Dec. 7, 2025

Top Common Motorcycle Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, host Niels Meersschaert highlights common motorcycle mistakes that riders often make. He discusses the dangers of inadequate safety gear, such as riding in shorts and sandals, and emphasizes the importance of using appropriate helmet visors for changing conditions. Additionally, Niels addresses the frequent oversight of leaving turn signals on and the critical need to use both brakes effectively. Tune in to gain insights on how to avoid these mistakes and enhance your riding safety.

Motorcycle Drivetrains Explained: Chains, Belts, and Shafts

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00:00 - Introduction

00:33 - Missing or incomplete safety gear

04:23 - Cancel the turn indicator

05:00 - Using only one brake

06:50 - Letting the gas tank get too empty

09:16 - Stalling

10:08 - Overreacting

11:30 - Missing maintenance

13:02 - Awareness

18:12 - Riding with a passenger

18:43 - Riding beyond your limits

24:50 - Arrogance

27:18 - Training

29:22 - Practice, practice, practice

30:50 - Wrap up

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Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. All of us as riders were newbies once, and many of us are still newbies for some aspects of the riding that we And being a newbie often means you'll make mistakes.

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We'll look at some common mistakes that riders make on their motorcycles and some ways to mitigate them. So let's with one of the most common mistakes. And this one arises from a little bit of maybe bravado or arrogance or a feeling that you want to have freedom in a sense, but it's really about missing incomplete or inappropriate safety gear. And there's always going to be some aspect of the motorcycling community who doesn't believe in safety gear for whatever their reasoning may be. this is certainly something that you have as an option as a rider to choose to do. But I would still put this into the mistake category because the risk of this actually becomes quite significant. And the one I'll start with here is you'll always find this, especially as it gets into the warmer summer months, there will be a rider who is riding around in shorts and sandals. And their thought is it's hot out. I don't want to wear jeans or riding pants or riding boots and they'll just ride shorts and sandals. And what I would encourage you is if you actually are really seriously considering that just do something that will perhaps change your mind and just Google images of a rider's foot after crashing, wearing just sandals.

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And this is going to be kind of a scary image because in many cases, all of the flesh of the foot has been worn off as they were sliding down the pavement.

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It's a really just disgusting image to be looking at. But it's an indication of just how almost quite frankly stupid this is to just ride around in sandals. and motorcycling is risky. It doesn't mean we're going to eliminate all the risk. But this is one of those that's pretty easy to mitigate and just seems stupid not to do. So I would definitely put this in as a Now, another one in this one, I may get some pushback on and that's absolutely fine. But I would say tinted visors are another common riding mistake. Now they seem great. But if you don't have a clear one with you as a spare, you could end up going into a tunnel or riding at night or all of a sudden the weather turns and it's not as bright anymore.

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And you may not be able to see as effectively because you have this dark tint visor. And what I would argue is look at some of the flip down visors, be they either from a Arai. makes this for some of their full face helmets where it just flips down.

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I've had this on previous helmets. It's really nice. And it allows you to flip it up or flip it down as necessary when you're in those And most of the, I'll say modular helmets will have an internal sun visor that you can slide down or slide up.

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I have this on my C5. It works great. I've also had it on a Neotech too. These are pretty common amongst most of the modular helmets. So you can still have the visor when you need it, but you can clear it out of the way when you move into those other conditions. The other way that you could do this is looking at some of the photochromatic shields. These would be a way that it will auto adjust based upon the conditions.

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So if you do get into where it's really bright sun out, it will darken. And as it starts to get a little bit darker, it will open up its brightness. These do work for tunnels, although the responsiveness of a photochromatic shield, it may not be quick enough as you immediately get into the tunnel.

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So you might still need to flip it Another option you could do, of course, is sunglasses. These will allow you to still have a clear visor, but have the sunglasses to block out any very extreme sun while you're riding along. And then if you get to a tunnel, you still have that same problem where you're wearing the sunglasses, but at the very least, as it gets dark at night, you can take the sunglasses So out of all of these, I would say having a flip-down visor is probably the most ideal. And then I would look at photochromatic shields and then sunglasses in order as the next options, Now another one, and we've all probably been guilty of this at one time or another, is leaving the turn signal blinking after you've completed your turn. And for a lot of bikes, especially older bikes that did not have any sort of a auto cancel feature on the turn You might see a rider going along for miles after miles after miles with that turn signal still blinking and blinking. With modern bikes, it is a little bit better, although they can suffer in almost the opposite direction which is where they turn off before you've actually completed the turn. And this can actually be quite frustrating and annoying.

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Another common riding mistake and this is, tends to be more prevalent with newer riders but if you develop it as a bad habit, it could even be after you've been riding for many years. And this is using just one brake. And, often times, what it is, is just the rear.

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There's a apprehension amongst riders, especially as they're first getting started out, where they feel that if they use the front brake, they might lock it up and then they'll lose control.

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And they're or comfortable, I'll say, using the rear brake. Now the irony is, is that your front brake actually provides about 70% of the braking force. So you're losing 70% of your ability to slow down if you only are relying on the rear brake.

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Now, on the flip side, there are going to be some riders who only use the front brake. And while this is, I'd say, if you're going to make a mistake of one brake versus the other, this is probably the better one to make.

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giving up 30% of your braking capability by not using the rear brake as well does limit you.

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Now, there is a little bit of a caveat to this because some modern bikes have what's called linked braking. So, if you activate any brake, whether it's the front brake or the rear brake, the bike will itself also modulate the other brake and give you more braking force. So, you can kind of get away with just using one brake in that situation, but I would still encourage you to get used to it because not every bike that you're going to be on is going to have that linked braking effect and using the both brakes is just going to give you a more complete braking. The other thing that this will do is it will allow you to adjust the modulation of how much force is front to rear, which especially as you're trying to get into a corner or set up for a corner, this actually can be really useful. So, learning how to use more than one brake is a really critical skill.

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Now, another one that some people will make a mistake is letting the gas tank get just a little bit too empty. And this can manifest in a few ways. One of them is you can run out of gas, which is embarrassing, but also could be problematic if you are literally in the middle of nowhere and you have no one riding with you. So, that's one aspect. Now, I've had this on a motorcycle before where I have actually run out of gas. I actually ran out of gas while the gas tank indicator, you know, whether it's full or empty, was indicating that it was still a full tank of gas. And this is because of a failure in the sensor that was registering this.

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And so, it always would show full even though I ran out of gas. Now, fortunately, I was maybe a quarter mile away from an exit on the highway I was running on. So, I was able to just, you know, roll the bike down. We were able to get over to the next gas station right at the end of the exit ramp and refill. But you're not always going to be so fortunate. So, be mindful of this. The other issue that I would say, beyond just running out of gas, is that in a lot of motorcycles, the fuel also helps to cool down the fuel pump. riding the bike all the way down to vapor can cause issues with your fuel pump. It could make it overheat, which could cause premature failure.

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And now, you can't even ride the bike More commonly, when you have a fuel pump, it's usually fuel injection. But that's usually where you're going to run into the problem. If you have a bike that has a fuel reserve indicator, and this could be either an old school bike where literally the engine will conk out and now you have to switch the petcock over to the reserve, or it could be an indicator that's going to show that you are at reserve. This is really the time when you should start searching for fuel. And I would say this would be the latest amount of time. What I personally love to do is I use a trip meter. I reset it when I refill the tank. I know how much fuel the tank can hold.I know what my average miles per gallon is so I can compute, hey, when I get to this amount of mileage, I need to refuel, or at least I need to start thinking about it.

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For me personally, I like to refuel once I'm getting to about a half a tank. This way I don't have to worry about it. I'm not going to be at the end of a tank and now searching for a gas station. And then, of course, just normal luck is going to say that every gas station that you pass is now closed or out of gas for some reason. So refilling when you're at a half-tank just gives you a little bit more breathing room. Now another mistake that we make as motorcyclists is stalling the bike. And most often this happens because we were perhaps a little too aggressive on releasing the clutch without giving enough throttle at the same time. Where it becomes even more common is if you are on a hill. And if you're starting on a hill, remember it's now a coordination aspect. You have to start to give throttle, release the clutch slowly enough that it can start to get that, and then start releasing the brake so that you don't roll backwards.

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It's a little bit of a tricky situation and for a lot of motorcyclists who are early in their riding careers, this is a very common place where they will make that mistake. So practicing on how to release the clutch smoothly in all conditions is really going to be a way that you can improve your riding skills.

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Now another mistake that a lot of riders will do, especially if you're riding in a situation that you are uncomfortable with, or have not had a lot of experience or practice in is overreacting. So, a couple of examples of this would be grabbing a fistful of brake. You slam on that front brake, and if your bike didn't have ABS, you could lock up that front brake, and now the bike is skidding with no control whatsoever because that front wheel is locked up. Same thing if you locked up the rear brake though, because now the rear brake is going to lock and now it's going to be fishtailing as you're continuing trying to go.

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Now with a lot of modern bikes that have ABS, it is not as catastrophic as it might have been in the past. Or if you have an older bike, it is still something to be thoughtful of.

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The other one that you can get is where people will turn the bars all the way to full lock instantly in an effort to avoid whatever is coming their way.

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you're going to effectively create the same situation. The bike cannot react that quickly and you will likely run into a situation where all of a sudden the bike will get unsettled and you could end up having a, either a high side or a low side for where the bike is going to run out of control. So, overreacting is a very significant cause of problems. Now, another one I want to focus on is another common mistake by motorcyclists is forgetting to lube clean a chain regularly.

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Now, most manufacturers will recommend that a chain be cleaned and lubed at least every three to five hundred miles. And I saw a social media post recently of a rider who was asking how to remove the rust from their chain. And from the comments that people were putting onto the post, as well as the responses from the original poster, it became obvious that the rider had never cleaned nor lubed their chain in the five thousand miles of riding that they had done. And needless to say, the consensus was that the rider needed to replace the chain and the sprockets because of the accelerated wear from maintenance neglect. So remember, your motorcycle does need regular maintenance, and the chain is the one that the frequent one that you'd need to do. And it's more frequent than you would like. This is to me, one of the downsides of a chain.

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We did cover some of the different drive trains that were available on motorcycles. I'll put a link to that in the show notes where we talked about some of these problems with each. But a chain drive in particular, because you have re-lube it and clean it roughly every three to five hundred miles. That could just be a weekend trip. It could be a day ride for a really long day ride. So you might have to clean that every day if you're on a trip. And that's a little annoying, but it doesn't mean that you ignore it. So just be mindful. You have to keep up on maintaining the motorcycle.

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Now, a lot of these things that we've talked about were more of the specific examples of where riders make mistakes. And in particular, the one about overreacting is a response to what I'm going to talk about right now, which is a lack of awareness. And this can manifest in a few different ways.

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One of them is you assume that the car sees you. And this happens really commonly in crossing traffic. if you're here in the US and you have left turning traffic or right turning traffic for our UK listeners, this is one of the most common collision causes for riders. And assuming that the vehicle will turn in front of you is actually the safer bet than assuming that they see you and will wait. So slow down, cover the brake and clutch levers so you can instantly hit them as needed.

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And you can be squeezing that brake and that clutch as opposed to grabbing it very quickly.

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other thing that you want to do just to keep that awareness up as you're riding is scan the sides of the road for wildlife, especially when you're in a wooded area. The odds of having a deer run out in front of you or even I've seen times when I was riding on some off-road or dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere, I've had bears. I've had a mother bear with her cubs right out in front of the bike.

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Just try to keep an eye out for those type of situations where you might have wildlife run in front of you and just be covering that brake when you're seeing it so that you are ready to slow down as much as possible and just be looking and keeping an eye scanning the sides of the road. Now in an urban environment, you really have to do much of the same scanning as you do out in the woods. But realize that there's many more things that are in motion, so you usually have to slow down just so that your ability to scan it all can be matched with the speed at which you're noticing all of these elements.

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But there could be pedestrians who might dart out. There could be a kid who's going to run out in front of traffic. There could be a pet who's going to run out in traffic. There's going to be vehicles that are coming in and out of parking lots. So just be mindful and keep an eye on it.

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Keep that scan going so that you're ready to go. And if you get into an area where you're starting to see a lot more traffic and a lot more movement, it costs you nothing to just put a couple of fingers over that brake just to cover it so it's ready to go at a moment's notice whenever something starts to move and creates a situation.

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Now another common mistake that we make as riders is we forget to look ahead of the bike. not looking directly at the front wheel or what's right in front of the front wheel. If you're looking there two, three, four feet in front of the front wheel, you have zero time to react to that. It's going to be passed before you actually can do anything to adjust it. So get your eyes up. This is every class that I've taken for motorcycling is usually the advice of most instructors all the time is get those eyes up, get those eyes up. You will notice the flow of the road, you will see road hazards earlier.

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It just makes you able to have much more time to react to a situation than if you're staring at the front wheel. Now in curves especially, this is really critical because you are able to then look for road debris like gravel or oil or And you can position yourself in the lane appropriately when you see these road hazards. Now the last one that happens, and this is a very common mistake that riders make, is target fixation. As we notice this thing that we're worried about, we just keep staring at that thing. And it could be that deer that's coming across, it could be this car that's coming across, whatever it ends up being, we're staring at that. And the problem is, is that when you're riding, you will go where you are looking.

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So don't look at the thing you don't want to hit. Look at where you want to go to avoid hitting it, not at the thing that you would hit. I was riding many years ago, and we had a friend of ours who had not really done a lot of long trips. We were, it was really his first overnight trip that we were doing, and we were riding from New York City all the way up to Vermont. So it was going to be six hours-ish of ride time, and he was used to doing maybe an hour or two in a whole day. So this was a much longer period of time than he had ever ridden before. And as a consequence, he started to get a little tired. He wasn't paying as much attention. We were riding through a bit of a twisty section, and you know, he kind of dozed out a little bit. And then when he kind of noticed what was going on, he saw that he was heading towards a tree and he target fixated. He just kept staring at the tree. He didn't avoid it and ran straight into the tree. Needless to say, he did a tremendous amount of damage to the motorcycle. He did have some injuries on his thumbs, and that target fixation was the real cause. If he had moved literally two feet to either side, he would have completely missed the tree and had a wide open field that he could have then had plenty of time to slow down in. So target fixation can be really, really dangerous.

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just get in the habit of looking where you want to go.

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Now, if really getting excited about riding your motorcycle or maybe you're a newer rider, you may want to share this experience with someone else. And this makes a lot of sense. You want to bring someone along and take them on a ride. a passenger really changes the handling dynamics of the bike. And if you don't instruct the passenger on how to lean with you and not be jostling the bike, could actually move around on the bike that could cause control issues. Don't jump to getting passenger before you're ready.

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Now, closely related to that because that is one element of what I'll put into a more of a broad bucket of riding beyond your limits. You're not yet ready to bring that passenger on, but that's not the only example of where you can ride beyond your limits. if you're on a group ride, don't try to keep pace with the group. Proper group riding is that the leader in each rider should be waiting for the rider behind them at the next turn off of the road. So you should never feel obliged to ride faster than you feel comfortable. And if the road conditions are iffy, like gravel, wet leaves, etc., just slow down.

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If you need a break before the next plan stop, just tell the group and take that time, Don't feel that you have to keep pace with the group. It's usually the most problematic is when you are pushing yourself beyond your comfort level because everyone else is riding at a pace that you are personally not comfortable with. Now, another mistake that people will make is in misjudging corners. And usually this manifests the most common way is going too fast.

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Now, here in the US, most corners will have a yellow sign indicating the direction of the turn. And many of them will also have a suggested speed. Now, while you may choose to ride faster than the suggested speed, you can use it as a relative indication of how sharp the corner is, and then adjust your speed accordingly. So maybe you're going along a road and it's a let's say it's a 45 mile an hour road, and now you see a road sign ahead that's showing almost like a U-turn and it's saying 15 miles an hour. The odds that you're going to be able to continue to be doing 45 miles an hour on that road is approaching nil. You will have to slow down. Now, you may not have to do 15, but you will definitely have to slow down. So just be thoughtful of taking that as a suggestion and adjusting your speed accordingly.

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Now, if you fail to do so, if you do not adjust your speed, it doesn't have to be all the way down to that 15 miles an hour, you run wide either off of the road, or even worse, into opposing traffic. Now, another one that people will make mistakes on as they're going through corners is when you have a blind corner. So never ride faster than you can see through the corner. Now, when you're on a track, the track is intentionally, even if it's a very tight corner, there is no trees, there's no buildings.

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There's nothing that is going to hinder your ability to see all the way through the corner. And this is what makes a track in some ways a safer environment in which to ride at a very fast pace, because while you may need to slow down for the turn itself, you'll never have a situation where you cannot see through the corner, except maybe if it's a hill and it's descending. But in most cases, you can absolutely see through the corner when you're on a track. But in the real world, this is not the And many years ago, I was leading a multi-day trip from New York City to the Canadian border. And we were trying to hit as many dirt roads as possible along the whole way. And each morning, I'd have a riders meeting about how important it was to wait for the rider behind you at each turn and to ride your own ride, really to stay at the pace that you feel comfortable with. But there was one other piece of advice that I often reiterated, and that was to look out for blind corners. We were riding along dirt roads. Dirt roads typically will be older roads that may not have the same designs as we have for modern roads. So some of them could have some tight turns in them.

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And they're going to have trees along the sides, because this is usually more in the woods and the rural areas. And one of the things I warned about, people, there could be farm stopped just as you're going around a corner?

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And so on the second day of our trip, we rounded one of these blind corners. And sure enough, there was a combine stopped in the road just after the turn.

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And if we hadn't adjusted our speed for the inability to see through the corner, we would have run right into the sharp bits of that combine. Ouch.

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assume that there will be something in the other part of the corner that you cannot see, whether it's wildlife, whether it's a stopped vehicle, whatever.

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Don't go faster than you can see through the corner. Now another one that people will make a mistake with is gear selection and braking. Ideally, you want to get into the gear you need before you are in the corner.

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And you'll develop a sense of what speed is right for a corner and the ideal gear for that speed. So you want to downshift as needed before you get into the turn. And remember your tires perform two distinct actions on the bike. They provide both the acceleration and braking force. So if you think of that in line with the motorcycle, that's the force that they're able to do. But they also help to turn the So if you try to brake and turn, or to accelerate and turn, you can run out of grip. So you need to adjust how much of each you do.

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The safest, although not the fastest way through a corner, is to brake before you turn. And get to the speed you need to carry through the corner. And then you can maintain that through the corner. And that's not the fastest way through a corner, but it is definitely the safest. You're never going to have a problem with it. But many experienced riders will use trail braking to continue some braking as they go into the corner. And you could think of it almost as a shift. You were slowing down, slowing down, slowing down. Now you're reducing how much you're slowing down as you start to add in some turning. And then you get into where you're doing your full turning. You're completely off the brakes at that point. So think of it as a shift from braking to steering, and you have a total amount of grip that you can spend. And you want to trade off whether your grip is being spent in braking, or your grip is being spent in turning and adjust. So as you get more advanced as a rider, you'll figure out how to tune this or go to a class where they will really explicitly teach this to you.

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Now, another common riding mistake that we as motorcyclists will do is really about our attitude as we are riding. this can manifest in a few different ways. So one of these is what I'll describe as is arrogance. this can extend itself in a few different ways.

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One is we expect everyone else to be looking out for us. And this entitlement is an issue for riders. We expect everyone should watch out for us and give us the space that we need. But most drivers are used to other cars and the apparent size of a motorcycle can make it seem that we are further away. And if we're kind of honest about it, we might be going a little faster than the flow of other traffic. So we're going to be getting to where they are even faster, even though we look smaller. And this can make it difficult for a driver in another vehicle to gauge the distance and the time that they have to do whatever maneuver they're going to do would be moving in front of you. The other thing is that there's a fear factor amongst the other vehicles. They don't view a motorcycle as a threat to hurting them. And they'll be much more likely to yield to a large tractor trailer than to a small motorcycle. So don't expect that everyone else is going to look out for you or that they are going to accurately judge the distance.

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So just remember that when you're on the motorcycle, we are vulnerable. There is no giant crash cage around us. We're also smaller and easier to miss when scanning. Cars and trucks can and will cut us off. Assume they will, and you'll be much more likely to ride another day. Now, the next one that we'll see manifest from this arrogance is thinking that you're a better rider than you are. There's an old adage that you might say you have 20 years riding experience, but it's really one year of riding experience 20 times over.

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And if you haven't intentionally tried to ride in a variety of situations, you'll be unprepared for when one of those situations arises. Experience isn't about time. It's about pattern recognition. If you always ride the same route, you can become complacent and not pay attention.

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And that is when you'll have an incident. If you never ride when it rains and you're caught out in the rain, you have no experience for how to ride in those conditions. Make sure that you have varied experience to prepare you for as many situations as possible.

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And this brings us to what I think is probably one of the most critical mistakes that people make, which is not getting rider training. Now, it's not just for newbies. There are riders who will say, oh, what I did my riding training when I got my license and that was enough. And the thing is, experienced riders can still benefit from training. Maybe you've developed a bad habit, but you're unaware of it. Maybe you're looking to expand the kind of riding that you do.

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There's always more to learn.

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Taking a course every few years or more often if you ride infrequently is a good approach, especially for riders who are only putting on a few miles each year. They have little practice to sort of reinforce whatever learning they do. So more frequent training is really a good idea. Now, some courses help you with specialized situations like low traction, whether that's off-road or in the wet. And think about what you aren't comfortable doing on the bike and find training that addresses that. Now, as I alluded to, some people will say, but I took the basic rider course. Well, the basic rider course is just that. It's a basic riding course. Don't think that that is enough. It's called basic because it's enough to get you a license, not to become a proficient rider. And I like my examiner said when I was getting my pilot's license, because there's training, of course, that we do as you're becoming a pilot and it was no different in there. When I took exam to get my private, at the end of it, and my examiner said, congratulations, you've now earned your pilot's license. He said, now you have a license to learn, meaning that the journey of learning how to be a really good pilot wasn't over just because I achieved my pilot's license. It was a license to learn. And motorcycling is no different. That basic riding course is just to get you the very basics. You understand the fundamentals. It's enough to get you to pass your license exam, but you still need to continue to learn beyond that. And it's not just about taking the course.

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You need to continue to practice. Training is great, but if you don't practice it, it's one time and then you forgot about it. It's like, oh, I spent three hours on a course. And I'm not going to remember it after the point. So what a lot of good riders will do is they will practice. They'll go into an empty parking lot and they'll do low speed riding. They'll practice to make sure that they feel comfortable in getting really tight circles. How do they do it without putting their foot down? This is a good technique to really learn how to manage the bike, understanding how to manage your throttle, your brake, your turning, just to keep everything in perfect balance. And that's a good way to do it. The other one that people will do the same thing.

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They'll oftentimes use an empty parking lot is emergency braking.

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How do you get up to some speed and then grab those brakes as quickly as you can to slow down and modulate them so that you are keeping right at the edge of skidding. And if you have ABS, you're feeling what it's like to have that pulse of the ABS going through the lever so that you're not surprised when you run into it. You want to have that comfort level. So doing this practice really is critical. Now, if you're going to go and do this, I wouldn't say do this without having done a class.

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Take a class where you have an instructor showing you and they're slowly building you up to a faster and faster rate. But once you've taken the class, you want to continue practicing those same drills that you had done in the class when you're done.

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So we've covered a lot of the range of mistakes from inappropriate riding gear to poor maintenance approaches to a lack of awareness and skills practice and training. So my question for you is,what is the one mistake you find yourself doing on a bike? Share your thoughts through the text to show link in the show notes or leave a voicemail at throttle and roast dot com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.

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I'll talk to you next week.