Reading the road

Want to know the key to fast, safe riding? Then read on, my friend

Our expert: Ryan Decarteret

Ryan is a passionate motorcyclist, Rapid National Operations Manager and Coach with a background in surveillance and covert police riding, with around one million miles of riding experience (and he says he's still learning).

We all want to be great riders. Of course we do. But being a great rider doesn't just happen overnight. It takes a lot of commitment. And it takes the right approach. To give us a fighting chance to get this right, we asked Ryan Decarteret, National Operations Manager and Coach at Rapid rider training, what was the best way to improving your riding. The answer? Reading the road.

The bad news is that it's not quite as simple as picking up a copy of the Highway Code and memorising it. The good news is that it's totally achievable when you know how, and you are willing to put the work in. Here's what's involved...

MSL: If we want to get better at riding, what's the best way to develop our skills?

RYAN: The single most transformational thing a rider can do for their riding, is to evolve their ability to see and interpret detail at speed. Great riders can observe and interpret vastly more detail, much earlier than novices, and at far higher speeds. This allows them much more time and space to react to the road ahead, and effortlessly handle whatever comes their way.

Learning to read the road involves the development of observation and interpretation skills. We need to be able to identify large amounts of detail, and here's the crunch: we need to make sense of what it means to us.

MSL: So, we need to improve our observation. How do we do that?

RYAN: The process of observing and gathering information should be early, detailed and continuous.