Motorcyclists often worry about crashing on public roads or out in the wilderness, incurring damage to their bikes and bodies (or worse). This is a thoroughly reasonable concern, given the high stakes involved and the reality of a rider’s vulnerability to threats posed by car traffic, rugged terrain, wildlife and other unpredictable hazards. In fact, it’s seriously problematic for a motorcyclist to lack such apprehension. Some anxiety is a good thing, serving as motivation to stay vigilant, maintain skills and wear protective gear. Of course, one can have “too much of a good thing” and end up distracted by perpetual terror, perhaps including far-fetched scenarios. This kind of anxiety, with its intrusive parade of catastrophic fantasies, actually contributes to the likelihood of a mishap. In such cases, fear changes from being an asset to a liability. Another kind of fear is never an asset and always a liability.
Instead of losing an arm or a leg, this second type of fear is about losing face. This is the fear that keeps many motorcyclists from getting involved in rider training. It’s apprehension about dropping your bike during low-speed parking lot drills in front of your classmates. It’s the worry you’ll have the slowest lap times at a school that uses a track to teach all skill levels. It can even be the trepidation that some of your cherished beliefs and entrenched practices may be challenged; then you’d have to choose between accepting you were wrong (and taking on the hard work of changing a habit), or defiantly clinging to your old stance (now with the addition of nagging doubts—what if that expert really does know best?). Because these fears prevent riders from pursuing education, they represent a potentially deadly threat. Instead of posing a specific, transient situational danger, like an oncoming car turning left at intersection X, ignorance and lack of practice decrease safety in a global, continuous way across all circumstances and timeframes.
Listen to this column as Episode 81 of the MOA podcast The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes. Submit your questions to Mark for the podcast by emailing podcast@bmwmoa.org.
Notice I said ignorance, not stupidity. This is a crucial distinction. Whereas the latter implies some defect in one’s intelligence, the former carries no such derogatory connotation. Ignorance is simply an absence of knowledge. We’re all ignorant of unimaginably vast swaths of information. Everyone begins their tenure as a motorcyclist ignorant of countless aspects of how to handle a bike, from basic operation of its controls to its fundamental maintenance, and especially making it go, stop and turn in accord with our intentions and in strategic response to ever-changing circumstances. Even the most advanced rider stands forever at the frontier of the as-yet-unknown and unmastered, with constant practice required to retain hard-earned skills. Sure, an elite racer won’t forget which lever works the clutch and which the front brake, but without regular exercise of the neural pathways and musculature involved, reflexes and coordination decay with shocking rapidity and competence decreases apace. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but entropy is f**king relentless.
There’s always more to learn. Always. Do you honestly believe you know everything already? Can you really have too much expertise as a rider? Given the fact every ride involves the chance of encountering some new challenge, there’s an ever-present risk of being unprepared. The better our understanding, the fewer surprises we’ll have to contend with, and the larger our repertoire of possible responses will be. Who wouldn’t want more resources for coping with problems, some of which could have grave (pun intended) consequences? If this question were to be answered on the basis of pure logic, the response would be straightforward and obvious: “nobody.” Ah, but human beings are not very rational decision makers. There’s always a substantial emotional element in every one of our choices. And one of the most influential emotional dynamics is our powerful need to defend and bolster self-regard. Our pride can easily override other considerations, and it can do so with impressive stealth. Few people realize the extent to which it distorts their perception and reasoning, although they may readily recognize it in someone else. Instead of asking “Who wouldn’t want more resources?,” the question becomes “Who would want to acknowledge their limitations and flaws, and then expend effort to address them?” Now the answer might still be “nobody,” but this turns the picture upside down.
Humility may seem a virtue, depending on your view of the social contract. Some see it as an admirable trait and evidence of character strength—an ego flexible and resilient enough to tolerate admissions of shortcomings, regrets, guilt and shame without collapse or defensiveness. Others consider humility a dangerous weakness and a vulnerability to be avoided at all cost, as it undermines confidence, certainty and dominance, and voluntarily opens up a line of attack for adversaries to exploit. Which position a person takes on humility depends on their personality, history and relational surroundings, but there’s no argument against the absolute necessity of humility in the learning process. Without the acknowledgement of ignorance, there is neither the motivation nor the opportunity to acquire knowledge. All learning invariably involves making mistakes and modifying ones understanding and actions to improve accuracy and performance going forward. This is inherently humbling. Paradoxically, those who cannot stand to be humbled—revealed to themselves, and perhaps others, as ignorant—are doomed to remain ignorant and therefore fail unnecessarily in many situations. Ignorance can be a normal, temporary state, replaced by genuine expertise, but insisting it doesn’t exist makes it permanent. As the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that which we resist persists.
Fortunately, the flip side of this is that acceptance opens the way for change. You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to recognize that admitting a problem is the first step in solving it. Soichiro Honda, indisputably a towering figure in modern industry, attributed his company’s successes to the willingness to make mistakes—and to go even further, embracing mistake-making as the foundation of all achievement. We learn at least as much from our failures as we do from our successes, and Honda considered his empire’s ascendance a function of having made more mistakes than his competitors. It’s also possible to make endlessly repetitive errors and learn absolutely nothing, with that all-too-human need to preserve self-regard running interference. We can insist the world was wrong or unfair or unappreciative of our genius—anything other than accepting we were ignorant and need to change our approach if we’re to improve the outcome.
I won’t belabor this point anymore. I trust you can see the fear of rider training is better understood as the fear of shame—the shame of being revealed as ignorant, and therefore unskilled (here I’m including the ignorance of untrained reflexes, coordination and muscle memory). You might as well be ashamed of needing air to breathe, since ignorance is a universal feature of the human condition. All motorcyclists are positioned somewhere on the ladder of learning, with mastery beyond that of riders further down and inferior to those higher up. But everyone was at some point perched on each rung beneath them; nobody starts at the top or gets to skip steps. Even the sagest instructors were once where each one of their students are today. They had to grapple with the very same difficulties because no one is born knowing how to ride well. Whatever capabilities an advanced rider may possess had to be learned and developed. Certainly, some people are naturally endowed with sharper powers of observation, superior athleticism, and quicker mental processing, making some aspects of the learning process easier for them. However, such folks still had to make a multitude of mistakes in order to hone their skills, and a lack of humility would have greatly impeded their progress.
The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes is brought to you by the MOA Foundation. You can join the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America quickly and easily to better take advantage of the Paul B Grant and Clark Luster programs mentioned in this episode.
One trick that can be helpful in dealing with resistance to the humility required for learning is to redefine the bases for shame and pride. Rather than ascribing shame to failure, a more enlightened perspective appreciates failures as essential precursors to success, and therefore a source of pride. Shame is instead attached to avoiding such necessary experiences, and thereby ensuring Failure on a much larger scale. Taking mistakes in stride, embracing this aspect of the learning process like old man Honda, can be viewed as both a reflection of strength and the source of even greater power. Fleeing from mistakes, by refusing to either make or recognize them, can be reconsidered a kind of cowardice and the cause of lasting weakness. This reversal of perspective is better aligned with reality and more conducive to growth. We can empathize with those who are reluctant to risk losing face; it’s not pleasant and many people have been conditioned to equate it with terrible dangers. But that doesn’t change the fact such an approach to rider training, and life in general, creates other dangers, too. In some instances, ignorance may indeed be bliss, but in the long run it’s much more likely to yield incompetence and disaster, which are far more humiliating than revealing one’s status as merely human.
I’ve attended a dozen or so riding schools, including some held at racetracks, some conducted on public roads, and some confined to range drills in a parking lot. At every one of these events, trainees (including me) dropped bikes, slid off the pavement, and required an instructor’s special attention to remedy a problem. I have never once witnessed any derision or shunning by classmates in response—quite the contrary. Any struggling student typically receives an outpouring of support from their peers, whether in the form of commiseration (“I had/have that exact same difficulty!”), sharing what they found useful (“Try a little lighter braking a bit earlier—that really helped my corner entry smoothness.”), or a big round of cheering applause when the student eventually aces the lesson. Remember, the training group is comprised of other people with a vested interest in making the setting emotionally safe for everyone. Nobody wants to be shamed, and if they’ve come to the school, they’ve already recognized the need to learn, and presumably the role of mistake-making toward that end. If one student were to try to bolster their own self-regard at the expense of another, the group is virtually certain to reject such behavior with vigor, and any instructor worth their salt will put an end to it immediately and decisively. I’m sure there must be lousy riding schools and inept instructors out there, and the environment at a track day sans instruction may not feature as much generosity, but reputable training organizations will be extremely attentive to this dimension.
I’ve saved the best for last. Not only do decreased ignorance and increased competence improve safety, they enhance enjoyment as well. Even if we never encounter a challenging hazard (we’ve got better odds of winning the lottery!), every minute we spend on two wheels will be more fun. It’s indescribably exhilarating to have a motorcycle do just what we want it to, especially when that happens with minimal thought or effort. If we were worried about our status in a riding school with a bunch of strangers, we probably fret about keeping up with our familiar riding buddies on a regular basis. Becoming smoother, anticipating the need for certain maneuvers earlier, and getting comfortable braking harder, leaning further, and getting back on the gas sooner will make being last to the lunch stop a thing of the past. Not that riding has to be a competition, but it’s definitely better to feel part of the pack, rather than left behind. Finally, mastery is rewarding in itself. It’s one of the central pillars of healthy self-regard—setting goals and achieving them with diligent effort. We relish the resulting sense of control and efficacy, and take pride in genuine accomplishment, as opposed to pretending we’re more capable than we really are. Ironically, posing sets us up for the worst version of losing face: being revealed as a fraud. Then, not only is our incompetence on full display, but our insecurity-driven deceit (and conceit) shows, too. Now that’s em-bare-ass-ing! Let’s replace our fear of rider training with FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out on all the pleasures of riding better.
Mark Barnes is a clinical psychologist and motojournalist. To read more of his writings, check out his book Why We Ride: A Psychologist Explains the Motorcyclist’s Mind and the Love Affair Between Rider, Bike and Road, currently available in paperback through Amazon and other retailers.
Featured image on the front page of the site is courtesy of Kandi Spangler.
