How to... Master The Class On a scooter, getting your licence is only the first step in your education
Words by JEREMY BOWDLER, photography from the tw archives You did it. You've got your scooter, you've got your licence, and now you've got your freedom. But riding around the mean streets of the city isn't quite the same as riding around on the testing range and you can't just put your hand up and ask a question in the middle of the road in the middle of the city in the middle of peak hour.
The good news is that, as a scooter rider, you'll never stop learning about your riding, refining it, improving it. The even better news is that it's never going to be as scary as that first, tentative foray into the traffic.
There are two basic streams to becoming a better rider: the first is technical, how you can take advantage of the way a scooter behaves to make riding it easier; and the second is mental, how the way you think makes you safer. This issue, we'll be looking at the practical, or skills-based, theories of scooter riding, and we'll look at the mental, or roadcraft skills next time.
Getting on the gas
The modern scooter isn't known as twist and go for nothing. The marvels of modernday constantly variable transmission (CVT) mean that there are no clutch, no gears, and no gearbox to get between you and the rear wheel. Just twist and go.
But what does the throttle do, apart from the obvious of getting you from A to B? For a start, it helps to stabilise the scooter. While the physics of getting a scooter to turn a corner are quite formidable, the simple fact remains that braking before a corner and accelerating through it is by far the best way to get around a corner. What happens is that when you accelerate, the weight bias of a scooter moves slightly towards the front end at first, making the front tyre grip a little bit better and compressing the front suspension which steepens the effective steering head angle, making the scooter easier to steer into the corner and allowing it to hold a tighter line through the corner without wanting to run wide.
If you go into a corner with a neutral or trailing throttle (ie, just holding it steady or closing it), inertia wants to make the scooter carry on straight ahead, testing the tyres' adhesion and leading to that feeling of ohmigodI'mnotgoingtomkaeit or, at the least, a wobbly, vaguely unsettling feeling in the middle of a corner, as if you've just surrendered control and the scooter is taking you for a ride instead of the other way around.
Slow in, fast out is the maxim here, and getting on the gas through a corner will also increase your ground clearance, which is generally considered to be a good thing.
Braking
Scooters obviously have two brakes, generally these days one on either handlebar grip. By convention, the right lever operates the front brake and the left the rear (though there are more and more scooters coming out with linked or combination brakes where both brakes may be operated by only on lever).
While both brakes operate to stop the scooter, they operate differently and can have subsidiary uses. On a motorcycle, the front brake takes care of more than 80 per cent of braking. This is due to weight transference, ie, when you brake, inertia wants you and the bike to keep going straight ahead. The front tyre is providing the friction for you to stop, so the whole kit and caboodle tries to rotate itself around the front wheel. This puts an enormous force on the front tyre, which distorts to more than twice its normal contact patch to cope with the demands.
The same thing happens on a scooter but, because the vast majority of mass is directly above the rear wheel (think rider, engine, bodywork, etc), there is less of a rotational urge and more of a direct push forwards. The small amount of front suspension travel also contributes, by not "diving" as much as a bike does. The upshot of this is that the front brake is very useful for general braking duties, such as riding in traffic and holding the scooter on a hill, etc, but when it comes time to stop when you mean stop, you'll need both brakes.
The rear brake is more powerful and has more effect on a scooter because there is not a huge amount weight transference under braking, allowing the rear wheel and tyre more of a role in braking. The weight transference that is there will, however, make the rear brake easier than the front to lock up, though the physical properties of a scooter mean that you'll make a squeal, a bit of smoke, leave some rubber on the road, but not get too out of shape if you do lock up the rear.
The back brake does fulfil another two functions in addition to being just a brake. It is also a steering wheel and a parking brake...
Operating the rear brake while cornering will tighten your line. So, if you feel like you are running wide and in danger of getting into trouble, careful use of the rear brake lever while staying on the throttle can tighten the scooter's line and bring you back from the brink of disaster. Too much back brake will lock the wheel while closing the throttle in this situation will make you run wider and can lead to disaster, however, so it is a technique best practised before you depend upon it.
I tend to use the front brake first, to wash off speed and to get the weight onto the front tyre in case I need to brake really hard, then I ease on the rear brake to wash off more speed and to keep the pitching under control and then, as I get into the corner I let go of the front brake, ease on the throttle while gradually releasing the rear brake. It's all about being smooth and maintaining the scooter's attitude - and speed - and, if you do it right, your passenger will never even know you've been doing all that complex manoeuvring.
The back brake is also the most effective handbrake in traffic and it is a good habit to get into so that it becomes automatic. Getting hit from behind at traffic lights does happen and, if you have no brake applied, then the traffic behind you will obviously not see your brakelight and you can be pushed into the traffic. If you have the front brake on and it happens, you'll fall over. If, on the other hand, you have the rear brake applied, you have the best chance of not being pushed into no man's land or of being knocked off.
Finally, the rear brake also acts as a sort of clutch. When you're waiting for the lights to change, you wind on the throttle but that means you can creep forward. Holding the rear brake (and the throttle) on keeps the transmission wound up, ready to leap out as soon as the lights go green, but prevents that premature ejaculation into the traffic.
Steering/countersteering
 If scooter riding is twist and go, then scooter steering is simply a case of turning the 'bars, no? Well, yes and no. As you'll have discovered, at walking pace the scooter goes the way you turn the bars: turn left, go left. When speeds pick up and you begin to lean into corners, then the opposite holds true. You turn the 'bars right to go left. You may not believe it and you may not feel it, but you instinctively set up a small countersteering action to initiate the turn.
Again, the physics are complicated - too complicated to go into here - but gyroscopic precession demands that a spinning wheel turned about its axle in one direction leans in the opposite direction. So, as you are merrily bopping along and you want to turn to the left, you tip the 'bars to the right fractionally, the scooter leans to the left and you straighten the 'bars to a neutral position and the forces of gravity, friction and inertia see you safely around the corner. And you do this without thinking about it.
As a conscious manoeuvre, on the other hand, countersteering allows you to make very quick changes of direction - as in evasive action in traffic - and allows you to finetune your general cornering (turn the 'bars out of the corner to tighten your line, turn them in to run wider). Remember, of course, that even small movements of the 'bars can make drastic changes to your cornering. Experiment, but do it little by little.
Body positioning
How you sit on a scooter can have a big impact on how well you ride it. You may never want to be a motorcycle racer, but have you noticed how they hang off their bikes, knees dragging on the ground around corners? Why do they do it? To give their tyres an easier time.
Again, a little physics. Your cornering speed is determined by gravity itself, your centre of gravity, the speed of the scooter and the adhesion of the tyres (among other things, including ground clearance). In a nutshell, if you can move the centre of gravity lower and to the inside, you don't have to lean over quite so far to maintain the same corner speed. This increases your ground clearance and gives your tyres an easier time because they are not operating quite so much on their shoulders, but more towards the centre of the tread.
Okay, so hanging off a scooter is probably not the best way to ride them, but consider leaning in with your inside shoulder, your inside leg forward and your outside leg back, about under your bum. You may find it a little more confidence inspiring.
The reason for the foot positioning is that pressure on the footboards with your inside leg can make the scooter turn in, and pressure applied with the outside leg can make the scooter stand up (and you can exert more pressure - and therefore more steering - if you're foot is back towards the centre of the scooter). Of course, a twisty road will make you look like you're doing the gypsy two-step, but life's pretty straight without twisties, right?
The eyes have it
One of the hardest parts of learning to ride effectively is to trust yourself and your senses to do the right thing. As you progress from paddling around the carpark to hitting the streets, your eyes progress from looking a millimetre in front of your front wheel to scanning the horizon. And, the further ahead you look, the better you'll be. There'll be more on this aspect of master class next issue, but for now, here's a handy little tip: you go where you look. Look at the pothole and you'll hit it. Look at the gap and you're in the clear. As published in TW SCOOTER MAGAZINE - 3/03/2005
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