Simon Brooke wrote:
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.

I've got one of them [1], and that is indeed how it steers.

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.

I never used to notice it, but now I often notice myself starting a turn
by countersteering. For some reason it's much more noticeable on the
Street Machine that it used to be on my ATB. Perhaps it's more
necessary on a bent than on a wedgie.


[1] It was my 30th birthday present from my Dad. I downloaded a 2.84MB
movie of it in action from URL:http://www.taiyoedge.com/, but it
appears to no longer be there. Instead, it should be temporarily
possible to get it from he
URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/z-freestyle.mpg

--
Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine