Bikers are sometimes the victims of crazy or careless car drivers no doubt. But don’t kid yourself – most motorbike prangs are things we could avoid if we mastered our brains, our brakes, and the bends.

Follow our series of guides on how not to crash, and start adding the years of accident-free biking to your riding life…

Psychologist and former grands prix racer Tony Head continues his explanation of the way your biking brain can help or hinder…

‘How can I practise for an accident without having one?
You can’t practise real accident situations. But the brain is amazingly receptive to what can seem like stagey practise.

There are two methods – break down emergency situations into smaller units you can practise – such as emergency braking on a variety of different surfaces or cambers, and swerving manoeuvres.

Practise braking on unpredictable signals from a friend at the roadside – find ways to mimic the random unexpectedness of accidents.

The second method is mental rehearsal – thinking through what would be a very stressful situations in your mind, in as much detail as you can muster. This is now common practise among top-level athletes and sports people.

It works by triggering tiny signals to be sent to the muscles you would need in a real emergency situation and prepare them for such an event in the future. Do it again and again to improve your skills.

‘I’m sceptical. Daydreaming is nothing like riding a bike’
A pilot can be cleared to fly a jumbo jet, with passengers, only ever having ‘flown’ a simulator. Your brain is more powerful than any simulator.

Aerobatics pilots such as the red arrows literally walk through their routines on the ground, imagining what it will be like in the air. It takes concentration and effort (not to mention a lack of self-consciousness) but it works – you can program your own brain.

This kind of practise, if you do it regularly, dramatically reduces your thinking time. And that greatly increases your chances in any emergency situation.

‘I work better under stress. It brings out the best in me’
Every skill has an optimum stress level – up to a point, the more stressed you are the better you perform. A good example is weightlifting – the more worked up you are, the more you can lift.

But riding a bike has a totally different stress curve. Go beyond the optimum – it might be the intense, focused feeling you get on your favourite twisty road – and your performance rapidly tails off.

‘I haven’t got time to practise obscure skills all the time’
Motor skills you successfully implant in your brain stay there. It’s your awareness and responses to cues which degrade. Normal riding can bring this back, but it can’t put the emergency motor skills there in the first place.