OK, so riding home from rugby the other day, I passed a large group of bikers en route to somewhere (possibly Rykas), and the guy at the lead nodded to me, and I nodded back, as I do every time. Then he took his left hand off the bars and clenched it in front of him, just above his windscreen. Then he opened and closed it in a fast motion, as if flashing. It took me a second or two to work out what he was doing, but he was informing me that my indicators were still flashing from the roundabout I’d just come off and I’d forgotten to cancel.
So this gave me an idea. Should we write and publish a ‘Biker’s sign language’, for the purposes of informing and assisting other bikers on our roads? Situations I can think of where this would be useful are:
Informing oncoming bikers of mobile speed cameras ahead
Informing them of a mistake (e.g indicators/full beam on)
Traffic ahead
Potential hazards ahead (spilled fuel/oil)
and I’m sure they are many more, where a quick message could vastly help a fellow biker whom we would otherwise have no contact with? I reckon I could put together quite a comprehensive guide, with pictures and diagrams and all that lovely stuff.
Think I should give this a go, or am I barking up a very wrong tree?
most of these are well known to the veterans but newer riders do struggle so i think it would be great, was riding with my mate and he was riding way too close to parked cars and i couldnt think of any signal that would make sense, so honked an pointed for him to pull over an jus told him.
but my fav signal is def riding infront of my mate and going no-handed and doing the YMCA, he gets so embaressed :D:D:D
I use a sky-ward finger in a circle above my head to show to a following mate we’re turning right round at a roundabout. And if I want them to pull alongside me to chat instead of riding behind then I’ll make a chopping motion with my hand towards the floor on whichever side.
all the above are spot on as far as I’m concerned too, make the dictionary
I stick a leg out to a biker on my tail to indicate to pass on this side. Is this normal or did i make that up? Either way it seems to work.
The national sign for coppers is tapping the top of ones helmet I was lead to understand. Some kind of throw back from signals truckers used when…er…thier CB was out? :hehe:
I’ll start work on this dictionary this weekend then. Time to break out the digital camera!
Or maybe in my two free periods tomorrow. Maybe I can abuse the school computers and graphics programs for this task…
If anyone wants a mug shot of them performing a hand signal to go into the guide, post in here and I’ll try to meet you at Newlands Corner at some point!
This is quite a weird question, but is there a london bikers sign? because while riding towards the Ace on LB night, if i go past some bikers goin the same way would be nice to know if they belong to LB or not lol
