4 ms·

Ha. I don't know why but I've recently become involved in a couple of arguments regarding counter-steering (check comment history :) ). It's the new Monty Hall

Ha. I don't know why but I've recently become involved in a couple of arguments regarding counter-steering (check comment history :) ). It's the new Monty Hall puzzle. Or "does 0.999... === 1?"

dahart 11y ago
Yeah, he was confused and skeptical. A lot of people are, and that's okay because it is unintuitive. I don't bother trying to convince non-riders generally, but I might suggest if they want to argue with me they must first take the MSF course and attempt a few sharp turns before I will bother to engage. :)
- YZF 11y ago
  You can also counter-steer a bicycle (at speed)... Also at least the gyroscopic component of it can be felt simply by trying to turn a spinning wheel held in your hands... Something I've seen in a few science museums... I guess the difference with a motorcycle is that it simply can't be steered effectively any other way at speed... So you're not going to find any biker who says this doesn't work ;)
  - dahart 11y ago
    Yes, true! So my pet theory is you're always counter-steering even on a bicycle, its just really hard to tell.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      If you ride a bicycle with wet tires on dry concrete, your tracks will prove that you're constantly steering small amounts back and forth to remain balanced. So a counter-steer is kind of inevitable: if you're turning left now, you were probably turning right a moment ago. Even so, that's somehow different than counter-steering a motorcycle. I haven't ridden motorcycles nearly as much as bicycles, but my sense is that motorcycle tires/wheels are so much more massive that at normal highway speeds they really do have the gyroscopic effects that everyone mistakenly believes are present in bicycle tires/wheels. When these effects cannot be counteracted by increased steering force, steering requires precession/counter-steer. So there is sort of a progression from low-mass systems that must be steered to stay upright to high-mass systems that must be tilted to steer. It's not clear whether these are really different phenomena, or just two values that have an inverse relation.
      - dahart 11y ago
        Everything you said is right. I'm going to totally geek out here, so forgive me. I don't intend to argue with you at all, just clarifying my own thoughts and explanation. I would call the back and forth "balancing", and not counter-steering. You go back and forth in order to keep your center of mass positioned, on average, over the line that connects your two contact points with the ground. But I think you're continually counter-steering while you balance! (Unless you are leaning really fast back and forth, but that's not how we ride bikes, right? We steer to balance...) Counter-steering (in my mind- this is not necessarily generally accepted) is always an instantaneous effect where you steer the front wheel to the left of where it is, in order to turn more right than you're currently turning. I think that you are always counter-steering, even on a bicycle. My theory is that if you put any inline two wheel vehicle, regardless of motor or mass, into a constant speed, constant radius right turn, then the stationary position will be the front wheel is steering to the right a bit. Now is where counter-steering comes in. In order to increase your turning radius, or straighten out and stop turning, you steer into the turn by pushing forward on the left side of the handlebars. In order to decrease your turning radius, or turn tighter, you push on the right side of the handlebars, thus steering the wheel more left than it currently is. For this second part, your front wheel might be steering right of center the entire time, the critical bit is that you're steering left of where you were in order to tighten your right turn. I think counter-steering is going on at all times, even while you're swinging back and forth balancing on a bike. In fact on a bike its a lot easier to experience counter-steering when you're coming out of a turn than when you're going into one. I think this is what people mistake for steering right to turn right. You do steer right, but it happens after the turn started, you always turn into the turn in order to straighten out. It just happens so quickly and automatically its hard to notice its there. What do you think, sound plausible? The implications of this would mean that mass & gyroscopic effects don't have much to say about counter-steering specifically, they just change how much you can turn by leaning vs turn by counter-steering. With bigger bikes, you can't do much by leaning. (I think I'm just repeating what you said here.) But I also think we use a lot more counter-steer than lean on bicycles, and just don't know it!
        jessaustin 11y ago
    - schoen 11y ago
      I took a bike safety class that tried to explicitly teach countersteering (I guess the way that I hear motorcycle safety classes do). The instructor's theory was that you do always countersteer on a bike but that you usually don't notice (unlike motorcycles, I guess). He said that you may need deliberate, practiced countersteering to make a sharp, high-speed turn (called a "quick turn"). It looks like other cycling instructors teach this too: http://www.bamacyclist.com/articles/QuickTurn.htm http://www.bamacyclist.com/articles/QuickTurn.htm http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/chapter5a.htm http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/chapter5a.htm http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/295623-quick-turn-maneuver.html http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/295623-quick-turn-... Maybe the idea is that the size of the necessary movement for a very fast turn is outside of the range of a typical cyclist's unconscious reflexes. So for a gradual turn you can sort of do what feels natural, but for a quick enough turn you need special practice. That might match up with motorcycle instruction practice fairly well if we expect that motorcycle turns are more likely to need to be fast enough to need the rider to perform a counterintuitive movement.

Ha. I don't know why but I've recently become involved in a couple of arguments regarding counter-steering (check comment history :) ). It's the new Monty Hall puzzle. Or "does 0.999... === 1?"

dahart 11y ago

Yeah, he was confused and skeptical. A lot of people are, and that's okay because it is unintuitive. I don't bother trying to convince non-riders generally, but I might suggest if they want to argue with me they must first take the MSF course and attempt a few sharp turns before I will bother to engage. :)

YZF 11y ago
You can also counter-steer a bicycle (at speed)... Also at least the gyroscopic component of it can be felt simply by trying to turn a spinning wheel held in your hands... Something I've seen in a few science museums... I guess the difference with a motorcycle is that it simply can't be steered effectively any other way at speed... So you're not going to find any biker who says this doesn't work ;)
- dahart 11y ago
  Yes, true! So my pet theory is you're always counter-steering even on a bicycle, its just really hard to tell.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    If you ride a bicycle with wet tires on dry concrete, your tracks will prove that you're constantly steering small amounts back and forth to remain balanced. So a counter-steer is kind of inevitable: if you're turning left now, you were probably turning right a moment ago. Even so, that's somehow different than counter-steering a motorcycle. I haven't ridden motorcycles nearly as much as bicycles, but my sense is that motorcycle tires/wheels are so much more massive that at normal highway speeds they really do have the gyroscopic effects that everyone mistakenly believes are present in bicycle tires/wheels. When these effects cannot be counteracted by increased steering force, steering requires precession/counter-steer. So there is sort of a progression from low-mass systems that must be steered to stay upright to high-mass systems that must be tilted to steer. It's not clear whether these are really different phenomena, or just two values that have an inverse relation.
    - dahart 11y ago
      Everything you said is right. I'm going to totally geek out here, so forgive me. I don't intend to argue with you at all, just clarifying my own thoughts and explanation. I would call the back and forth "balancing", and not counter-steering. You go back and forth in order to keep your center of mass positioned, on average, over the line that connects your two contact points with the ground. But I think you're continually counter-steering while you balance! (Unless you are leaning really fast back and forth, but that's not how we ride bikes, right? We steer to balance...) Counter-steering (in my mind- this is not necessarily generally accepted) is always an instantaneous effect where you steer the front wheel to the left of where it is, in order to turn more right than you're currently turning. I think that you are always counter-steering, even on a bicycle. My theory is that if you put any inline two wheel vehicle, regardless of motor or mass, into a constant speed, constant radius right turn, then the stationary position will be the front wheel is steering to the right a bit. Now is where counter-steering comes in. In order to increase your turning radius, or straighten out and stop turning, you steer into the turn by pushing forward on the left side of the handlebars. In order to decrease your turning radius, or turn tighter, you push on the right side of the handlebars, thus steering the wheel more left than it currently is. For this second part, your front wheel might be steering right of center the entire time, the critical bit is that you're steering left of where you were in order to tighten your right turn. I think counter-steering is going on at all times, even while you're swinging back and forth balancing on a bike. In fact on a bike its a lot easier to experience counter-steering when you're coming out of a turn than when you're going into one. I think this is what people mistake for steering right to turn right. You do steer right, but it happens after the turn started, you always turn into the turn in order to straighten out. It just happens so quickly and automatically its hard to notice its there. What do you think, sound plausible? The implications of this would mean that mass & gyroscopic effects don't have much to say about counter-steering specifically, they just change how much you can turn by leaning vs turn by counter-steering. With bigger bikes, you can't do much by leaning. (I think I'm just repeating what you said here.) But I also think we use a lot more counter-steer than lean on bicycles, and just don't know it!
      - jessaustin 11y ago
  - schoen 11y ago
    I took a bike safety class that tried to explicitly teach countersteering (I guess the way that I hear motorcycle safety classes do). The instructor's theory was that you do always countersteer on a bike but that you usually don't notice (unlike motorcycles, I guess). He said that you may need deliberate, practiced countersteering to make a sharp, high-speed turn (called a "quick turn"). It looks like other cycling instructors teach this too: http://www.bamacyclist.com/articles/QuickTurn.htm http://www.bamacyclist.com/articles/QuickTurn.htm http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/chapter5a.htm http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/usa/chapter5a.htm http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/295623-quick-turn-maneuver.html http://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/295623-quick-turn-... Maybe the idea is that the size of the necessary movement for a very fast turn is outside of the range of a typical cyclist's unconscious reflexes. So for a gradual turn you can sort of do what feels natural, but for a quick enough turn you need special practice. That might match up with motorcycle instruction practice fairly well if we expect that motorcycle turns are more likely to need to be fast enough to need the rider to perform a counterintuitive movement.