Motorbike Intuition

How to Develop Your Riding Sixth Sense

As motorcyclists, we understand that riding is an incredible experience that demands specialised skills.

One of the critical elements to ensure our safety on the road is the ability to anticipate the actions of car drivers before they occur, as around 50% of bike crashes involve other vehicles.

A sixth sense, honed through experience and mindfulness, can be the difference between a safe journey and having a bad day.

You often hear riders talk about using their sixth sense on a motorcycle.

In Australia, the Queensland government even used Sixth Sense to headline a rider safety campaign with no other than 500GP legend and rider safety ambassador Mick Doohan.

This article will explore how a motorcycle rider can develop this invaluable skill.

What is Sixth Sense?

The sixth sense, also known as intuition, allows you to grasp a situation or solution quickly without having to analyse it consciously. It is sometimes known as a gut feeling or instinct.

Psychologists believe intuition is the mind's ability to quickly identify patterns from past experiences and apply them to current situations.

Intuition has had a poor reputation among scientists, often being viewed as inferior to reason.

However, many researchers now see intuition as our brain’s way of taking shortcuts based on our memories and knowledge.

Intuition on a motorcycle can save your life. Think of intuition as a shortcut to make decisions quickly and often effectively with a limited cognitive load.

The problem is that you must have had the experiences and memories to develop intuition and a sixth sense. For motorcycle riders, those memories are the close calls we and our mates experience during our riding journey.

If you are an inexperienced motorcycle rider, you are certainly more vulnerable with a lack of a sixth sense and are more likely to learn the hard way from close calls or, worse, through the school of hard knocks.

Continual Education and Training

It’s well known that mastering a skill can require 10,000 hours of practising the correct riding techniques.

That's 8 hours a day, five days a week, for five years!

Regularly practising the correct riding techniques is essential. Advanced riding courses and workshops can also provide valuable insights into anticipating the actions of other drivers and further refine your sixth sense.

However, we know there are cost and time barriers to training courses, so Motorbike Coach is developing digital products to help bridge the gap between the 20 hours of training required to obtain a license and the 10,000 hours needed for mastery.

You can subscribe to our paid newsletter here to start your journey.

How to Hack Intuition

If we understand the driver behaviours that can cause us harm, we can train and plan a response, thinking about it mindfully without real-world experience.