, fatigue, and lapses of judgment.
Judgment, in particular-that parent voice inside our head that should be watching over everything-is frequently an early casualty in the prelude to a crash. Judgment isn't often viewed as a riding skill, a competency to be developed. And yet, as the progenitor of all our decision making-where should I ride today, what should I wear, who should I go with, what shall my pace be, what should my line through that corner be, and on and on-it sets the stage for everything that comes after. Absolutely, judgment should be nurtured. Alas, it's a lot harder to learn judgment than something like trail braking or how to wheelie. And it's usually the first thing we toss aside when we start having fun and get all happy.
None of these causes are new, of course. We've heard them all before. The important thing to realize is that these are all "soft" factors. They defy a quick understanding of what happened, rarely raising their head as a single, obvious cause of a crash. How, then, do we figure it out
In the aviation world every crash is examined in minute, exacting detail. No stone is left unturned in trying to determine what caused it. And that information is then disseminated widely. You can actually buy books that are only about airplane crashes. Treatises that lay out in grim detail case study after case study of how it all went wrong up there. Similarly, aviation magazines frequently showcase crash or near-crash incidents, detailing the particulars of what real world pilots faced.
And pilots embrace that stuff, because they know that understanding what their counterparts went through-how some of the stuff those other pilots did worked, and how some of it didn't-may someday save their own ass.
That kind of critical analysis contrasts sharply with the attitude too often seen in the motorcycling community-where oftentimes our crashes are embellished for dramatic effect and where a busted-up bike or a pair of scarred leathers are somehow seen as badges of courage. And where there's usually little or no attempt to seriously decompose the crash and come up with an answer to the question.
And therein lies the message: We need to intellectualize this sport of ours. When we crash we need to sit down and think long and hard about everything that preceded it; and everything that was a part of it. We need to study it. We need to write it down. We need to examine our bike for clues. We need to go back and visit the place it happened, if necessary. We need to bend our minds to the puzzle until the cause-or, more likely, causes-reveals itself. The answer is there.
And then, understanding it, we need to add it to our body of experience-that list of lessons we don't want to have to learn a second time.
That's especially important if we've experienced more than one crash over a relatively short span of time. A decade ago, after having enjoyed dozens of incident-free track days over many years, I suddenly found myself the not-so-proud author of three racetrack crashes over as many years. A crash rate I found utterly unacceptable. That prompted some long and reflective thinking about what I was doing and how I was doing it.
If you're crashing multiple times, there's almost always a common thread that runs through them. You need to figure out what it is.
Those scarred leathers? They're simply a reminder that, for a single moment in time, we sucked.