Countersteer or Die!

Think you know everything you need to know about Countersteering?

https://imgur.com/gallery/bQZbvf0

Long time Inmate here but this one ended up on Imgur.com where I get FAKE POINTS affirming the validity of what I'm claiming. (And downvotes if I'm wrong!)

Lots of pictures, video, SHOCKING video, A solid 10 minute read esp if you view a few of the videos illustrating various points.

Check it out and let me know! Of course, corrections are MOST welcome. (Painful, but welcome..)

Wade

Countersteering is so easy and intuitive and works so well, I can't understand what all the fuss & controversy is about. Push left, go left. Push right, go right. It makes the bike lean over which causes it to turn. What could be simpler than that? Works extremely well. No need for complicated explanations of how it works; just do it. Even if you don't think you are countersteering, you are.

People who deny countersteering is a thing are just confused.

Long ago, failure to know about counter steering was the cause of my first motorcycle crash. I didn't die, but I did get three compound fractures. I bought the bike Sunday. Monday I was in the ER. Spent a month in the hospital and a couple years on and off crutches with a few surgeries .

How about " Counter Steer or Limp"?

This is on my list of things they don't emphasize enough with new riders. If someone hasn't completely internalized this, they're basically incapable of an evasive maneuver, never mind being able to corner.

This is the most vivid illustration I've seen...

People don't believe in countersteering because in most cases it lasts for less than a second and then you're regular steering.
If you're going the speed the yellow sign tells you to turn, you probably countersteer for one second at the beginning, then you're steering into the turn, then you steer further into the turn to straighten out.

Instead of Countersteer=Turn, think Countersteer=force to lean
I want to lean this way = steer that way --- I want to lean that way = steer this way

Another word for "counter steering" is just "keeping your balance with your hands on the bars". Its an essential mechanism for riding in a stright line.

I think one way people could maybe intuitively grasp counter steering is if you had a steering damper that only damped in one direction (or much more strongly in one than the other). But I know from experience that this would be rather horrifying at speeds above 15 mph.

Why does the OP live in two different places?

Push right for snow, Push left for sun.

Been riding motorcycles for about 52 years and bicycles a few more..... Had never even heard the term "counter steering" until a dozen or so years ago, when I read an article about it in some magazine I came across. Was kind of impressed by the words of wisdom initially, but then realised I had been doing it intuitively for years, since I started riding a bicycle at the age of seven.

No big deal, just some X-spurt trying to impress.... move on.

Thanks! That's a great vid!

If you're leaning into the corner and looking through the corner (head closer to the mirror) you are naturally counter steering.

"Push left, go left. Push right, go right." Yeah. Anyone wanting to try it just do that on a basically straight road within your lane.

"It makes the bike lean over which causes it to turn." Actually counter-steering uses the friction patch of the tires on the road to move the front tire one way or the other under the center of gravity of the bike. The rear tire just follows. We experience this as leaning. Then we let up when the desired lean is achieved and we return to what would be normal steering, making adjustments to our line as needed with more counter-steering. But as Steve in Golden says, it soon becomes so ingrained and natural we seldom realize what we're doing.

As long as you're going faster than about 15ish mph, all of your steering is countersteering.

When I was first starting out I wanted complicated explanations because it seemed very counterintuitive. But in practice it’s very simple. Push right = lean right = go right. And seeing a few slow motion or freeze-frame captures of how the turn toward the “wrong” direction facilitates leaning in the correct direction, helped immensely, in a way that talking about contact patches and gyroscopic precession and whatever else, never could. At that point it becomes very clear: bigger push = greater lean = quicker turn. Damn handy to have internalized as instinct when you suddenly have to dodge the tool chest that just fell off that guy’s truck a few car lengths ahead.

It's not enough to intuitively do it (as everyone does, otherwise every shop across a dealership would experience daily crashes of people who couldn't do anything but ride straight), you need to instinctively do it - if you get surprised, you need to be trained to push. In a surprise situation you don't have the luxury of setting up the bike to a corner - you need it to lean, now. No time for body English, so you just push on the bar and it goes.

This to me, is the key point. It seems beyond absurd to debate counter steering as if it was a subjective possibility. It's as plain as a ball dropping when you let go of it. The important part is the instinctive "push-right turn-right" this poster is bringing up. There is a tendency in many riders, and I've experienced it myself, to try and lean or even freeze up to accomplish a direction change when, for example, drifting off the road's edge or into an area of poor pavement or hazard. Counter steering is a lifesaving maneuver if you can make it an automatic response. The physics of it are certainly beyond debate.

This needs to be a perpetual thread.

This and car tires.

Isn't counter steering, by definition, simply turning one direction while steering another?

So it's pretty simple. On a two wheel vehicle which leans in while turning at any speed about maybe 10 mph or whatever, if you continue to turn into a corner you will eventually literally crash, the bike keeps leaning, you keep steering... crunch!

So what do you naturally do if you actually can balance a two wheel vehicle (some people cannot do this, I knew one)? You start the turn in (however it happens, I'm ignoring the technical aspect since it's been flogged to death), then you start steering back against your two wheel vehicle's natural tendency to fall in further, turning deeper. You control how far it falls in by your amount of steering back against it, then holding at the level of cornering desired... counter steering against the vehicle's tendency to continue to turn. I have heard an excellent description, calling steering a motorcycle as a controlled crash.

Lots of physics and forces, but the actual event is pretty simple and if you don't do it you will eventually turn in so far the bike will end up on its side.

So this is another take on countersteering.
We have countersteering to initiate a turn and
countersteering to control a turn once it's initiated

Maybe we need a third description of countersteering to finish the turn and resume normal, straight, riding.

My brain hurts