in message , Doki
') wrote:



Mark South wrote:

The problem is that to turn away from an obstacle you have to steer
towards it. This means that situations can arise where it is not
possible to avoid the obstacle with rear steering but it could have
been avoided with front steering.

I'm afraid I don't really *get* countersteering. I must do it, but
I've never noticed myself do it. Probably all bunged away in the brain
stem and never consciously thought about.

Countersteering is one of those things about cycling which people have
religious beliefs about. In practice you can steer a bike by starting
the turn by turning the handlebars the opposite way, in order to get
the wheels out from under the CoG, but it isn't necessary or even
common. If you had a radio controlled bike with a rigidly mounted crash
test dummy this would be the only way to steer it. But 90% of bike
steering at any normal speed is balance and body weight, and
countersteering is very rare in practice (I very rarely do it and
watching other people I very rarely see it.

Mind you, cycling theorists will tell you this is impossible. And that
wheels stand on spokes and that steering is a matter of gyroscopic
precession, and all sorts of other things which are indeed partly true
or true under some circumstances, but which True Believers recite as
mantras of universal truth.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

...but have you *seen* the size of the world wide spider?