8 ms·

Avid cyclist, but I have no idea what this is talking about: "...the phenomenon of 'countersteering', whereby the rider can steer to the left only by first bri

Avid cyclist, but I have no idea what this is talking about: "...the phenomenon of 'countersteering', whereby the rider can steer to the left only by first briefly torquing the handlebars to the right, allowing the bike to fall into a leftward lean." Am I just doing this subconsciously?

artimaeis 10y ago
I've never noticed this on bicycles, but I also haven't ridden anything but a stationary in 5+ years now! But this is very noticeable in motorcycles. Most riders don't really think about the torque they're applying to the handlebars, but when you lean into a turn you're definitely applying that torque to the handlebars. You're kind of putting the side of the wheel to the ground in the process, and the only way to put the side you want to turn to towards the ground is to torque the handlebars in the opposite direction.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  I don't know why it's so much more important in motorcycles- even riders who have ridden bikes for many years like myself benefit from pointed instruction in "press right to go right". Perhaps because the rake is so much greater, it's not a natural, immediate carryover from bicycles. Or perhaps because the motorcycle is much heavier, handlebar input becomes all the more important, relative to a bicycle you can steer with your body.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    It's that the motorcycle is much heavier. You need to countersteer first to get the wheels out from under the center of mass of the motorcycle, in order to initiate the lean in the opposite direction. A bicycle is much lighter so you muscle it around more solely by moving your body, which significantly outmasses the bike.
  - draven 10y ago
    > even riders who have ridden bikes for many years like myself benefit from pointed instruction in "press right to go right". I was taught that 2 hours into my training when I prepared for the exam to get my license. I remember my instructor telling me to ride in straight lines and try to gently push the handlebar to the left or right and "see what happens." Then he would make me try the slalom part of the exam. I sometimes let go of the handlebar (when decelerating and when there's no traffic around me) and it takes a lot more effort to make minor adjustments to the trajectory by shifting my weight only.
pcmaffey 10y ago
Its crazy seeing motorcycle racers countersteer to get a deep, knee-on-the-ground lean into a turn, with the wheel and handlebars turned the opposite direction. For cycling, I can only explain this passage by saying I lean a little left first, possibly providing that right torque, which then enables the handlebars to turn fully left into the turn. But I have no idea what I'm talking about.
recursive 10y ago
Probably. If you care enough, and have the facilities, you can take a slo-mo video of yourself taking an abrupt and sharp turn. You will find that counter-intuitively, your bars first turn the opposite direction. In any experienced cyclist, this just becomes an innate instinct.
Luc 10y ago
Yes! This PDF explains it very well, with illustrations, on the last page: http://bicycle.tudelft.nl/schwab/Bicycle/DO-07-3-2bicycles.pdf http://bicycle.tudelft.nl/schwab/Bicycle/DO-07-3-2bicycles.p... "Practically nobody is conscious of the fact that they must steer briefly to the left ion order to make a right-hand turn. But this is not so strange, because the swerve is very small (approximately 3 degrees) and happens very quickly – 0.5 seconds. The wet tire tracks from cycling experiments reveal that we all do this. Apparently we learn this unconsciously when we learn to ride a bike."
- SamBam 10y ago
  It seems that they are saying you have to steer right in order to initiate a left lean. But how do they account for steering with no hands? I can steer pretty well without hands. It seems as if I must be able to initiate the left lean without pushing the handlebars right. So why couldn't I also do this when not riding without hands?
  - Bognar 10y ago
    I can ride pretty well without hands as well. When I heard about counter-steering a long time back I paid closer attention to what I was doing while riding hands-free. Turns out that I was doing a weird little bodily flick motion in to get the wheel pointing to the opposite direction of the turn before I started leaning into the turn. Pay attention to yourself next time you ride and you might be surprised.
    - peterwwillis 10y ago
      Yep. If you try to just lean right immediately, the bike will just.... fall over, because the wheel stayed straight. The momentum from the flick your body creates begins to turn the wheel a small amount, and the forward momentum of the bike in combination with the lean keeps the wheel turned right. By contrast, if you flicked the bike/wheel but did not lean, the wheel would simply straighten itself again. Even for automobiles this stuff is very simple suspension + steering mechanics. Due to how their suspension & steering components are designed, and assuming they are aligned properly, a car will always follow the road. If the road leans + curves, so does their steering.
rconti 10y ago
Yes, it's subconscious (and/or you are initiating the turn by leaning into it, which causes the bicycle to countersteer FOR you). The way I describe it is that the wheels MUST be underneath the force exerted by the center of mass. In straight-line riding, this means your wheels are under you. In a corner, your mass is to the "inside" of the corner, but the centripetal force added to gravity's downward force ends up pushing down to where the wheels are. So you need to steer a bicycle so that the wheels are always under this center of mass force (I'm sure there's a word for it). Hence, if you were to turn the wheels in the direction you wanted to turn, you'd fall over, off the bike, to the outside of your intended turn. Therefore, to initiate a turn, you have to steer the wheels out from under the bike (the "wrong" way) to initiate your mass's 'fall' into the corner. Then you steer the wheels back under you to balance the fall.
HCIdivision17 10y ago
It's wildly unintuitive, so don't feel bad. When I was first learning to ride a motorcycle with the MSF, I damn neared dumped the practice bike a few times trying to manhandle it. You'll really quickly internalize push-left-go-left. And it turns out to work great on regular bikes, too. (But it's terrifyingly more responsive - I actually can't relax pedaling a bicycle because of the fear of how easy it is to flip the things and capsize them from countersteering.) EDIT: There's a neat heuristic that was brought up in the course: the center of mass of the bike is above the bottom of the wheels, and a turning bike must lean into the turn (weird road geometries excepted), therefore to turn the stuff under the center of mass must counter the top leaning in. Thus to go left, you push left, causing the front wheel to pull out from under the bike right-wards, which starts to capsize the bike leftwards! Like I said before, a bicycle reacts really really hard to this, but a hefty motorcyle has a far lower center of mass and leans into it more gracefully.
- _Wintermute 10y ago
  > And it turns out to work great on regular bikes, too Well yes, seeing as that's how you steer a bicycle. As a keen cyclist it annoys me when people (especially coaches) start harping on about countersteering being an additional technique you should learn, when it's what everyone has been doing intuitively since they first learned to ride a bike.
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    Don't take it personally - I was always just a terrible rider when I was young; I meant that in a mildly sarcastic way. I never really figured out how to properly steer until I got a motorcycle, and that just about ruined my feeling of force in the other way. Put me on a bike and in 15 feet I'll accidentally steer so hard you'd think I was dodging semis / saw a hundred dollar bill on the pavement. (I assume as a kid I just always manhandled the bike so hard I never noticed. Always standing on the pedals and pumping them like I was running, wobbling the bike's center of gravity the whole way.)
  - dahart 10y ago
    We learn counter-steering subconsciously, right? It's intuitive in the sense that it's muscle memory, but not in the sense that it's conscious and obvious why. A lot of people who've ridden bicycles initially refuse to believe counter-steering exists, I think that demonstrates that it's not completely intuitive. If the counter-steering part is obvious to you, then you're probably ahead of the curve, and you can certainly ignore when coaches harp about it. Counter-steering is said to be important to learn consciously because it's unintuitive, and people have crashed and died on motorcycles in panic situations by turning their handlebars toward their escape route only to have the bike go the opposite direction. Or at least I heard a rumor about that in my MSF course. I do think it's valuable to know this fact consciously and not rely on body intuition, but I'm also sure it's much more important for motorcycling than for bicycling.
ranko 10y ago
Yes, you're doing it subconsciously. Countersteering is only possible on two-wheeled vehicles, which means that tricycles handle very differently to bikes, and that learning to ride with stabilisers (training wheels) can be counterproductive.
- kqr 10y ago
  This totally explains my early, only, very bad experience with training wheels. I went right out into the street because I turned the wrong way and my friend (who had the training wheel bike) thought I knew nothing about riding bikes. I just learned without training wheels...
kqr 10y ago
Ever thought about why you can't "steer away" from a curb, how it appears to "suck you in" when you try? It's because that first, subconscious turn in the wrong direction takes you into the curb edge.
- no_flags 10y ago
  I've heard this was more of a psychological "target fixation" effect, unless I misunderstand the scenario you describe.
  - stouset 10y ago
    You heard wrong. It's because you can't countersteer, which is the only way to turn a bicycle or motorcycle at speed. Try it. Get on a bike. Go straight, and pick up speed. Intentionally press the right side of the handlebar. Note which direction the bike is now aiming.
bch 10y ago
This is really apparent with motorcycles. I haven't personally noticed/tested with a bicycle, though.
upofadown 10y ago
You don't have to countersteer to turn on a bike. When you are riding straight you are using a combination of balance and handlebar position to adjust the angle of the bike so it is directly between you and the ground. If you fail to do this you fall over. So to turn without countersteer just stop doing anything and start to fall over. When you reach your desired angle of bank then turn the handlebars in the direction you are falling just enough so the acceleration from turning exactly counteracts the force that is causing you to fall. You are now in a continuous turn and you didn't countersteer at all. If you don't want to have to wait to fall or want to turn in a particular direction you will end up turning the handlebars in the opposite direction for a time. But that is just you continuing to adjust the angle of the bike to a desired angle like you do continuously all the time you are riding the bike. You haven't done anything different or counter intuitive. I personally don't consider "countersteer" to be a thing.
- dahart 10y ago
  > I personally don't consider "countersteer" to be a thing. It sounds like you've never ridden a motorcycle? Most safety courses on motorcycles teach counter-steering, precisely because it is a thing and failure to understand it can compromise your ability to recover from a bad situation. On a motorcycle going fast, you counter-steer continuously. If you make a slow right turn on a freeway, you can turn for 30 seconds by only pushing forward on the right handle. I'm pretty sure you always counter-steer even on a bike, it's just very hard to notice, especially going slow. We don't think about it. It's not really a choice though, there's only one way to turn without leaning, you don't get to pick counter-steering or not. You should definitely try it on a bicycle while going fast. Once you consciously turn your handlebars right and end up steering right no matter what you do, it becomes really clear.
  - upofadown 10y ago
    >there's only one way to turn without leaning I generated an argument that refutes that statement in the post you are responding to. I am not arguing that the effect does not exist, only that it isn't interesting and is not worthy of a special term to describe it. FWIW I ride motorcycles on a regular basis... I oppose the discussion on countersteering in the regular motorcycle training curriculum because it suggests that there is more than one type of turn for no real reason. It would be better just to say that you turn on a motorcycle by changing the angle of the motorcycle from vertical. Then there is only one thing to learn.
dahart 10y ago
Try doing it consciously! It's very fun & informative. Try not to lean, and do some experimenting while you're riding fast. The faster you go, the more noticeable the effect is. You can push forward on the right side, and it will immediately put you and your bike into a right lean. Hold your hand pushing slightly on the right side to continue turning right. The handlebars will push back a little and try to straighten out. Many people that ride bikes never know about counter-steering, unless they ride motorcycles too. So, you're not alone. I didn't know about it on a bike until I learned riding motorcycles.
cel1ne 10y ago
Yes. What's more you actually change the direction above a certain speed like 5km/h or so. Prior to that you turn the bar into the direction you want to go, above that you do the opposite. The cerebellum rules. When riding a motorcycle it's very noticeable. Just tipping the handlebar with the finger at 100km/h and it will lean into the other direction.
tome 10y ago
I can't help wondering if everyone who has replied to you has mixed up cause and effect. My explanation would be: "To turn left you need to lean to the left. Leaning to the left momentarily forces the handlebars to turn the right." This describes an equivalent outcome to the quotation from the article but implication about what is cause and what is effect is quite different.
- randlet 10y ago
  It's very easy to verify for yourself that the cause & effect goes "push right handlebar (or equivalently, pull left handlebar) to initiate a right hand turn/lean". The countersteering argument has been repeated literally 100's of times on the internet on motorcycle forums. It's not worth debating as it is absolutely a real phenomena. It's counterintuitive yes, but there is no doubt that it is real.
afroviking 10y ago
There's a very interesting video from Keith's Code's superbike school where they built a motorcycle with an extra handle bar that's fixed to the bike to prove that leaning doesn't actually turn the bike much at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGQ-HePrT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGQ-HePrT8 I know this works for sure on a motorcycle, and I've tried this experiment on a bicycle too, you can turn a bike right just by pushing the handlebar forward with your right hand. Totally counter intuitive but it works and I'm pretty sure we do it subconsciously when we lean by pushing on the handlebar and we end up counter-steering.
exabrial 10y ago
Yes! If you own a motorcycle, you -have- to countersteer!
zackify 10y ago
Twist of the wrist 2, a movie on how to lean on a motorcycle, explains it really well https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuTcJcqAng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuTcJcqAng
gerbilly 10y ago
This entire countersteering discussion is interesting for a site that often debates "consciousness". It's an example of a skill most of us acquired and use every day all without being accessible to our conscious brain. In fact, not only is it unconscious, most people consider it very counterintuitive. What other types of cognition do our bodies perform everyday that we aren't aware of? I'd argue that the amount of cognition accessible to our conscious mind is only a small fraction.
celias 10y ago
This phenomenon was the answer to a Car Talk Puzzler - http://m.cartalk.com/content/paging-sherlock-holmes http://m.cartalk.com/content/paging-sherlock-holmes

artimaeis 10y ago

I've never noticed this on bicycles, but I also haven't ridden anything but a stationary in 5+ years now! But this is very noticeable in motorcycles. Most riders don't really think about the torque they're applying to the handlebars, but when you lean into a turn you're definitely applying that torque to the handlebars. You're kind of putting the side of the wheel to the ground in the process, and the only way to put the side you want to turn to towards the ground is to torque the handlebars in the opposite direction.

sliverstorm 10y ago
I don't know why it's so much more important in motorcycles- even riders who have ridden bikes for many years like myself benefit from pointed instruction in "press right to go right". Perhaps because the rake is so much greater, it's not a natural, immediate carryover from bicycles. Or perhaps because the motorcycle is much heavier, handlebar input becomes all the more important, relative to a bicycle you can steer with your body.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  It's that the motorcycle is much heavier. You need to countersteer first to get the wheels out from under the center of mass of the motorcycle, in order to initiate the lean in the opposite direction. A bicycle is much lighter so you muscle it around more solely by moving your body, which significantly outmasses the bike.
- draven 10y ago
  > even riders who have ridden bikes for many years like myself benefit from pointed instruction in "press right to go right". I was taught that 2 hours into my training when I prepared for the exam to get my license. I remember my instructor telling me to ride in straight lines and try to gently push the handlebar to the left or right and "see what happens." Then he would make me try the slalom part of the exam. I sometimes let go of the handlebar (when decelerating and when there's no traffic around me) and it takes a lot more effort to make minor adjustments to the trajectory by shifting my weight only.

pcmaffey 10y ago

Its crazy seeing motorcycle racers countersteer to get a deep, knee-on-the-ground lean into a turn, with the wheel and handlebars turned the opposite direction. For cycling, I can only explain this passage by saying I lean a little left first, possibly providing that right torque, which then enables the handlebars to turn fully left into the turn. But I have no idea what I'm talking about.

recursive 10y ago

Probably. If you care enough, and have the facilities, you can take a slo-mo video of yourself taking an abrupt and sharp turn. You will find that counter-intuitively, your bars first turn the opposite direction. In any experienced cyclist, this just becomes an innate instinct.

Luc 10y ago

Yes! This PDF explains it very well, with illustrations, on the last page: http://bicycle.tudelft.nl/schwab/Bicycle/DO-07-3-2bicycles.pdf http://bicycle.tudelft.nl/schwab/Bicycle/DO-07-3-2bicycles.p... "Practically nobody is conscious of the fact that they must steer briefly to the left ion order to make a right-hand turn. But this is not so strange, because the swerve is very small (approximately 3 degrees) and happens very quickly – 0.5 seconds. The wet tire tracks from cycling experiments reveal that we all do this. Apparently we learn this unconsciously when we learn to ride a bike."

SamBam 10y ago
It seems that they are saying you have to steer right in order to initiate a left lean. But how do they account for steering with no hands? I can steer pretty well without hands. It seems as if I must be able to initiate the left lean without pushing the handlebars right. So why couldn't I also do this when not riding without hands?
- Bognar 10y ago
  I can ride pretty well without hands as well. When I heard about counter-steering a long time back I paid closer attention to what I was doing while riding hands-free. Turns out that I was doing a weird little bodily flick motion in to get the wheel pointing to the opposite direction of the turn before I started leaning into the turn. Pay attention to yourself next time you ride and you might be surprised.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    Yep. If you try to just lean right immediately, the bike will just.... fall over, because the wheel stayed straight. The momentum from the flick your body creates begins to turn the wheel a small amount, and the forward momentum of the bike in combination with the lean keeps the wheel turned right. By contrast, if you flicked the bike/wheel but did not lean, the wheel would simply straighten itself again. Even for automobiles this stuff is very simple suspension + steering mechanics. Due to how their suspension & steering components are designed, and assuming they are aligned properly, a car will always follow the road. If the road leans + curves, so does their steering.

rconti 10y ago

Yes, it's subconscious (and/or you are initiating the turn by leaning into it, which causes the bicycle to countersteer FOR you). The way I describe it is that the wheels MUST be underneath the force exerted by the center of mass. In straight-line riding, this means your wheels are under you. In a corner, your mass is to the "inside" of the corner, but the centripetal force added to gravity's downward force ends up pushing down to where the wheels are. So you need to steer a bicycle so that the wheels are always under this center of mass force (I'm sure there's a word for it). Hence, if you were to turn the wheels in the direction you wanted to turn, you'd fall over, off the bike, to the outside of your intended turn. Therefore, to initiate a turn, you have to steer the wheels out from under the bike (the "wrong" way) to initiate your mass's 'fall' into the corner. Then you steer the wheels back under you to balance the fall.

HCIdivision17 10y ago

It's wildly unintuitive, so don't feel bad. When I was first learning to ride a motorcycle with the MSF, I damn neared dumped the practice bike a few times trying to manhandle it. You'll really quickly internalize push-left-go-left. And it turns out to work great on regular bikes, too. (But it's terrifyingly more responsive - I actually can't relax pedaling a bicycle because of the fear of how easy it is to flip the things and capsize them from countersteering.) EDIT: There's a neat heuristic that was brought up in the course: the center of mass of the bike is above the bottom of the wheels, and a turning bike must lean into the turn (weird road geometries excepted), therefore to turn the stuff under the center of mass must counter the top leaning in. Thus to go left, you push left, causing the front wheel to pull out from under the bike right-wards, which starts to capsize the bike leftwards! Like I said before, a bicycle reacts really really hard to this, but a hefty motorcyle has a far lower center of mass and leans into it more gracefully.

_Wintermute 10y ago
> And it turns out to work great on regular bikes, too Well yes, seeing as that's how you steer a bicycle. As a keen cyclist it annoys me when people (especially coaches) start harping on about countersteering being an additional technique you should learn, when it's what everyone has been doing intuitively since they first learned to ride a bike.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  Don't take it personally - I was always just a terrible rider when I was young; I meant that in a mildly sarcastic way. I never really figured out how to properly steer until I got a motorcycle, and that just about ruined my feeling of force in the other way. Put me on a bike and in 15 feet I'll accidentally steer so hard you'd think I was dodging semis / saw a hundred dollar bill on the pavement. (I assume as a kid I just always manhandled the bike so hard I never noticed. Always standing on the pedals and pumping them like I was running, wobbling the bike's center of gravity the whole way.)
- dahart 10y ago
  We learn counter-steering subconsciously, right? It's intuitive in the sense that it's muscle memory, but not in the sense that it's conscious and obvious why. A lot of people who've ridden bicycles initially refuse to believe counter-steering exists, I think that demonstrates that it's not completely intuitive. If the counter-steering part is obvious to you, then you're probably ahead of the curve, and you can certainly ignore when coaches harp about it. Counter-steering is said to be important to learn consciously because it's unintuitive, and people have crashed and died on motorcycles in panic situations by turning their handlebars toward their escape route only to have the bike go the opposite direction. Or at least I heard a rumor about that in my MSF course. I do think it's valuable to know this fact consciously and not rely on body intuition, but I'm also sure it's much more important for motorcycling than for bicycling.

ranko 10y ago

Yes, you're doing it subconsciously. Countersteering is only possible on two-wheeled vehicles, which means that tricycles handle very differently to bikes, and that learning to ride with stabilisers (training wheels) can be counterproductive.

kqr 10y ago
This totally explains my early, only, very bad experience with training wheels. I went right out into the street because I turned the wrong way and my friend (who had the training wheel bike) thought I knew nothing about riding bikes. I just learned without training wheels...

kqr 10y ago

Ever thought about why you can't "steer away" from a curb, how it appears to "suck you in" when you try? It's because that first, subconscious turn in the wrong direction takes you into the curb edge.

no_flags 10y ago
I've heard this was more of a psychological "target fixation" effect, unless I misunderstand the scenario you describe.
- stouset 10y ago
  You heard wrong. It's because you can't countersteer, which is the only way to turn a bicycle or motorcycle at speed. Try it. Get on a bike. Go straight, and pick up speed. Intentionally press the right side of the handlebar. Note which direction the bike is now aiming.

bch 10y ago

This is really apparent with motorcycles. I haven't personally noticed/tested with a bicycle, though.

upofadown 10y ago

You don't have to countersteer to turn on a bike. When you are riding straight you are using a combination of balance and handlebar position to adjust the angle of the bike so it is directly between you and the ground. If you fail to do this you fall over. So to turn without countersteer just stop doing anything and start to fall over. When you reach your desired angle of bank then turn the handlebars in the direction you are falling just enough so the acceleration from turning exactly counteracts the force that is causing you to fall. You are now in a continuous turn and you didn't countersteer at all. If you don't want to have to wait to fall or want to turn in a particular direction you will end up turning the handlebars in the opposite direction for a time. But that is just you continuing to adjust the angle of the bike to a desired angle like you do continuously all the time you are riding the bike. You haven't done anything different or counter intuitive. I personally don't consider "countersteer" to be a thing.

dahart 10y ago
> I personally don't consider "countersteer" to be a thing. It sounds like you've never ridden a motorcycle? Most safety courses on motorcycles teach counter-steering, precisely because it is a thing and failure to understand it can compromise your ability to recover from a bad situation. On a motorcycle going fast, you counter-steer continuously. If you make a slow right turn on a freeway, you can turn for 30 seconds by only pushing forward on the right handle. I'm pretty sure you always counter-steer even on a bike, it's just very hard to notice, especially going slow. We don't think about it. It's not really a choice though, there's only one way to turn without leaning, you don't get to pick counter-steering or not. You should definitely try it on a bicycle while going fast. Once you consciously turn your handlebars right and end up steering right no matter what you do, it becomes really clear.
- upofadown 10y ago
  >there's only one way to turn without leaning I generated an argument that refutes that statement in the post you are responding to. I am not arguing that the effect does not exist, only that it isn't interesting and is not worthy of a special term to describe it. FWIW I ride motorcycles on a regular basis... I oppose the discussion on countersteering in the regular motorcycle training curriculum because it suggests that there is more than one type of turn for no real reason. It would be better just to say that you turn on a motorcycle by changing the angle of the motorcycle from vertical. Then there is only one thing to learn.

dahart 10y ago

Try doing it consciously! It's very fun & informative. Try not to lean, and do some experimenting while you're riding fast. The faster you go, the more noticeable the effect is. You can push forward on the right side, and it will immediately put you and your bike into a right lean. Hold your hand pushing slightly on the right side to continue turning right. The handlebars will push back a little and try to straighten out. Many people that ride bikes never know about counter-steering, unless they ride motorcycles too. So, you're not alone. I didn't know about it on a bike until I learned riding motorcycles.

cel1ne 10y ago

Yes. What's more you actually change the direction above a certain speed like 5km/h or so. Prior to that you turn the bar into the direction you want to go, above that you do the opposite. The cerebellum rules. When riding a motorcycle it's very noticeable. Just tipping the handlebar with the finger at 100km/h and it will lean into the other direction.

tome 10y ago

I can't help wondering if everyone who has replied to you has mixed up cause and effect. My explanation would be: "To turn left you need to lean to the left. Leaning to the left momentarily forces the handlebars to turn the right." This describes an equivalent outcome to the quotation from the article but implication about what is cause and what is effect is quite different.

randlet 10y ago
It's very easy to verify for yourself that the cause & effect goes "push right handlebar (or equivalently, pull left handlebar) to initiate a right hand turn/lean". The countersteering argument has been repeated literally 100's of times on the internet on motorcycle forums. It's not worth debating as it is absolutely a real phenomena. It's counterintuitive yes, but there is no doubt that it is real.

afroviking 10y ago

There's a very interesting video from Keith's Code's superbike school where they built a motorcycle with an extra handle bar that's fixed to the bike to prove that leaning doesn't actually turn the bike much at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGQ-HePrT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOGQ-HePrT8 I know this works for sure on a motorcycle, and I've tried this experiment on a bicycle too, you can turn a bike right just by pushing the handlebar forward with your right hand. Totally counter intuitive but it works and I'm pretty sure we do it subconsciously when we lean by pushing on the handlebar and we end up counter-steering.

exabrial 10y ago

Yes! If you own a motorcycle, you -have- to countersteer!

zackify 10y ago

Twist of the wrist 2, a movie on how to lean on a motorcycle, explains it really well https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuTcJcqAng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuTcJcqAng

gerbilly 10y ago

This entire countersteering discussion is interesting for a site that often debates "consciousness". It's an example of a skill most of us acquired and use every day all without being accessible to our conscious brain. In fact, not only is it unconscious, most people consider it very counterintuitive. What other types of cognition do our bodies perform everyday that we aren't aware of? I'd argue that the amount of cognition accessible to our conscious mind is only a small fraction.

celias 10y ago

This phenomenon was the answer to a Car Talk Puzzler - http://m.cartalk.com/content/paging-sherlock-holmes http://m.cartalk.com/content/paging-sherlock-holmes