Bad motorcycling habits are picked up over time. Because these actions don’t always bring about a bad outcome, such as a motorcycle accident, they are repeated until they become habits. Some motorcyclists ride with their bad habits for years without incident either because of luck or because the right set of circumstances hasn’t occurred yet for the habits to cause an accident. If you have any of the following bad riding habits, correct them before they harm you:

Riding Too Fast Through Intersections

You see green lights up ahead and speed up to ensure you get through the intersection before the lights turn red. Or perhaps you might speed up through an intersection to beat other cars trying to make a left turn. There’s a good chance you picked up this habit when driving in your car.

As a motorcyclist, you can’t afford to get into any kind of accident because you aren’t protected by bumpers and crumple zones. You must slow down and be ready for a left-turning car to cut you off. They will do this because they either don’t see you, or misjudge your speed because of your narrow profile.

Sitting on Your Bike While Filling With Gas

Sitting on your bike prevents you from quickly jumping away should any gas spill onto your hot engine and cause a big gasoline fire. Perhaps you exercise great care — for now. But one day, a distraction will prevent you from realizing you’re overfilling your tank.

Riding Too Fast Through Poor Visibility Situations

Familiarity with the twists and turns of a route allows you to ride it at ever greater speeds. You know exactly how much speed you can use for each turn and get away with it. Because you have been getting away with it, you don’t feel overly concerned about rounding turns that are essentially blind at your speed. It only takes a stalled car or a deer in the road to find out you don’t have enough stopping distance for your speed.

Riding Too Fast Through Residential Areas

You may regard residential areas as bothersome because their speed limits seem unnecessarily slow. The roads are quite “tame” for your bike and your skills, so you habitually ride fast. The reason for these low speed limits is the unpredictability of these areas. Kids or dogs can suddenly race across the road. Many kids can barely ride their bikes in a straight line and rarely pay attention to road traffic. You can also count on cars quickly backing out of driveways in front of you.

Bad riding habits are a kind of ticking time bomb. Make an effort to identify and correct them before you injure yourself or another in a motorcycle accident. On the other hand, if another’s bad riding or driving habits injured you in an accident, contact us today for a free case evaluation.