Street Strategies: Risk Management, Part III

10 May 2017 Ramey "Coach" Stroud 757 Views

This article begins a series of MotoSafe columns on “Street Strategies.” In the following months we hope to guide you, our fellow BMW MOA members, in the awareness and application of strategies to help you better enjoy your ride. We hope to introduce, and maybe reintroduce, you to those strategies that will help you ride more safely. Please note that much of the following article references are based upon the Motorcycle Safety Foundations (MSF) Basic RiderCourse SM (BRC) material.

NOTE: This article was originally published in October 2012 and may contain outdated references. Please verify anything involving the MSF with their current programs.

For those of you that have taken the MSF BRC, the title should sound familiar since it is the final words of the BRC video on risk. Risk is there every day that we ride. It is there in all our daily activities, but most especially when we choose to enjoy our sport.

There are three components of risk: Awareness, Acceptance and Management. Each is just as important as the next in helping us to not only enjoy our ride, but all three need to be there to have a safe ride. Let’s look at each component in order.

Awareness, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “having or showing realization, perception or knowledge,” in this case of risk. So what do we, as motorcycle riders, need to be aware of? We need to be aware of the limitations we have as motorcyclists. We may have powerful, nimble bikes, but our limitations can wipe out that advantage in an instant.

Does a car driver, or as motorcyclists like to call them, cage drivers, have to put their foot down when they come to a stop? No, but we do. Even those very experienced riders who have taken a biking bonding course have to stop sometimes and hold the bike upright. We ride a very unstable vehicle, as they tip over easily. We need to be concerned with stability. The stability issue comes into play each time we take a corner and lean the bike. Too much lean for our speed and we tip over, dropping the bike. Stability also is an issue in traffic, where we need to constantly be aware of keeping the bike upright, or as we say, keeping the rubber side down.

Next, we are not as big as the other vehicles around us, an advantage often, but also a limitation. We become invisible to those other drivers. Or, even worse, they see us but think we are farther away and going slower than we really are. Visibility, or rather the lack of visibility to the cage drivers, is a big cause of many motorcycle accidents.

Many a motorcyclist has found out too late that the car driver who just ran them off the road did not see them. A common response by car drivers is they didn’t see the motorcycle. The Hurt Study, released in 1981, found that “The failure of motorists to detect and recognize motorcycles in traffic is the predominating cause of motorcycle accidents. The driver of the other vehicle involved in a collision with the motorcycle did not see the motorcycle before the collision, or did not see the motorcycle until too late to avoid the collision.”

We need to be aware that we are essentially invisible to those other road users.

Another difference between us, the motorcyclist, and the other road users is vulnerability. A car has metal, plastic, integrated roll bars and other safety equipment. We only have the helmets we wear, the pants, the jackets that cover our bodies, the gloves to protect our hands and the boots on our feet. Not much protection from a 2,000-pound metal object, which outweighs both our bike and us by at least a factor of three! Or, protection from that road surface we are riding on.

Acceptance is defined as “to receive willingly, to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable,” again from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. If we accept the risk, then we are responsible for the level of risk we experience. The MSF in their BRC material uses the illustration of a ladder. The higher you climb on a ladder, the greater chance you may fall. You have more factors to consider as you climb higher. Distance from the ground is only one of them. How about the stability of the ladder itself? You have all seen that warning on ladders about standing on the top rung, which is a warning that you are at greater risk the higher on the ladder you go.

Ultimately you are the person who must accept the risk, so you must take personal responsibility. When we ride our bikes, not only must we be aware of the limitations of the motorcycle, but we must also accept those limits and learn to ride within them. They determine how much risk we can take, at any given moment of a ride.

The MSF uses a chain to illustrate the concept of acceptance. It is linked to the story of a motorcyclist heading home at night. The story sets up a situation with many factors. The point is that all the factors combined lead to the accident, but if the rider removes any one factor, the accident doesn’t happen. The rider is ultimately the person responsible.

The final component is Management. Having a strategy to manage risk is what the game is all about. If we can manage the risk inherent in our sport, we can enjoy it more and have a safer experience. What is the objective of a good motorcyclist when riding? Considering the topic of this article, wouldn’t you say having a desire and the motivation to reduce risk while riding? How do you do that? You have a strategy.

First, you need to have knowledge of the tools in your toolkit to manage risk. What are those tools?

Know and stay within your personal limits

Could you, as a new rider, do the same things that a superbike racer can do? Of course not! Knowing your limits helps you to assess the risk of a given situation.

Know and stay within the limits of your motorcycle

Can an F 800 ST corner and accelerate like an S 1000 RR? Again, learning what your bike can and can’t do is critical to how you manage each situation. How new the bike is to you is also a factor. Again from the Hurt study, “More than half of the accident-involved motorcycle riders had less than five months experience on the accident motorcycle, although the total street riding experience was almost three years.” They had not learned what their bikes were capable of doing, or not doing.

Time and Space

Using a strategy that gives you both the time to respond, and also the space to respond to a given situation. Open up that following distance to the vehicle ahead of you. If following two seconds behind that vehicle in front of you is the minimum distance, why not make it three seconds, just to have an extra margin.

MSF teaches a strategy called SEE, which means Search, Evaluate and Execute. We will discuss this further in following articles.

I ask myself “What should I do now?” over and over in the dark freezing air of a climber’s emergency refuge. Outside, the wind-driven snow is curling around my motorcycle. It’s getting dark and I am low on fuel. Do I stay here at 15,000 feet near the top of the Andes, or take a chance and ride down through a snowstorm to the base camp some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away? What should I do now?

Part I of this three-part series introduced some fundamental concepts of risk management regarding motorcycles. In Part II you learned that making tough choices about risk is like looking at a playground teeter-totter. The risk and danger ahead go on one end and your skills and the motorcycle’s capability on the other. If it tips down on the danger side, you don’t go, or you choose a less risky option. If it tips the other way, it means your skills and bike setup outweigh the dangers and you are good to go. But what happens when the teeter-totter stays level?

Risk Assessment

What do you do if your skills and equipment are in balance with the dangers ahead? Is your safety to be a matter of a coin toss? To explore this question, I shared with you last time the story of a tough situation I recently experienced high in the Andes Mountains of South America. I then asked what would you have done in my situation. Now, in Part III, you’ll find out what actually happened. You get to evaluate how I used the teeter-totter in real life. You get to decide whether I made the right call.

Take a Risk?

Used as a noun, the word risk usually means exposure to danger and the possibility that something unpleasant or unwelcome will happen. A scientist could evaluate the applicable physics and mathematics to calculate the amount of danger as a fairly uniform and constant probability. If A and if B, but not C, then outcome D will occur X times out of a 100. When humans enter the picture, the game changes. Now the word risk becomes a verb: an act or failure to act in such a way as to bring about the possibility of an unpleasant or unwelcome event. Danger the noun, humans the verb.

For example, if I jump from a perfectly good airplane, am I an extreme risk taker? The skydiver holds a Class A rating (the highest possible) and uses the best equipment available. She never jumps in bad weather and always wears a reserve parachute with an automatic altitude-sensing opener. How about if I ride a motorcycle on a busy street? The man on his new S 1000 RR isn’t wearing a helmet because his state doesn’t require one. He has on a black T-shirt and shorts because it’s a hot night. He’s had a few beers while watching the game at the pub, but he’s not that far from home. At this speed, his eyes are watering because he forgot his prescription glasses.

Who do you think is more at risk—the lady falling through the air at terminal velocity only seconds from the ground or the man on a short ride to his house? Whatever your answer, can you see that what these people did changed the degree of risk they faced? The preparation or lack thereof lowered the risk on the one hand and raised it on the other. These simple examples illustrate an extreme risk taker is one who faces danger without appropriate training or equipment and/or who makes poor decisions.

GO/NO-GO Decisions

At some point in every ride you will face GO/NO-GO decision points. This is when you have to decide if you will take that trail or climb that hill or go that fast or call it a day. These are non-control decisions. To go or not is about when, where and how hard to ride, not the specifics of what gear or what RPM or to brake or not. Your GO/NO-GO decisions are about ride strategy, not the tactical aspects of control function or body mechanics.

To make good GO/NO-GO choices requires a rider to consider three things—skills, equipment and situation. The skydiver in the example above decided to jump after putting the dangers of free fall and weather on one side of the teeter-totter and her equipment and training on the other. To remember all three parts of a good decision, I visualize a three-legged stool. The legs are skills, equipment and situational awareness. If one leg of the stool breaks (meaning it is overlooked), the stool falls over, symbolizing a poor decision.

Situational Awareness

(note: see article SIERRA ALPHA)

The three-legged stool and the teeter-totter visualizations work together. To demonstrate how, let’s evaluate all the facts you were given in Part II about my situation up in the Andes. On one side of the teeter-totter—situation

The danger: 5,000 meters mean sea level (about 16,000 feet elevation) in thin air; unexpected weather: forecast in error and no updates available; micro-weather pattern unknown; wind chill index currently around 0 degrees F; unknown snowfall intensity (total depth); unknown snowfall duration (hours or days); on my own, with no help available close by; base camp and next fuel some 30–50 kilometers (19–31 miles) away, mostly downhill; not familiar with area; limited map detail and few road signs; now sunset and soon darkness, with no star or moonlight due to cloud cover; off-pavement road conditions, but map says pavement soon.

On the other end of the teeter-totter—skills

Former mountain search and rescue team member, ski patrol, wilderness EMT; extensive motorcycle training on- and off-road with day/night racing/rally experience; age: 65 years old in good health, but has been riding all day; partial-paraplegic with limited mobility, can hike short distance with a cane; possible hypoxia: some mental disorientation with lapses in focus/concentration; possible dehydration, no urge to urinate; currently Stage I hyperthermia; clothing and all-weather boots now maintaining body heat; overall feeling of fatigue, but still ready and capable of more miles.

Equipment

fixed, enclosed refuge shelter available, but no heat and limited water; portable cold-weather emergency shelter on the bike; 48–72 hours of survival rations, but no cooking fire wood available; GPS working and programmed for route, paper map back-up; SPOT emergency locator and shelter short-wave radio off-line; BMW R 1150 R in top mechanical condition and set up for these conditions; low on fuel, but enough to do 50 kilometers (31 miles); four liters of spare fuel onboard, good for approximately 40 kilometers (25 miles); off-road and fog lights fitted and functional; no additional cold weather clothing available, only summer pants and shirts; no formal trip plan filed, but informed officers at border station of travel goals.

I sat there thinking about where the teeter-totter was for my various options: 1) Stay where I am in the refuge shelter. 2) Continue on to the base station below. 3) Return to the Chilean border station. I immediately ruled out option three—not enough fuel. So now the choice was down to stay or to go.

What if I leave and then can’t find the base camp? But then I realized it was next to the road. If I can just keep moving, the road will lead me there.
What if I get stuck in the snow or mud? Two things came to mind: I can steer in slippery conditions with my thumb-brake and throttle. It’s mostly downhill from here to the base camp, so traction management should be easier than going uphill.
What if the snowfall increases? I will be going down the mountain to warmer, thicker air. It is possible the snow will turn back to rain.
What if I run out of gas? Not likely, but I have survival gear on the bike. I could snow camp in place. Not a good thought; a worst-case scenario.

NO-GO

The benefits of staying were immediate and not in question. I have shelter from the storm. There is no heat, but at least I’m protected from the icy wind outside. But what if this storm dumps a couple of feet of snow? How long will it be before I can ride out? I have enough gear and food to last for a couple of days. It won’t be pleasant or comfortable, but it is possible. I could melt snow for drinking water, but it would not be easy because there is no more fire wood.
No one knows I am here. I was relying on my SPOT emergency locator, but it is showing a red warning light. Is there no GPS signal because of a malfunction or the dense cloud cover? It’s not likely the border guards in Chile will call the guards in Argentina to ask if I made it to their outpost.
An emergency radio is built into the back wall of the shelter, but the push-to-talk switch is missing. Can I access the radio in the wall and fix it? Will the batteries that power the radio be charged? How long will it take to make the repairs? If I spend the time and the radio still doesn’t work, will the snow be too deep by then to ride on?
What if I lose body heat in the next 72 hours? I can pull a wheel and burn a tire, but then I’m stuck here if the storm breaks and the road is passable. It would also be a good signal fire, but who would see it?

The “what if” questions continued in my head until I realized the teeter-totter was level in both cases. The risks of staying and the risks of going were about equal.

Risk Tolerance

I had gotten myself into a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. There was no clear best choice and both options were equally bad. It was about this time that fear raised its ugly head. Some face fear with anger and boldness. They get mad to start an adrenaline release for the fight ahead. When in doubt, gas it out! Others allow fear to take control of the situation. They find a corner and do nothing. As a fireman on search and rescue missions, I always looked for children hiding in closets or under beds. Kids hide from the ﬂames, thinking what they can’t see won’t hurt them. These bravado and avoidance behaviors are classic fight-or-ﬂight responses.

As we discussed in Part I, there is a better way to make tough decisions. With the proper training and experience, we can learn to move our decision making from a part of the brain called the hypothalamus to the prefrontal cortex. We can learn to avoid fight-or-ﬂight reactions and make executive function decisions based on logic and fact. Thankfully I have received that training, so here in the dim light of the shelter I force myself to do what we do on the bike: SCAN, THINK, ACT.

I reviewed all of the details of my situation. I considered the pros and cons of my options. Then, before making the decision, I took a long, slow, deep breath.

Sometimes we need to ask ourselves, how am I doing? It’s a powerful question, because under stress we tend to lose touch with our bodies. For example, in competition I learned to routinely do self-assessments at speed for strategic reasons. During rallies or desert races it might be on a dry lakebed, a long sand section or some other relatively smooth surface where I could relax just a little. On the super bikes it was usually on a long straightaway while down behind the bubble at 150 mph-plus. I would take a long deep breath and let it out slowly. How am I doing? How’s the bike? Can I pick up the pace or do I need to back off?

Now I’m here on this cold ﬂoor asking questions for another reason. Risk tolerance levels move around and I need to find out where mine is now. In the morning when we are fresh, sharp and strong, our risk tolerance is usually at its highest level. But as the miles or hours unfold, we get mentally, physically and emotionally tired. We are not as able to cope with demanding situations. If we are smart, we adjust speed and terrain accordingly. We don’t take on as much and are more cautious. I am cold and tired, so I need to be more conservative, but I’m under the gun. My decision clock is ticking. I have to make my GO/NO GO choice quickly. The longer I wait, the colder it gets. If it gets cold enough, the wet snow will turn dry and get deeper.

An individual’s risk tolerance is based not only on current condition but also on his or her life experiences and personality. For example, I have lived on the edge most of my life. I’m used to doing dangerous things: fire captain, skydiver, rodeo cowboy, motorcycle racer, aerobatic pilot, ultra-marathoner, scuba diver. My ability to tolerate tough conditions is not theoretical. If I had had a less challenging life, I probably would not be riding solo here in South America. But even with a lifetime of experience and training – and even with the finest equipment – we can only lower the risk so much. How low it has to go before I can accept it is my risk tolerance level. Now I have to get in touch with my current risk tolerance level and choose between two bad options.

What Happened Next

While I was sitting there deciding what to do, I was eating and drinking. I was doing a micro-recovery, like an Iron Butt rider taking a five-minute nap on the bike at a gas stop. I asked myself if I ride on, what will the next couple of hours be like? The images in my mind were not that bad, so I made the decision to go. I packed my pockets accordingly. Anti-fog here; Plexis there. SPOT on and into a side pocket. Flashlight checked okay, then into another pocket with power bars and lip wax. Face wrapped in a bandana, ear plugs in, heavy gloves on, zippers closed. As I was doing all that, I planned how I would pack when I went out to the bike. I wanted the reverse order of the gear needed to set up a fast snow camp if I got stuck or ran out of gas. When I stood up in the dark, I was on a mission. There was no question in my mind about what I was going to do next. When you make a GO/NO GO decision, it has to be a 100 percent commitment. If you are going to climb that hill, then climb it! A half-hearted effort is usually worse than doing nothing.

I threw my gear out the door, then stumbled down the step to the bike. Normally I would have started the bike to warm it up, but I didn’t want to waste gas. It took longer to pack and mount than planned because my thick gloves slowed the process. I scraped the snow off the seat and sat down. Key on, fuel lever up and the bike started immediately. I love fuel injection. I lowered my face shield halfway and reached for full grip heat. Left toe down, left fingers out and I stalled the bike. Restart and try again. The wheel spun and spun but slowly found traction and we began to move. The high beam reﬂected back on the whiteness ahead and blinded me. So down to low beam and fog light on. first gear and then second and then third, but it was too fast so back to second. Now it was time to settle in. I scooted around on the seat to find the magic spot, leaned forward and tilted my chin just right so I could see out through a small open strip between the bottom of my face shield and the bandana over my nose and chin.

I passed the base camp, but didn’t know it until I reached a barrier across the road at the Argentine border station. The guard who came to the door was mad because I gotten him out of bed. He pointed back up the road and shouted, mañana! Crazy gringo, come back tomorrow. Great, I thought. I’m going to run out of gas because of a turnaround. The old Quonset hut was hard to see in the snowy darkness. Their generator was off, so there were no lights. I rolled up to one end and parked. They couldn’t believe a guy on a motorcycle was pounding on their door in the middle of the night in a snowstorm. They laughed at the crazy man in the helmet and BMW jacket and invited me in. One went to start the generator and another heated water for tea. They wanted to hear my story. An hour or so later, I slipped into a bunk in the dormitory. The rings on the metal ceiling above my bunk were wet with condensation. I didn’t care.

Post Script

After a couple of days, the snow melted and it was time to get back on the road. But before I left I wanted to take fire wood back up to the refuge for the next person in trouble. I had called the Argentina Civil Defense Agency to report the broken emergency radio on the back wall. Surprisingly, while I in the shelter a service truck pulled up outside. Two guys in sharp uniforms carried in a big new battery and a fancy new radio. I smiled. As I drove away, I thought, timing is everything.

About the Author
Ramey “Coach” Stroud is a former off-road racing champion, past motocross rider of the year and currently an around-the-world motorcycle traveler. He was recently awarded the BMW MOA Foundation’s prestigious “Individual of the Year” award for his motorcycle training programs and contributions to rider safety. His current challenge is learning walk without a cane so he can Tango.

Originally published in BMW Owners News in June 2013.