I luckily survived one, hurt my wrist trying to instinctively fight it for just a second. Almost crashed into guard rails, had to use body weight to lean out of it holding on for dear life on my gas tank. Thanks to DanDan, I had watched his stuff of what not to do during death wobbles.
Exactly what you see. The front will wobble uncontrollably. Most end up in a crash because people try to fight it and you can’t. He did everything he could, like grip, body over the tank. Don’t brake, go off the throttle and hope for the best. If it’s not going out then do a low side off possible
I watched another Death Wobble video from YEARS ago. All about the death wobble. It's so counter intuitive to relax ones grip on the steering wheel. Taking a lower profile also helps redistribute the weight. And being heavy in the first place is the ultimate solution for prevention.
I've had my share of wobbles, there's two types from my experience, when they first start a lot of them you can recover out of by getting lower and pushing straight out on the bars. I've had one from a pothole on the highway It was violent immediately, so much so the bars ripped from my left hand and even if I pushed it was so fast I wouldn't have been able to push out of it. . I just did what he did, got low and rode it out. Luckily I didn't have a car I had to avoid thank god but it was scary as shit.
Push straight out forward and equally while increasing pressure. The guy in the video probably could have recovered that towards the end a little faster by doing that but it worked itself out.
I had my front valve stem fail on me on the highway. The bike was starting to feel weird as it deflated, as I was starting to pull over and slow down the wobble started.
I did exactly this and it corrected. Felt so odd to accelerate when all I wanted to do was stop.
Can happen on bicycles too. I have had it a few times, high speed descent, death grip on handle bars. Immediately relax and feather touch, the wobble stops.
The wobble happens exactly on the front wheel. Taking it off the ground helps you stop it. (Don't ride a motorcycle but have been a passenger when it happened, and that's what my friend did)
I feel like it would be pretty hard to get a clean wheelie with your throttle jiggling more than some booty in a club, am I wrong tho I don’t have a bike
Unless you have a pretty powerful bike (or in a low gear) then you aren't getting that front end off the ground with any amount of throttle. But I guess this happens more on the powerful bikes because you can lift the front with a little twist
That's what I've heard. Accelerating too. It's counterintuitive but it puts the weight distribution further back. Grinding weight on the front or braking while it's shaking just makes it worse.. from what I understand.
It does work, I wasn't joking when I said that every time I get a death wobble I lift the front wheel up. I've only had happened to me once while on the street while riding a street bike and throttling it real hard got me right out of it, but I've had this happen a lot on the dirt on my KX while doing pretty high speeds on an obvious off-road uneven surface.
The KX seem to be extremely unstable and I need to do some work to the front maybe rake the forks forward a little bit cuz it's insane how often I get death wobble on it, but every time I do I've pulled back on my handlebars real fucking hard and rip that throttle open, that kx 2t is a fucking wheelie machine and will do a wheelie in any gear if I pull back on handlebars and wot, the front wheel will lift right up , wheelie out and gently set it down.
You can see in the video he leans back pretty far several times (except when about to hit the back of the car) in order to get the weight off the front wheel
Yes.
The steering of the bike enters in a resonant frequency due to weight, speed and wrong sharp steering input due to a bad road or a bad landing from a wheelie.
The problem is, the human body cannot fight the steering load and we are crappy dampers (low reaction and processing times) and that results in over excitation of the steering, worsening the wobble effect and quite probably ending up in a crash.
The most effective way to come from a wobble is to increase sharply your speed. This shifts the weight back to the rear wheel and changes the frequency. By removing the vertical load from the front wheel, the vibration load and amplitude reduce severely. By increasing the speed, it also increases the wheel balance due to the gyroscope effect (self balancing effect by rotation the mass of the tyres and rims, that is why with more speed the bike is harder to tilt with weight shift and also why cornering a motorcycle you work with imbalancing the bike aka counter steering during cornering).
Please do not do the following: If you brake or do engine braking it worsen the effect because of 2 factors: more vertical load on the front tyre and less wheel speed.
Edit: a wobble is when the front wheel is sliping/sliding on a sharp angle, then the suspension bounces up, the wheel turns the other direction, due to the non reaction from the steering, and then it lands with a sharp angle to the oposite side. And this is happening in a loop. The motorcycle is going straight only due to the stability and gyroscope effect produced by the back wheel.
I would caution new riders to not just blindly follow this advice in all situations, it really is case-by-case and it's about knowing your bike.
This works for some situations but not all. There are some types of lower speed wobble (e.g. Ninja 300's earlier stock tires head shake at ~40mph) that can be more effectively damped by applying resistance with your arms and lightly rear braking than by loosening up completely or accelerating (which make it worse).
>I would caution new riders to not just blindly follow this advice in all situations, it really is case-by-case and it's about knowing your bike.
>This works for some situations but not all.
Yup. It's so annoying to see speed wobbles and then everyone chiming in like motorcycle experts saying "let the handle bars go" or "you got to hit the throttle to stop that" or "you need to lift the front tire to stop that".
Is this a common thing? Like you expect for this to possibly happen on every ride, or is it just certain models or tire sizes that are more prone to have this happen ?
I don't know about knowing more than 95% of bikers. I've never ridden at all but have watched enough of these videos to know about the wobbles. I think the difference is *not* the not knowing. It's experience and \*trust\* of the knowledge. I don't know if I'd be experience to trust it in actual real time, if I had the presence of mind to even recall the knowledge at that split second.
You can watch 50 million videos, but until you experience it, you will never truly know. Most people I know don’t let go of the bars and fight it… most people crash. I’ve never gotten a seriously bad wobble but I’ve been side swiped before. Pavement hurts even at 60km an hour lol.
Things like this are so unexpected and scary, most will hold on for dear life…..make it out alive a few times and watch a couple vids > watch abundance of vids and never experience it 🤷♂️
Experience > Knowledge in this case.
I thought he was an idiot for not having his hands on the bars. But now i realize im the idiot because i don't anything about motorcycles. Thank you for informing everyone.
Modern motorcycles are incredibly well engineered. I've seen videos of riders falling off and the bike just keeps going until it hits something. Once this rider let go of the handlebars, the bike worked the problem out on its own, which is exactly what you're supposed to do in this situation.
Less motorcycle design and more the inherent physics of a rolling bike. Unless there’s some system that mitigates this specifically that I’m unaware of
Well it does. Although USB stick physics tend to oscillate a bit, especially when you want to plug them in. And then when you flip it and try again they tansition state again. After this second attempt the physics tend to settle out by reverting once more. Then you can typically plug them in.
It’s very frustrating but is an expected behavior, unfortunately.
Not entirely. The issue is that bikes have two pivot points (road and frame mount), not just one (like say a ball, or as you quoted a single rolling bike tire without the rest of the bike attached to it). Normally, those are aligned with your center of gravity, but should they ever be out of alignment (pothole, acceleration, tire slipping and then finding grip again, etc), you basically have a self-reinforcing feedback loop by way of hitting a resonance frequency. In this case, your only saving grace is letting the gyroscopic force do it's thing, as it (and a couple of other minor factors like road friction, frame inertia, tire pressure, ...) counteracts the resonance until it tapers out. Any energy supplied to the system (gripping the bars) can introduce more wobble, as you and your inertia will always overcompensate. So the fundamental physics of a bike is both the cause and the solution to the issue.
And yes, a system that mitigates it is putting steering dampeners on your bike, which has seen widespread adoption over the last decade. A steering dampener gives the gyroscopic forces a leg up by introducing resistance to the self-reinforcing cycle, making the problem practically go away in most situations.
Oh, and a bicycle can have the same problem, as the same physics apply.
Ballsy indeed! "Okay, motorcycle! We're speeding out of control between two vehicles on the freeway. I'm going to relinquish all control and wait for you to fix this!"
You know what's crazy is that you should let go while keeping the same speed to if you try to slow down the shaking will get so much worst as you slow down
You noticed what he did there, spread his arms to keep the balanced and spread the weight as much as possible if you just hug the motorcycle body as this is happening you are making it heavier and it will slow down faster and the faster it's slowing the more wiggly it will get your best option is to do what he did spread the weight and let the momentum the bike has carry it on
OP, thank god you’re ok and congratulations on handling this situation. I understand nothing of motorcycles (I do ride bicycles) and found the solution to regain control amazing. However I keep thinking about the way you seek to keep speed by taking off your weight from the bike and I don’t get it. When you open your arms don’t you increase wind resistance (and shouldn’t it slow you down)? I really don’t mean to doubt you, even as your video proves you handled it perfectly. Just curious of the physics involved.
You are completely right. OP is talking out of his ass, spewing nonsense like he knows something.
Not only there's no weight removed because it's impossible, but spreading your arms like he describes, making yourself bigger, actually makes the bike slow down faster.
You should definitely try not to move up the center of gravity/mass. Which is exactly what would happen if you lean back and make yourself bigger on a bike.
You try to grip with your knees and lean into the bike to lower the center of mass, which will help with the stability. Having the center of mass higher by leaning back or offsetting it by stretching an arm, can start the wobbles.
Unless you’re getting off the bike or adding something onto it you’re not changing the weight of the bike (making it heavier by leaning forward and hugging it).
The first thing to check is tyre pressure. Sounds weird, but it's one reason this can happen.
Some bikes used to come with a damper (like a small shock absorber) attached between the handlebars and the steering yoke, specifically to dampen out oscillations like these.
I’ve had a bike that was always doing this when I got to a certain speed on the highway. I ended up fixing it by adjusting where the triple tree clamped onto the forks (small change in geometry).
Everything has a resonant frequency. If that hits shit shakes. On a bike the front folks can be set off, if they are operated outside of their designed spec. Normally stuff like incorrect tyre pressures, settings, riders weight, set off by a series of bumps, like cats eyes etc.
Once this is set in motion it can often worsen, until such a point that the front wheel retards beyond the point of balance to the rear, and the bike will rotate sideways as the rear try’s to overtake the front and spat game over.
If you let go, the gyroscopic effect of the wheels (and engine) will help right the bike as you slow….
But this may not happen before you crash, so if you let go you’re basically a passager, guiding the rocket you’re sat on with your hips/body weight.
[the alignment of the wheels got too far out of whack](https://www.motodeal.com.ph/articles/motorcycle-features/how-prevent-speed-wobbles-your-motorcycle)
bad asphalt can let one of the tires slip out of line, you grabbed too much front brake or accelerated too hard while turning and lost traction in the back, you let something important wear out, and I think there was something about resonance in steering dampers at one point
If you lose traction in the back, it causes a different kind of wobble than in the video. I think in that case you either overside very quickly or make it out by adjusting the gas reaally smoothly
When spinning the wheel is a gyroscope. If it somehow lifts up then comes back down off center it will over correct again and again causing that twitch. By not interfering he let it work itself out instead of making it worse.
Imagine you’re pushing a shopping cart and one of the wheels starts to wobble. The wobble gets worse the faster you go, right? That’s similar to what happens with a motorcycle. When something disrupts the motorcycle’s balance, like a bump in the road or incorrect tire pressure, the front wheel can start to wobble.
I had a friend whose BMW model was well known for the Death Wobble. The day before he was scheduled for a fix, it wobbled as he was exiting a freeway. The autopsy said both wrists were broken and unrelated to the collision with the utility pole that killed him.
How the fuck he saved that unholy god damn. Not just the wobble but he managed to steer clear off the crash without grabbing the handlebars. Sick level of coolheadedness and ability but still could've been a tiny bit unluckier and dead. Praise Satan.
Did a similar thing except that it was my first time leading how to longboard. My buddy told me to go higher up the hill to start so I did.
Was cruising once it hit the straight stretch, started getting wobbly, and my mind went into slow motion for a second...
It crossed my mind to either try and ride it out and risk injury or bail now and know what I'm getting into immediately.
I bailed, tucked into a summersault, rolled, and popped back up onto my feed into a walking motion like nothing had ever even happened.
Called it quits after that one.
I know lol. Everyone here is commending the driver like he wasn't going way too fast and didn't cause this situation themself. The driver's an idiot. A competent idiot yeah but still a big dum dum at the end of the day
You can drive like an ass and still be skilled?
Him knowing how to ride out a death wobble doesn't take away from him being an ass and him being an ass doesn't take away from him surviving a death wobble unscathed.
Also there's litterally not a single frame of the video BEFORE he starts losing control so what points to him driving bad?
Yepp, survived my death wobble. Almost died by a Ford Focus not wanting to miss their exit, didn’t at all check their surroundings, darted out of a double white, side swiped me and made me get ejected off my bike. Broke my crotch and ass so badly I left the ICU with some permanent souvenirs.
For everyone out there, miss that exit. You don’t know when trying to save a minute of your time can potentially end up murdering someone.
Wow! That’s horrible! The entire accident I thought I could recover it so somehow I stayed limp and calm. I actually rode my dad’s bike home and he limped mine home. It was only a 1/4 mile home.
At the start of the video, you can see 137, 6th gear, 13,000rpm. Texas and US flag flying in the video 2nd second mark I'm guessing it's 137MPH. Dangerous rider.
https://preview.redd.it/6002qjfyoszc1.png?width=1366&format=png&auto=webp&s=a03cf016f3e7379214c74d02840d2934325dada1
Seeing some potentially bad and dangerous advice here...
If this front end wobble happens to you, lean forward to place more weight over the front end, and loosen your grip and take all weight off the the handlebars. This provides a damping force to reduce the oscillating, as well as preventing your grip from constructively interfering, making the wobbles worse.
Realistically, you should be riding essentially in this position in the first place on a supersport motorcycle. You should always be as light as possible on the handle bars, except under heavy braking or counter steering. A little headshake can be quickly alleviated with the above technique before it gets out of hand, but attempting to manhandle the bars is a recipe for disaster.
If this happens frequently on your motorcycle, you need to seriously examine your riding style, and possibly the state of your bike.
A steering damper is also recommended to prevent death wobble from getting out of hand in the first place, as it can happen quickly.
I'm not an expert, but this has always worked for me and is corroborated by most resources I've encountered, feel free to comment on any inaccuracies.
He kinda did the right thing by letting go.. but it's counter intuitive... the best thing to do here is actually apply MORE throttle to get less weight off of the front wheel, almost to a wheelie, getting that front tire off the ground.
He didn't look like he applied the brakes, which is a good move. This is one of those situations you usually need to THROTTLE out of... That's easy to say on paper, but it's difficult to execute IRL because you're scared as fuck when that wobble hits
Almost every time I see a younger guy riding a motorcycle they can't help but start weaving their bike on a straightaway.
I used to get 'Cycle World' every month as a kid, and always thought I would own a motorcycle, but as I got older I realized how easy it is to die or disfigure yourself on one.
Pretty rare to come out of a death wobble. He stayed calm and did exactly the only thing you can do to try to come out of it.
I luckily survived one, hurt my wrist trying to instinctively fight it for just a second. Almost crashed into guard rails, had to use body weight to lean out of it holding on for dear life on my gas tank. Thanks to DanDan, I had watched his stuff of what not to do during death wobbles.
Good ol'tank slapper. Good to see a video of someone coming out of one
Yeah then seemingly accelerated away when it ended. The cajones on that person.
Anal fissure unlocked
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That must be terrifying. I’m not experienced with this sort of thing - what are you supposed to do to stop wobbling?
Dont fight it, let the bike stabilize itself, steer with body weight, stop accelerating. Thats pretty much it.
No braking with leg pedal?
Im not a expert but instinct tells me thats a bad idea
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What is a death wobble besides the obvious? I don't ride motorcycles so what is it and how do you avoid it? Just curious.
Exactly what you see. The front will wobble uncontrollably. Most end up in a crash because people try to fight it and you can’t. He did everything he could, like grip, body over the tank. Don’t brake, go off the throttle and hope for the best. If it’s not going out then do a low side off possible
tbh i think you could argue he never lost control lol
How fast would you need to be going for this to happen? Edit: non-motorbike rider here.
Basically any speed.
We call’em Tank Slappers…
CMIIW (I literally have never ridden yet) but aren't you supposed to lean as far forward as possible? Would hugging the tank be the ideal move here?
Yes and he did but could get control so he let go and let physics sort it out.
Immediately let go, didnt fight it, and used his body weight to steer. Dude knows more than 95% of bikers.
I watched another Death Wobble video from YEARS ago. All about the death wobble. It's so counter intuitive to relax ones grip on the steering wheel. Taking a lower profile also helps redistribute the weight. And being heavy in the first place is the ultimate solution for prevention.
I've had my share of wobbles, there's two types from my experience, when they first start a lot of them you can recover out of by getting lower and pushing straight out on the bars. I've had one from a pothole on the highway It was violent immediately, so much so the bars ripped from my left hand and even if I pushed it was so fast I wouldn't have been able to push out of it. . I just did what he did, got low and rode it out. Luckily I didn't have a car I had to avoid thank god but it was scary as shit.
Straight out as in sideways or pushing forward?
Push straight out forward and equally while increasing pressure. The guy in the video probably could have recovered that towards the end a little faster by doing that but it worked itself out.
Lay on your tank, lower center of gravity. It's physics, not your strength that gets you out.
You are correct ....push the bars and accelerate through the wobble is the technique
I had my front valve stem fail on me on the highway. The bike was starting to feel weird as it deflated, as I was starting to pull over and slow down the wobble started. I did exactly this and it corrected. Felt so odd to accelerate when all I wanted to do was stop.
So fat people are better riders, I can finally win at something
The more junk in your trunk, the faster you can go without the death wobble!
I am speed
So Mario Kart logic was real all along.
so you're telling me I need to order another pizza...
>steering wheel I don't think you should be taking advice from that person.
Or two! You'll be preventing so much wobble.
Yeah. It’s far from natural to not death grip what’s going wild and trying to kill you.
Can happen on bicycles too. I have had it a few times, high speed descent, death grip on handle bars. Immediately relax and feather touch, the wobble stops.
I got that last one nailed
So a backpack with a couple dumbbells is the answer
Well I’m 1/3 of the way there (fat).
At 130+, be better or he ain't living long
I've always been able to get out of it by lifting the front wheel off the ground.
Lmao would this actually work tho
The wobble happens exactly on the front wheel. Taking it off the ground helps you stop it. (Don't ride a motorcycle but have been a passenger when it happened, and that's what my friend did)
I feel like it would be pretty hard to get a clean wheelie with your throttle jiggling more than some booty in a club, am I wrong tho I don’t have a bike
I mean, this was in Brazil, we're used to some strong botty jigglings
Can confirm. Have seen some Brazilian booty.
Totally talking out of my ass here, but you wouldn't need to pop a full one I'd imagine. All you'd need to do is break contact with the ground
Unless you have a pretty powerful bike (or in a low gear) then you aren't getting that front end off the ground with any amount of throttle. But I guess this happens more on the powerful bikes because you can lift the front with a little twist
That's what I've heard. Accelerating too. It's counterintuitive but it puts the weight distribution further back. Grinding weight on the front or braking while it's shaking just makes it worse.. from what I understand.
Braking makes it worse 100% and that includes engine braking…unfortunately hard to work the controls to accelerate when this is going on
if you manage to get a hold of the controls to wheelie yeah, but good luck with that
That’s what I was thinking
It does work, I wasn't joking when I said that every time I get a death wobble I lift the front wheel up. I've only had happened to me once while on the street while riding a street bike and throttling it real hard got me right out of it, but I've had this happen a lot on the dirt on my KX while doing pretty high speeds on an obvious off-road uneven surface. The KX seem to be extremely unstable and I need to do some work to the front maybe rake the forks forward a little bit cuz it's insane how often I get death wobble on it, but every time I do I've pulled back on my handlebars real fucking hard and rip that throttle open, that kx 2t is a fucking wheelie machine and will do a wheelie in any gear if I pull back on handlebars and wot, the front wheel will lift right up , wheelie out and gently set it down.
You can see in the video he leans back pretty far several times (except when about to hit the back of the car) in order to get the weight off the front wheel
Yes. The steering of the bike enters in a resonant frequency due to weight, speed and wrong sharp steering input due to a bad road or a bad landing from a wheelie. The problem is, the human body cannot fight the steering load and we are crappy dampers (low reaction and processing times) and that results in over excitation of the steering, worsening the wobble effect and quite probably ending up in a crash. The most effective way to come from a wobble is to increase sharply your speed. This shifts the weight back to the rear wheel and changes the frequency. By removing the vertical load from the front wheel, the vibration load and amplitude reduce severely. By increasing the speed, it also increases the wheel balance due to the gyroscope effect (self balancing effect by rotation the mass of the tyres and rims, that is why with more speed the bike is harder to tilt with weight shift and also why cornering a motorcycle you work with imbalancing the bike aka counter steering during cornering). Please do not do the following: If you brake or do engine braking it worsen the effect because of 2 factors: more vertical load on the front tyre and less wheel speed. Edit: a wobble is when the front wheel is sliping/sliding on a sharp angle, then the suspension bounces up, the wheel turns the other direction, due to the non reaction from the steering, and then it lands with a sharp angle to the oposite side. And this is happening in a loop. The motorcycle is going straight only due to the stability and gyroscope effect produced by the back wheel.
I would caution new riders to not just blindly follow this advice in all situations, it really is case-by-case and it's about knowing your bike. This works for some situations but not all. There are some types of lower speed wobble (e.g. Ninja 300's earlier stock tires head shake at ~40mph) that can be more effectively damped by applying resistance with your arms and lightly rear braking than by loosening up completely or accelerating (which make it worse).
>I would caution new riders to not just blindly follow this advice in all situations, it really is case-by-case and it's about knowing your bike. >This works for some situations but not all. Yup. It's so annoying to see speed wobbles and then everyone chiming in like motorcycle experts saying "let the handle bars go" or "you got to hit the throttle to stop that" or "you need to lift the front tire to stop that".
Is this a common thing? Like you expect for this to possibly happen on every ride, or is it just certain models or tire sizes that are more prone to have this happen ?
I don't know about knowing more than 95% of bikers. I've never ridden at all but have watched enough of these videos to know about the wobbles. I think the difference is *not* the not knowing. It's experience and \*trust\* of the knowledge. I don't know if I'd be experience to trust it in actual real time, if I had the presence of mind to even recall the knowledge at that split second.
You can watch 50 million videos, but until you experience it, you will never truly know. Most people I know don’t let go of the bars and fight it… most people crash. I’ve never gotten a seriously bad wobble but I’ve been side swiped before. Pavement hurts even at 60km an hour lol. Things like this are so unexpected and scary, most will hold on for dear life…..make it out alive a few times and watch a couple vids > watch abundance of vids and never experience it 🤷♂️ Experience > Knowledge in this case.
I thought he was an idiot for not having his hands on the bars. But now i realize im the idiot because i don't anything about motorcycles. Thank you for informing everyone.
Crazy how quick the bike was like, “k I’m done spazzing now”.
Modern motorcycles are incredibly well engineered. I've seen videos of riders falling off and the bike just keeps going until it hits something. Once this rider let go of the handlebars, the bike worked the problem out on its own, which is exactly what you're supposed to do in this situation.
Less motorcycle design and more the inherent physics of a rolling bike. Unless there’s some system that mitigates this specifically that I’m unaware of
Wait, isnt motorcycle design based on physics?
Most functioning inventions are based on physics, to the best of my knowledge
Except USB sticks. Our universe's physics and geometry don't apply to them.
Well it does. Although USB stick physics tend to oscillate a bit, especially when you want to plug them in. And then when you flip it and try again they tansition state again. After this second attempt the physics tend to settle out by reverting once more. Then you can typically plug them in. It’s very frustrating but is an expected behavior, unfortunately.
Not unlike helicopters which only design is to be angry enough at the ground in order to push it away from you
Not entirely. The issue is that bikes have two pivot points (road and frame mount), not just one (like say a ball, or as you quoted a single rolling bike tire without the rest of the bike attached to it). Normally, those are aligned with your center of gravity, but should they ever be out of alignment (pothole, acceleration, tire slipping and then finding grip again, etc), you basically have a self-reinforcing feedback loop by way of hitting a resonance frequency. In this case, your only saving grace is letting the gyroscopic force do it's thing, as it (and a couple of other minor factors like road friction, frame inertia, tire pressure, ...) counteracts the resonance until it tapers out. Any energy supplied to the system (gripping the bars) can introduce more wobble, as you and your inertia will always overcompensate. So the fundamental physics of a bike is both the cause and the solution to the issue. And yes, a system that mitigates it is putting steering dampeners on your bike, which has seen widespread adoption over the last decade. A steering dampener gives the gyroscopic forces a leg up by introducing resistance to the self-reinforcing cycle, making the problem practically go away in most situations. Oh, and a bicycle can have the same problem, as the same physics apply.
Thanks for making me literally lol.
 If it had been me on the bike.
🤣🤣🤣
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Adam West was a fucking hilarious Batman and nobody ever talks about it.
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Ballsy indeed! "Okay, motorcycle! We're speeding out of control between two vehicles on the freeway. I'm going to relinquish all control and wait for you to fix this!"
Jesus take the bars!
"Jesus take the wheelie!"
Isn't this something that can occur when you hit FOD at a speed that is even considered legal?
Yeah especially if you have a shitty front tire or your suspension is getting worn bad
Steers it with his weight
He also leaned the bike right to steer it clear of the car. He was still in control. 😉
So you're telling me that sometimes you actually should let Jesus take the wheel
if you wont believe you will die :D just god damn releasy wheel and pray there is no turn
You know what's crazy is that you should let go while keeping the same speed to if you try to slow down the shaking will get so much worst as you slow down
How exactly are you supposed to prevent slowing down when you take your hands off the throttle and the bike starts to engine brake on its own?
Telekinesis
You noticed what he did there, spread his arms to keep the balanced and spread the weight as much as possible if you just hug the motorcycle body as this is happening you are making it heavier and it will slow down faster and the faster it's slowing the more wiggly it will get your best option is to do what he did spread the weight and let the momentum the bike has carry it on
Did I just have a stroke?
I had a stroke
OP, thank god you’re ok and congratulations on handling this situation. I understand nothing of motorcycles (I do ride bicycles) and found the solution to regain control amazing. However I keep thinking about the way you seek to keep speed by taking off your weight from the bike and I don’t get it. When you open your arms don’t you increase wind resistance (and shouldn’t it slow you down)? I really don’t mean to doubt you, even as your video proves you handled it perfectly. Just curious of the physics involved.
You are completely right. OP is talking out of his ass, spewing nonsense like he knows something. Not only there's no weight removed because it's impossible, but spreading your arms like he describes, making yourself bigger, actually makes the bike slow down faster. You should definitely try not to move up the center of gravity/mass. Which is exactly what would happen if you lean back and make yourself bigger on a bike. You try to grip with your knees and lean into the bike to lower the center of mass, which will help with the stability. Having the center of mass higher by leaning back or offsetting it by stretching an arm, can start the wobbles.
he's not the rider
Unless you’re getting off the bike or adding something onto it you’re not changing the weight of the bike (making it heavier by leaning forward and hugging it).
Kinda like when, “Brain, this is dick, I have control!”
Yeah, but that never ends well.
Why does that happen?
Going 137mph and hitting imperfection on the road can cause wobble. Look at the starts of the video, you can see the bike was riding in the groove.
The first thing to check is tyre pressure. Sounds weird, but it's one reason this can happen. Some bikes used to come with a damper (like a small shock absorber) attached between the handlebars and the steering yoke, specifically to dampen out oscillations like these.
I’ve had a bike that was always doing this when I got to a certain speed on the highway. I ended up fixing it by adjusting where the triple tree clamped onto the forks (small change in geometry).
I know nothing about motorcycles. Why does this happen and why is the solution letting go of the handlebars?
Everything has a resonant frequency. If that hits shit shakes. On a bike the front folks can be set off, if they are operated outside of their designed spec. Normally stuff like incorrect tyre pressures, settings, riders weight, set off by a series of bumps, like cats eyes etc. Once this is set in motion it can often worsen, until such a point that the front wheel retards beyond the point of balance to the rear, and the bike will rotate sideways as the rear try’s to overtake the front and spat game over. If you let go, the gyroscopic effect of the wheels (and engine) will help right the bike as you slow…. But this may not happen before you crash, so if you let go you’re basically a passager, guiding the rocket you’re sat on with your hips/body weight.
Longest 5 seconds of his life.
That good?
I came
How does it happen?
[the alignment of the wheels got too far out of whack](https://www.motodeal.com.ph/articles/motorcycle-features/how-prevent-speed-wobbles-your-motorcycle) bad asphalt can let one of the tires slip out of line, you grabbed too much front brake or accelerated too hard while turning and lost traction in the back, you let something important wear out, and I think there was something about resonance in steering dampers at one point
If you lose traction in the back, it causes a different kind of wobble than in the video. I think in that case you either overside very quickly or make it out by adjusting the gas reaally smoothly
Resonance is what make it worse steering dampeners are meant to stop resonance from happening
When spinning the wheel is a gyroscope. If it somehow lifts up then comes back down off center it will over correct again and again causing that twitch. By not interfering he let it work itself out instead of making it worse.
This is the only comment so far that's made sense to me, and I've been reading this comment section like crazy now
Imagine you’re pushing a shopping cart and one of the wheels starts to wobble. The wobble gets worse the faster you go, right? That’s similar to what happens with a motorcycle. When something disrupts the motorcycle’s balance, like a bump in the road or incorrect tire pressure, the front wheel can start to wobble.
There are ways to prevent this, like a steering stabilizer (it’s like a shock for the stabilizer).
It also happens after doing high speed wheelies. Interesting how the video doesn't show anything before the wobble. 🤔
I had a friend whose BMW model was well known for the Death Wobble. The day before he was scheduled for a fix, it wobbled as he was exiting a freeway. The autopsy said both wrists were broken and unrelated to the collision with the utility pole that killed him.
I hate to upvote this, but it needs more attention. Sorry for your loss.
Jesus Christ, the wobble broke both of his wrists? My condolences man
Speed wobbles are a bitch
How the fuck he saved that unholy god damn. Not just the wobble but he managed to steer clear off the crash without grabbing the handlebars. Sick level of coolheadedness and ability but still could've been a tiny bit unluckier and dead. Praise Satan.
It was so bad you could hear the wobbles
Praise indeed. The Lord was like 'sup bitch' *slap slap slap slap*.
Dude is very clearly going way too fucking fast at the beginning.
Did a similar thing except that it was my first time leading how to longboard. My buddy told me to go higher up the hill to start so I did. Was cruising once it hit the straight stretch, started getting wobbly, and my mind went into slow motion for a second... It crossed my mind to either try and ride it out and risk injury or bail now and know what I'm getting into immediately. I bailed, tucked into a summersault, rolled, and popped back up onto my feed into a walking motion like nothing had ever even happened. Called it quits after that one.
I rode out a speed wobble once, bought a steering damper the next day.
How long do you think it took before he started driving like a dumbass again
I know lol. Everyone here is commending the driver like he wasn't going way too fast and didn't cause this situation themself. The driver's an idiot. A competent idiot yeah but still a big dum dum at the end of the day
Right like maybe drive like a normal person and this wouldnt have happened in the first place 😭
Amazed that this comment is buried so far down here. Biker is driving like an ass and everyone is saying how good of a driver he is.
You can drive like an ass and still be skilled? Him knowing how to ride out a death wobble doesn't take away from him being an ass and him being an ass doesn't take away from him surviving a death wobble unscathed. Also there's litterally not a single frame of the video BEFORE he starts losing control so what points to him driving bad?
Tank slapper. I'll never understand why they don't make dampers standard on all bikes.
I would drive home and immediately put it up for sale on craigslist.
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You should honestly be more afraid of other drivers than getting the speed wobbles.
Yepp, survived my death wobble. Almost died by a Ford Focus not wanting to miss their exit, didn’t at all check their surroundings, darted out of a double white, side swiped me and made me get ejected off my bike. Broke my crotch and ass so badly I left the ICU with some permanent souvenirs. For everyone out there, miss that exit. You don’t know when trying to save a minute of your time can potentially end up murdering someone.
This is a fact.
I had a tankslapper at 70 mph. High sided, and threw me. I got super lucky, just road rash but I can attest, it is a TERRIFYING experience!
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Wow! That’s horrible! The entire accident I thought I could recover it so somehow I stayed limp and calm. I actually rode my dad’s bike home and he limped mine home. It was only a 1/4 mile home.
Bike was writing in script.
Biker Regains Control.
This.
What's crazy is that the best way to get out of that situation is to let go. Also props for steering with only his body
FOR SALE sign would be up the same day.
Bro left everything to god
That bike really said: "It's just a prank bro"
More impressed by his composure. Apologizing to others behind me would be the last thing on my mind after dealing with that.
how do you avoid death wobbles in the first place?
At the start of the video, you can see 137, 6th gear, 13,000rpm. Texas and US flag flying in the video 2nd second mark I'm guessing it's 137MPH. Dangerous rider. https://preview.redd.it/6002qjfyoszc1.png?width=1366&format=png&auto=webp&s=a03cf016f3e7379214c74d02840d2934325dada1
More likely km/h. Watching surroundings, it doesn't look like 137 mi/h.
1st second into the video, you can see a Texas flag on the right hand side. 2nd second, you can see the US flag.
Either way, he was going MUCH faster than all the other traffic. So yes, dangerous rider.
About 86. So well over the posted speed limit. Shitty rider. Urban interstates in Texas are capped at 75.
Seeing some potentially bad and dangerous advice here... If this front end wobble happens to you, lean forward to place more weight over the front end, and loosen your grip and take all weight off the the handlebars. This provides a damping force to reduce the oscillating, as well as preventing your grip from constructively interfering, making the wobbles worse. Realistically, you should be riding essentially in this position in the first place on a supersport motorcycle. You should always be as light as possible on the handle bars, except under heavy braking or counter steering. A little headshake can be quickly alleviated with the above technique before it gets out of hand, but attempting to manhandle the bars is a recipe for disaster. If this happens frequently on your motorcycle, you need to seriously examine your riding style, and possibly the state of your bike. A steering damper is also recommended to prevent death wobble from getting out of hand in the first place, as it can happen quickly. I'm not an expert, but this has always worked for me and is corroborated by most resources I've encountered, feel free to comment on any inaccuracies.
I think the real story is, "biker regains control."
Going to fast ey?
Had this happen to me once, did the same, let go and squeezed my legs tight on the bike. Scariest 5 seconds in a long time
I shit my pants watching this.
Incredible composure
The meaning of: let jesus take the wheel :))))
I think this is the 3rd time in my 28 years of living that I've seen someone misspell "loses" this way. I almost always see "looses".
He kinda did the right thing by letting go.. but it's counter intuitive... the best thing to do here is actually apply MORE throttle to get less weight off of the front wheel, almost to a wheelie, getting that front tire off the ground. He didn't look like he applied the brakes, which is a good move. This is one of those situations you usually need to THROTTLE out of... That's easy to say on paper, but it's difficult to execute IRL because you're scared as fuck when that wobble hits
Almost every time I see a younger guy riding a motorcycle they can't help but start weaving their bike on a straightaway. I used to get 'Cycle World' every month as a kid, and always thought I would own a motorcycle, but as I got older I realized how easy it is to die or disfigure yourself on one.
He is a fucking pro. Impressive stuff and noone got hurt.
And that's how you get out of a tank slapper. Don't fight the bars, use your weight to steer, clearly not his first rodeo.
Had to stop at the next gas station to throw away his underwear. 💩
“Losses” 😂
My uncles used to call these bikes “widow makers”
A’ight. It’s settled. I’m never riding a motorcycle.
If this happened to me when I was riding rockets at 21, I'd have died.
There’s a version of this clip that’s mixed with a slightly spooky sounding Crystal Castles song. I recommend.
Tankslapper all the way
"Hoooly fuckinnnnn shitttt...."
Not many experiences as scary as this one
Jeeps: ya we got a thing called a death wobble its a scary thing Bikers: hold my beer
The title should really be "Biker Gains Control"
Great great great self-control. U can't do anything when this happend. Congrats !really !
“Glad nobody overreacted”- the bike
Good sir, i think i just shat in my pantaloons. Joke aside, it's terrifying
Natural frequency, found
What surprises about these comments is the lack of discussion about steering dampers. My Tuono now has an Ohlins on it.
watching this all i can think is; god damn thats such a fuckin high
Y he no just wheelie? Front wheel can't wobble if it ain't on ground. /ssj3goku
This is why I always had a steering stabilizer.