I'd like to especially highlight your 'at speed' point here. It's often claimed that _all_ steering on a bike requires countersteering, but that is false. Countersteering allows rapid change of direction, but if you're going in a straight line, then lean left and gently steer left (or just lean left and allowing the front wheel to steer itself), you _will_ go left, no countersteering required.
Motorcycle courses put a lot of emphasis on countersteering because motorcycles go much faster and weight a lot more than a bike so you need to familiarize yourself with the effect from the get go unlike regular bikes where you generally start by going very slowly and the low bike-to-meat weight ratio means that it's relatively easy to steer by leaning with your body as you mention. As soon as you go over, say, 20km/h it's critical to learn how to countersteer properly if you want to keep control.
Try turning on a 200kg motorcycle going at 100km/h by simply leaning on it, you'll be disappointed... See for instance https://youtu.be/8_5Z3jyO2pA?t=2m24s . Later on the video they show that letting go of the handles and leaning with your body also works but only because it actually causes the bike to countersteer "on its own".
Yep. It is even more pronounced on a race track with long sweeping turns, even higher speeds, and nothing else in the world to worry about# (like traffic). The faster that front wheel spins, the more it wants to keep on doing that just as before (gyro).
You will be physically pushing the left hand and pulling your right to set the bike up for a left turn, not just "thinking" it - so as to speak. Of course it is entirely intuitive, until perhaps you stop to think about what actions you are taking, and then realise yeah that's countersteering all right.
#) It's been a few years for me now and I only got a few ride days in after also completing Superbike Cornering School lessons, but I found the art of riding my (then) 600cc GSXR motorcycle on a high speed circuit (Phillip Island) extremely meditative - and exhilarating, especially after learning the function of the knee sliders to assist with controlling lean.
If you lean left, front wheel will "do" countersteering itself (same as noted). Since gyroscopic effect on bike is not so big and speed, mass is not bigger than rider it is not noticable. For motorbike you cannot just lean hence need for explicit countersteering because of much higher forces involved.
So I think it is correct to say that countersteering is always required.
>If you lean left, front wheel will "do" countersteering itself (same as noted).
I am not sure. If you lean left, then the handle bar ll slightly turn left automatically.
In actual countersteering, it greatly helps only because it helps to quickly initiate a tilt in the required direction. For example, if you want to go to left, then turn the handle bar to the right, which causes the front wheel to slight start to offset in the right, which in turn causes the whole bike to tilt to left, and once it start to tilt to the left, then the normal process of turning is applied...
It's always countersteering. Doesn't even matter if your hands are on the bars (really).
When you lean to (your) left, the center of mass of you+bike goes left of the plane of the wheels, this causes the front wheel to rotate away (i.e. right) from the motion slightly which causes you to bank left and the front wheel comes around to meet it until you are in equilibrium again.
Countersteering doesn't "help", it's just unavoidable. Being aware of it helps you have better control. At very low velocities the effect is so minor you probably can't notice (and steering angles are large).
Why does it cause the front wheel to rotate away (right) ?
Answer is : "it's complicated" , which is why this subject causes confusion. There are many arguments about the exact dynamics (combinations of gyroscopic effects, torques, center-of-mass motion), but empirically it is pretty clear that two wheeled vehicles like bikes/motorcycles do not turn without counter-steer.
Not at all complicated. A bike is made so that the front wheel will turn in the same direction as the bike is leaned. This has a simple stabilising effect. Bike leans right, front wheel turns right, increased centrifugal force from the sharper turn will unlean the bike to the left.
If I'm in contact with the top of my bike and not steering the bars, I can either push the top of the bike left or right. I push the top of the bike to the left. The bike and I have separate moments of intertia around longitudinal axis. Without any other forces involved (just my bum and the top of the bike pushing each other), the bottom of the bike i.e. the contact patch would move to the right. However, there's friction between the tyres and the ground meaning that doesn't happen. Instead, the ground pushes the bottom of the wheels to the left. This means the only external force on the union of rider and bike is from the ground pointing leftwards. This pushes the COG to the left.
While the motion of the top of the bike may cause some countersteering in the front wheel if left free, you can resist this by pushing the right side of the handlebars i.e. steering left. So we now have a bike tilting to the left, with the front wheel pointing forwards, and the COG to the left of the contact patches. The front wheel can be gently pushed to point left.
That is bullshit. If I just lean to the left, the bike does not "react" by leaning to the right. If I lean to the left without touching the handle bars, the cycle ll start turning to the left.
With counter steering, it can be made much quicker and in a much responsive fashion.
The point is that the wheel, which is free, will turn to the right first. The bike will lean to the left as this takes the two wheels out of line. The wheel will follow to the left.
There is nothing magical about countersteering, it’s just the way cornering works with bikes.
Don’t believe me? Set up an angle indicator and video it.
A bike is standing straight, completely still, with the front wheels completely straight. According to you, if I lean this stationary bike, to left, you are saying the front wheel will turn to right, right?
The part you are missing is the gyroscopic procession from the wheels. When you try turning the wheel to the left, you create a force that is 90 degrees to force.
If you just turn the handlebars (which would cause the bike to lean in the direction of the turn), you will end up creating a force at the top of the wheel in the opposite direction of your tilt. (e.g. the force will be at 12 o'clock)
If you just lean in the direction you'd like to turn, the wheel will turn in the opposite direction of the lean. (e.g. there will be an opposite force at 9 o'clock)
In order to turn you must always briefly steer in the opposite direction you'd like to turn, so that you may lean in the direction you'd like to turn, which will allow you to turn the wheel in the direction of the turn without upsetting the bike.
I learned this fact about 2 years ago and I've been hyper-aware of the fact ever since. Try as I might, it's literally impossible to steer a bike without counter-steering.
The fact that you absolutely must counter-steer to turn is one of the reason why inexperienced bike riders tend to fall over when they need to steer in an emergency, because they just twist the handlebars, which catapults them off the other side.
Knowing this also helped me finally learn to ride a bike with no handlebars, since you have to lean opposite the direction you'd like the wheel to go.
It's timing dependent. Turning right and momentum 'pushes' your body to the left, but with the correct timing you end up countering that force while keeping the bike absolutely vertical.
PS: Picture how a car turns, the wheels are vertical and you can you can turn without counter steering just fine but the weight externally offset. The difference with a bike / motorcycle is just how difficult it is to balance.
It is not timing it is balance of mass and conservation of energy. Car has totally different mass distribution. So energy conservation is also different.
The only time you steer left to go left is if you're going so slowly that the only reason the bike doesn't fall over is because of your near-superhuman balance. That is to say, when you're practically at a standstill. Anywhere approaching walking pace or above, if you try to turn left by steering left, you'll fall off the right hand side before you make any appreciable turn.
That's the issue; how do you lean left to start with? If the human-bicycle system has its center of gravity over the wheel line, shifting your weight relative to the bike doesn't move the center of gravity - you lean one way, the bike leans the other, and you end up in the same overall position. The only way to initiate a lean to the left is to countersteer to the right.
You are. I proved this to myself once by applying pressure to the handlebars using only the palm of my hands on the backside of each handle. Even at very slow speeds, I could not for the life of me turn left by applying pressure only to the right bar (to turn the front wheel to the left). No amount of leaning helped. To lean the bike, I needed to create some external force to push it over. Leaning my own body to the left just made the bike lean to the right.
I've seen the same claim from a lot of people who seemed to have thought about it a lot: that you always countersteer on a two-wheeled vehicle, but you only do so consciously if you're riding a very fast vehicle or you want to turn extremely quickly. (A deliberate countersteer is taught in some bicycle safety classes as an "emergency quick turn".)
This is counterintuitive to me as a regular cyclist, but I realize that most of my cycling skills are completely unconscious, so I don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to describe exactly what I'm doing on my bike.
That's what I used to think until I started taking motorbike lessons.
At first I was having a hard time turning, because this whole counter-steering thing didn't come naturally to me and I would try to turn the handlebars to the left if I wanted to go left, but the bike would go the other way witch was pretty scary.
I then internalised this and the next time I rode a bike I tried this out, and indeed, this is how it works. If I turned the handlebars left at any considerable speed, the bike would lean to the right and start turning right, with the handlebars going right. It would go a slight bit left at the very beginning, but then it would go all the way right.
When I think about it, at slow speeds (say below 25 km/h - 15 mph) I only turn the handlebars and lean the bike. However, I can lean the bike at those speeds, so no counter-steering is required. I first lean the bike and then turn the bars.
However, it's very difficult to have it lean any useful amount at speed. And this is where counter-steering is useful.
Granted, this is way more noticeable on a motorbike that on a bicycle. Maybe the weight of the wheels and of the whole bike has something to do with it. If I lean a 10 kg bike but stay upright on it, the centre of gravity doesn't move much. However, on a 300 kg motorcycle, it moves quite a bit more.
Some people seem to describe this difference as unconscious countersteering versus deliberate countersteering, that is, that the difference isn't really whether you're countersteering or not, but whether the countersteer is large enough that you have to do it "on purpose".
By leaning and letting the front wheel steer itself, you can turn with hands off the handlebar. When I used a bike to go to the train station, I'd often bike without touching the handlebar for parts of the ride, including the turns. Yes, I was young and stupid.
Maybe I am still young and stupid, but I cycle a lot and as often without hands on as the situation allows... It is just much more comfortable this way.
Bu yes, also more dangerous, so in difficult trafic I usually don't do it
It's true, but in all the years of my childhood when I did this (and I rode and turned no-handed often), I never once had an accident when my hands were off the handlebars. Your warning is still useful, I think, but I also think good judgment goes a long way here.
I've introduced confusion here by talking about leaning left. I should have said 'shift your weight such that the bike leans left'. See my other comment for a fuller explanation.
> It's often claimed that _all_ steering on a bike requires countersteering, but that is false.
Sounds like you've never ridden a motorcycle? It's obvious on a motorcycle that you counter-steer all the way through a turn.
If you analyze bike steering more carefully, you will also find that you're always counter-steering. But the definition of counter-steering might be different than you think.
You have to think about the front wheel's turn angle in relation to your turning radius. If you're riding in a right turn circle, then your wheel position will be turned right and not changing. In order to change that turning radius, you will always steer in the opposite direction of your desired direction relative to where your steering is at steady state.
So counter steering doesn't mean that if you are turning right your wheel is left of center. Counter steering means that to turn more right, you need to steer left of where you were. When making small adjustments, your steer might be right of center at all times even though you go from a right turn to a sharper right turn.
In other words, it's the delta of your steering angle that is always counter, not the position of your steering angle.
Does that make sense?
One easy way to understand why you're always counter-steering was given in the video: a bike is physically equivalent to an inverted pendulum. In order to move the pendulum in a given direction, you always have to move the base the other way, at all times. This is true on a bike too.
> Sounds like you've never ridden a motorcycle? It's obvious on a motorcycle that you counter-steer all the way through a turn.
Once the turn has been initiated and you are in the turn, I don't believe you continue to counter-steer.
I think instead that once in a turn you feel a force trying to continue the front wheel deeper into the turn and you must maintain a counter force to prevent that. It seems unlikely that the front wheel is actually angled out away from the turn.
> Once the turn has been initiated and you are in the turn, I don't believe you continue to counter-steer.
Sounds like you haven't ridden a motorcycle? In a hard right turn, you will need to keep constant pushing pressure on the right handle (steering left) in order to stay in the turn.
And maybe you didn't follow the rest of my comment? Counter-steering doesn't mean your wheel is left of center during a right turn. It's referring to a change in turning radius. At all times. Yes, your wheel might be turned right during the stable lean angle of a right turn (or it might not) but "counter steering" is referring to when you change your turning radius. You always steer the opposite direction that you were steering before. If you're in a right turn and want to turn sharper, you steer the wheel left of wherever it is. If you're in a right turn and want to straighten out, you steer the wheel right of wherever it is. It doesn't matter where the wheel is, all that matters is which direction the change happens.
If you're in a stable lean with a constant turning radius, then your steering isn't changing, so I guess perhaps technically you're not counter-steering, because you're not steering? This is more confusing than clarifying, and not always true anyway. It's better to realize that the "counter" in counter steering is referring to the derivative, not the absolute value. It's referring to the change in steering, not the angle the wheel is turned.
> It seems unlikely that the front wheel is actually angled out away from the turn.
You might want to google gp moto pictures before making claims, you can find tons of images of racers in the middle of the turn with the wheel angled outward. For example: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dtCD63fKw58/maxresdefault.jpg
> In a hard right turn, you will need to keep constant pushing pressure on the right handle (steering left) in order to stay in the turn.
This is not usually true (though sometimes is at slower speeds.) Bike geometry and speed changes how this works a good bit [1][2]. Tracking my old 600cc, I'd need positive at slower speeds, but would need to steer into the turn once I had a good lean angle at anything 60mph+.
> You might want to google gp moto pictures before making claims, you can find tons of images of racers in the middle of the turn with the wheel angled outward. For example: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dtCD63fKw58/maxresdefault.jpg
This is really uneccessarily condescending again. Also, that really looks a rider deepening lean as he rounds the apex. I'm thinking that wheel's not staying at that angle for long.
I encourage you to check the tone of your comments. Being rude to folks, especially while being wrong while doing it really brings down a community, and I hate seeing that happen on HN.
> Repeating this is so unnecessarily condescending.
I didn't mean it to be condescending, it's an honest question. People commenting don't seem to have the experience to back up their comments. I know for a fact that a hard turn on a motorcycle sometimes requires obvious counter-steering even during the stable middle of a turn, because I've done a lot of riding. I agree that bike geometry and speed changes things, but you've just validated what I said with your experience.
> I'm thinking that wheel's not staying at that angle for long.
Your assumption is incorrect, you can see it more clearly if you watch videos. The extreme counter-steer during moto races happens all the way through a turn, and then it happens in the other direction in order to end the turn. The part you and the parent comment missed is the bike forces try to un-lean when moving forward, and it becomes very apparent at higher speeds, so constant counter-steering is necessary.
> I encourage you to check the tone of your comments. Being rude to folks, especially while being wrong
I know it can be very hard to understand someone's tone, but it's equally wise to check your assumptions and your own tone. I was simply trying to make my point clear precisely because it appeared the comment above didn't understand what I said the first time.
You've claimed I'm wrong, but I don't believe I am, and I've provided evidence for my case. From my point of view, pushing back on that without evidence is rude, as is arguing against my first sentence apparently without reading the rest of the clarifying explanation.
BTW, what you didn't see is that I upvoted @JKCalhoun for engaging in the discussion.
It really is a form of not-at-all-subtle trolling. If you feel like you're talking to a wall on the internet, the correct move is to stop interacting with a waste of time.
Or don't repeat yourself, because the text is static, and it's not required. You put it there once, and it's still there. Forum sliding with spammy garbage doesn't make friends. Saying the same thing a different way still amounts to an internet fight, but it's arguing without trolling.
Since you are new here, you should know that the HN guidelines recommend assuming good faith at all times. They also suggest avoiding flame bait, which is what accusing someone of trolling is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You've mis-read my motives and this situation, perhaps @jaxwerk's suggestion that I was being condescending was enough to convince you it was true, however that comment is making an incorrect assumption. I didn't feel like I was talking to a wall, I asked the same question of a different person, a person who after I asked the first time, suggested that motorcycles tend to lean into a turn when turning. If you've ridden a motorcycle and know how to counter-steer, you'd know that motorcycles tend to right themselves while turning and that you have to keep counter-steering in order to maintain the turn.
My question was honest. I know from experience that the question of whether someone has ridden a motorcycle is very important when discussing counter-steering. Many people who've only ridden bicycles don't believe counter-steering exists at first. The people who understand counter-steering are the people who've taken a motorcycle safety course and/or learned about motorcycle racing and/or experimented while riding. It's much, much easier to feel & understand counter-steering on a motorcycle than a bike, and it's far, far more important.
Well, my description isn't amazing or as clear as it could be. ;) There should be a way to explain this without technical vocabulary.
How about this? If you sit still on a moving bike, and you don't try to lean, bike steering changes your lean. While you are turning your wheel further to the left, your lean to the right is increasing (your right side turning radius is decreasing).
That's it. That works for negative angles and negative lean, meaning if you're steering right and leaning right, then you start moving your wheel to the right, your left lean increases because your right lean decreases.
And it's always true. No matter where you start, you could be already turning left or right, steering more to the left always sharpens your turn to the right.
Does that make any more sense? I really do want to find a better way to describe counter steering so it becomes more intuitive and easier to understand.
