Skill is overrated
- Thread starter DataDan
- Start date
gound sound judgement here
picking routes with less traffic, doing your high speeds with few side roads
not entering into an unknow intersection where you know someone is going to broadside you unless you slow and expect him to be there.
I've had my accidents since 1973 , learned just how easily you could have metal plates put into your body like I have. That was in the over confident 20's. Now it follows me for 37 years where the limping comes in from cold to the bones weather reminds my metal . It really just great to ride at 65% now
Plenty of margin for error especially when you slow the speeds where you know something is bound to pop up, just a bag of tricks you have after 37 years of riding. Insted of diving in , go around in a sense. Give youself time to observe all posibilities always scanning ALWAYS !!!
Speed+public roads=disaster
Skill can't save you on public roads because there are just too many variables out of the rider's control. Even taking every precaution there is a significant risk of injury involved with riding. Applying skills learned at the track to riding on the street is fine. Trying apply the speeds of the track to road riding will eventually result in a wreck.
That's not to say that I sit in judgment of anyone. As long as a person knows the risk, if he/she chooses to push the envelope that's his/her choice.
When a couple of sport bikes came up on me on Redwood Rd. today I waved them by. I'm sure I could have held their pace (or pretty close to it) on my non-supersport. They weren't going that fast, but they were going too fast for me, given the number of cyclist and the cars on the road.
My "skill" was up to the task of keeping pace, but my judgment overruled. That's one of the things that keeps me riding. Riding is life in a microcosm. Riding requires you to make split second decisions that have immediate impact on your life. Unlike making financial, parenting or relationship decisions that may take years to find out if they were correct, you know immediately when you f-up on a ride.
In my mind, judgment trumps skill any day...
...besides, I'm a big wuss!
picking routes with less traffic, doing your high speeds with few side roads
not entering into an unknow intersection where you know someone is going to broadside you unless you slow and expect him to be there.
I've had my accidents since 1973 , learned just how easily you could have metal plates put into your body like I have. That was in the over confident 20's. Now it follows me for 37 years where the limping comes in from cold to the bones weather reminds my metal . It really just great to ride at 65% now
Plenty of margin for error especially when you slow the speeds where you know something is bound to pop up, just a bag of tricks you have after 37 years of riding. Insted of diving in , go around in a sense. Give youself time to observe all posibilities always scanning ALWAYS !!!
Joebar4000
Well-known member
To steal a certain moderators tagline:
"A superior rider uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require superior skill."
I've had eleven accidents on streetbikes.
Read that again. Eleven.
Not, eleven, oops I dropped it in the driveways, 11 'thrown it up the road ow, fuck, ow, fuck ow this is going to be expensive' - "accidents".
Ok, there were a couple - literally 2 - that I absolutely couldn't avoid - being rear-ended in traffic (already 'splitting') and a hit-and-run asshole who changed lanes into me.
The rest - mud on road, black ice, diesel, cyclist pulling out, car driver pulling out (x3) and a few just plain stupid-fast-for-the-conditions - all avoidable.
Even though the car drivers violated my way, I had put myself into a position where I had no exit, no options, no escape.
I relied on other people doing the correct thing. I had no margin, no leeway.
I continuously put myself into a position where if something went wrong - I had basically no options.
I was, actually, pretty skilled, pretty quickly, and happily ground pegs and sliders every single day of the year, even playing with backing it in (on a GPZ900 no less) - but I kept crashing.
Until I stopped doing stupid shit that gave me no room for an exit or 'what if this asshat does X, Y, Z'.
Then the accidents stopped.
I actually rode faster than before where it was safe to do so, but totally slowed it down everywhere else, took far fewer chances with traffic, never allowed myself to be put into a positition where there was no contingency plan.
I never *allowed* myself to be tailgated, sat next to, assumed they would not take the turn coming up that would cut me off while overtaking, etc. etc.
THAT is the difference, and importance of judgement vs. skill.
As Carlos says, exercising good judgement means not pulling a mono through heavy traffic at rush hour on 101 in the city, even if you have the skills to do it.
That's an extreme example, but you get the point. Epic skill + shit judgement still equals very high probability of dirt nap.
Zippity skill - past the basics - plus great judgement = careful, slow, but long-living rider.
Dan raises some good points, even on the times I've disagreed with him, it's worth providing a good argument instead of just pissing on someone else's chips because you disagree.
"A superior rider uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require superior skill."
I've had eleven accidents on streetbikes.
Read that again. Eleven.
Not, eleven, oops I dropped it in the driveways, 11 'thrown it up the road ow, fuck, ow, fuck ow this is going to be expensive' - "accidents".
Ok, there were a couple - literally 2 - that I absolutely couldn't avoid - being rear-ended in traffic (already 'splitting') and a hit-and-run asshole who changed lanes into me.
The rest - mud on road, black ice, diesel, cyclist pulling out, car driver pulling out (x3) and a few just plain stupid-fast-for-the-conditions - all avoidable.
Even though the car drivers violated my way, I had put myself into a position where I had no exit, no options, no escape.
I relied on other people doing the correct thing. I had no margin, no leeway.
I continuously put myself into a position where if something went wrong - I had basically no options.
I was, actually, pretty skilled, pretty quickly, and happily ground pegs and sliders every single day of the year, even playing with backing it in (on a GPZ900 no less) - but I kept crashing.
Until I stopped doing stupid shit that gave me no room for an exit or 'what if this asshat does X, Y, Z'.
Then the accidents stopped.
I actually rode faster than before where it was safe to do so, but totally slowed it down everywhere else, took far fewer chances with traffic, never allowed myself to be put into a positition where there was no contingency plan.
I never *allowed* myself to be tailgated, sat next to, assumed they would not take the turn coming up that would cut me off while overtaking, etc. etc.
THAT is the difference, and importance of judgement vs. skill.
As Carlos says, exercising good judgement means not pulling a mono through heavy traffic at rush hour on 101 in the city, even if you have the skills to do it.
That's an extreme example, but you get the point. Epic skill + shit judgement still equals very high probability of dirt nap.
Zippity skill - past the basics - plus great judgement = careful, slow, but long-living rider.
Dan raises some good points, even on the times I've disagreed with him, it's worth providing a good argument instead of just pissing on someone else's chips because you disagree.
DataDan
Mama says he's bona fide
It's never about speed alone, is it? It's about the totality of the situation. You can ride fast and have fun if you understand where and when you're vulnerable. Call it holistic speeding
.One of the more aggravating kind of posts I see in forums appear in threads about speed-caused crashes. Someone will say, "WTF was he thinking, riding that fast in that situation?" Someone else will reply, "STFU! EVERYONE speeds, and if you say you don't, you're lying." They're unable to see why 100mph might be boring-safe in one situation and 25mph potentially deadly in another.
But acquiring that sense seems to take years, and some bad experiences along the way.
Carlo
Kickstart Enthusiast
Oboy, here we go again!
Skill doesn't mean no accidents and no dui's at all.
No dui's is caused by not drinking and riding/driving. Not doing something isn't a skill.
No accidents is more complicated, but good judgement (some folks in the earlier incarnation of this conversation have suggested that good judgement is a form of skill) is the primary cause for no accidents.
I suggest you go back and read all eleven pages of this thread so you have a better idea of what we were talking about.
I've just finished my 42nd summer as a motorcyclist, and my 34th year with no crashes. I'm far from the most skilled motorcyclist I know, but my judgement is pretty near as good as it gets.
iehawk
Well-known member
Sorry if I miss a previous point. But looking at the quoted post alone...
'NO' is a mighty big word in this case. I'd say the skill helps to minimize the risk of accidents. To call it being the absolute seems so arrogant. There's still that small percentage of possibility that is just beyond our control. Gotta be humble and respect the roads (= jungle, including its many inhabitants) and the bike (it's quite the beast).
DUI is not about skill... that's stupidity that got caught.
Splicer
Well-known member
A friend of mine drives a four-wheeled car, and I've gotten rides from him a few times over the last couple of months while my bike has been in the shop. One of his favorite topics is how skilled a driver he is, and how no one else on the road is actually able to properly control their vehicles. He accelerates hard, executes razor-sharp lane changes, missing other vehicles by a foot or less, weaves in and out of lanes, ignores any law he deems "stupid", all while fiddling with the stereo and txting to his girlfriend. I have literally seen him make multiple lane changes on the freeway steering with his knee because his hands were busy doing something "important" like bringing up an app he downloaded and wanted to show me.
He claims to never have been in an accident of any kind. For the sake of argument, lets believe that is true.
I, by contrast, get behind the wheel of an automobile and do nothing but pilot the vehicle. Information gladly given, but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation. I'm like the BMW engineers of yore who wouldn't add cupholders to their cars because they could not comprehend that anyone would ever willingly have their hands anywhere other than 10 and 2 o'clock, or sometimes on the shifter.
I have no doubt that if you set up an obstacle course with cones and send each of us through it, my friend will get through it faster than I will, he'll knock over fewer cones than I will (or we'll both hit zero of them) and he'll do it without even looking where he's going.
And I'm not going to hold myself up as a "better driver." But I don't believe my friend is correct when he says he's a better driver than 99.999% of the people on the road. Even with his spotless record, he is one of the worst drivers on the road. I won't get in a car he drives.
There's a camp that says he is skilled but has poor judgment, and it seems there's another camp that says that judgment is part of skill and therefore he is not a skilled driver. There seems to be a camp that says that his flawless accident record trumps all other considerations (though as a side issue, the fact that he's never been in an accident doen't mean he hasn't caused accidents.)
But no matter how you slice it semantically, there are real and important differences between the way my friend drives and the way that I do. He has strengths I lack (what DataDan called skill) and lacks a virtue that almost everyone has at least some of (what DataDan called judgment).
(Now I'm going to use DataDan's terminology) A rider with good judgment and poor skills will be almost impossible to tell from a rider with good judgment and excellent skills. In a small number of circumstances, the one with raw skill will fare better, but in almost all other circumstances they will do pretty much the same thing.
The same cannot be said of riders with equal skill but unequal judgment.
Therefore, judgment makes an imperfect but pretty good substitute for skill. Skill is no substitute at all for good judgment.
TL;dr: pretty much what everyone else has been saying.
He claims to never have been in an accident of any kind. For the sake of argument, lets believe that is true.
I, by contrast, get behind the wheel of an automobile and do nothing but pilot the vehicle. Information gladly given, but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation. I'm like the BMW engineers of yore who wouldn't add cupholders to their cars because they could not comprehend that anyone would ever willingly have their hands anywhere other than 10 and 2 o'clock, or sometimes on the shifter.
I have no doubt that if you set up an obstacle course with cones and send each of us through it, my friend will get through it faster than I will, he'll knock over fewer cones than I will (or we'll both hit zero of them) and he'll do it without even looking where he's going.
And I'm not going to hold myself up as a "better driver." But I don't believe my friend is correct when he says he's a better driver than 99.999% of the people on the road. Even with his spotless record, he is one of the worst drivers on the road. I won't get in a car he drives.
There's a camp that says he is skilled but has poor judgment, and it seems there's another camp that says that judgment is part of skill and therefore he is not a skilled driver. There seems to be a camp that says that his flawless accident record trumps all other considerations (though as a side issue, the fact that he's never been in an accident doen't mean he hasn't caused accidents.)
But no matter how you slice it semantically, there are real and important differences between the way my friend drives and the way that I do. He has strengths I lack (what DataDan called skill) and lacks a virtue that almost everyone has at least some of (what DataDan called judgment).
(Now I'm going to use DataDan's terminology) A rider with good judgment and poor skills will be almost impossible to tell from a rider with good judgment and excellent skills. In a small number of circumstances, the one with raw skill will fare better, but in almost all other circumstances they will do pretty much the same thing.
The same cannot be said of riders with equal skill but unequal judgment.
Therefore, judgment makes an imperfect but pretty good substitute for skill. Skill is no substitute at all for good judgment.
TL;dr: pretty much what everyone else has been saying.
Carlo
Kickstart Enthusiast
the donald
Well-known member
Yeah I am at 1 1/2. I look at where I was and how far I have come, but I constantly have to.remember my skill is still minuscule compared.to many. And I can defiantly see and understand that trap.
But I guess that is where good judgement comes in. I,you, we, everyone will have lapses but if you have it the lapses aren't as severe(but can still be catastrophic).
I can't wait to start going to the track.
achtung6
Well-known member
Even top pros admit they sometimes "run out of talent"
Joebar4000
Well-known member
Not really.
I have in the past, quite happily done stupid shit like dragging a knee through an intersection in heavy traffic.
A noob who lacks the skills to ride that fast, *cannot* do that.
What stops me doing stupid shit like this anymore is judgment.
It's actually hard to think of a situation where skill will save you from a situation caused by poor judgment - too fast into a corner, splitting too fast, insufficient braking distance - skill can be the difference between nearly-crashing and almost-crashing - but if you used good judgment, you'd never allow yourself to get into a situation that REQUIRED superior skill.
People with minimal skill in cars safely live out their lives never approaching the limits of their machines, and never have accidents. They have low skill but good judgment.
Others are capable of drifting, throttle-steering at will, and have many accidents, because of poor judgment.
Of course, the ideal scenario is, someone who has very high skill, and very good judgment.
Good judgment will reduce your odds of an incident - good skill will help you survive an incident unscathed.
But as Mr. Miyagi once said, 'Best way no get hit, no be there'.
Reducing risk exposure is much better than increasing risk survival - doing both is ideal.
Think of it as gambling - poor judgment is like playing Russian Roulette - a lot.
Good skill is like playing Russian Roulette with more empty chambers in the pistol.
Would you rather have more empty chambers, or not put the pistol to your head at all?
ThinkFast
Live Long
Every few years in Roadracing World there is a RIP item on a racer who bought it in a road crash. Skill? Uh, yeah. Judgement? Maybe not so much on that day. In a street situation will a racer or highly skilled rider spank an unskilled rider 99% of the time safely? Hell yes. The problem occurs when that same highly skilled rider loses sight of the simple fact that the street is a random place and can hurt you far worse than the track (most of the time). And fwiw, there are no accidents - only crashes. At least that's the way we should ride.
PS - I don't agree with Joebar's comment about good skill and Russian roulette. It's not like playing with more empty chambers. Good skill is like playing a different game. As a Blue Angels flight leader said, "Precision flying isn't dangerous. It's just very unforgiving." Same with riding, I reckon.
PS - I don't agree with Joebar's comment about good skill and Russian roulette. It's not like playing with more empty chambers. Good skill is like playing a different game. As a Blue Angels flight leader said, "Precision flying isn't dangerous. It's just very unforgiving." Same with riding, I reckon.
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I would define "skill" as experience which helps a rider to not compound their problem, but rather make moves to alleviate such a problem. IOW, most new riders with less experience tend to not recognize the danger they are *currently* in and thus, compound the danger. Skill, or experience, helps to recognize and neutralize that danger.
Joebar4000
Well-known member
QFMFT, M.
Most accidents are the inevitable outcome of rolling the dice with risky behavior too many times.
Which brings me to...
Not sure what you mean. I don't want to turn this into an English Language semantics argument - perhaps I wasn't clear.
Riding (or anything) is taking chances. What chances you take, is judgment.
Good judgment reduces the number of bad incidents that REQUIRE superior skill (which for the sake of this argument, I'll narrowly define as good physical control of the motorcycle).
IOW, you're 'rolling the dice' less often, IOW, playing with more chambers.
E.g. I decide to overtake a car around a blind corner. This is taking a chance. Odds are, there won't be another car coming around the corner, but the consequence of there being one, would require amazing skill to escape from.
If I decide to overtake around blind corners often, I'm 'rolling the dice' a lot.
Not overtaking around blind corners does not require skill, but (admittedly a very small amount) of good judgment, IOW, not rolling the dice very often.
I could be very skilled, or not skilled at all, and still try that same dumbass move - so, being more skilled doesn't change the game at all.
The reason I call it Russian Roulette, is because there ARE, sadly, times when no amount of skill or judgment will save you. But these are actually really, really rare - true accidents. You can 'increase the number of chambers' by using good judgment.
Most collisions are some dumbass with bad judgment doing something their (or some other poor schmuck's) skill cannot overcome.
To Berto's point, you can argue that having good judgment is also learned skill - for example, many noobs crash on sport bikes, not because they go too fast, but because they don't realize how close they are to the edge of the envelope until they step past it. Most modern bikes give tons of feedback to the experienced rider, but to a noob, they feel rock-solid, until you're on your ass. Sensitivity to that feedback is very definitely a skill, but including it improves your ability to make good decisions, i.e. judgment...
This is where it get's really fuzzy and perhaps where the schism in perception lies - calling overall good judgment a learned skill, which I'll agree it is -but I think DataDan's original point was aimed at 'bike control' versus 'choosing a course of action'. :nerd
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Hmmm...I started riding Bultaco's way back in '69 (enduros-motocross) and moved to my first street bike in '72---Honda 750! My last bike bike was a '84 Ninja, which I sold in '87.....until '09, when I got back into it and bought a '08 FZ1 (and just bought a track bike!!). Where am I going with this? I'm STUNNED by the lack of 'street awareness' that most of the guys I ride with have! They ride like they're in their truck, not paying attention to anyone.....if that 24 yr old bimbo, yapping on her cell phone, pulls out and hits me in my Chevy 2500---I WIN! On my FZ, I'm in ICU! Am I skilled? I'm not bad, more so then anyone i ride with, but I don't care if your Casey Stoner....if your HUA on the street, your
skill doesn't really matter. It might save u in some incidents, but seeing something unfolding in front of you allows you to avoid it and not be there!
skill doesn't really matter. It might save u in some incidents, but seeing something unfolding in front of you allows you to avoid it and not be there!
Splicer
Well-known member
Yeah, 3B43. I can't find much to disagree with there. Except that there are people in this thread who will argue that awareness and judgment are part of skill so the semantic argument goes 'round and 'round. "No, it's ALL about SKILL!!!1!" versus "Skill is less important than awareness and judgment" is an impossible conversation when the participants can't agree on what "skill" does or does not include.
Maybe it's because I just watched it recently, I think it's a lot like the Hollywood portrayal of the famous mountain men who went to the Alamo. They were skilled and considered the best survivalist there were....but they went to the Alamo. Circumstances outweighed even what their skill could accommodate...
mnb
Obliterates Stereotypes
You can have all the skill in the world, but if you have poor judgement or inadequate awareness, it will be of limited use.
Your eyes will save you from accidents far more than braking skills or how well you can flick it.
Just because you can go fast, doesn't mean you should. Or that it is wise. The street is full of opportunities for the unexpected.
Your eyes will save you from accidents far more than braking skills or how well you can flick it.
Just because you can go fast, doesn't mean you should. Or that it is wise. The street is full of opportunities for the unexpected.
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