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Tips for riding with a passenger
From the UK recreational motorcycles newsgroup.Tips for the passenger
1. Wear proper gear - if leathers, boots and gloves are necessary for
the rider, then they are for you too. If borrowing a helmet, make sure
it fits tightly; if it doesn’t, don’t go.
2. Don’t get on or off the bike without first getting the nod from the
rider.
3. Keep your feet on the footpegs at all times. The law says that you must keep both feet on the passenger pegs unless you are mounting or dismounting, so you must let the rider support the bike at junctions / traffic lights etc.
4. Hold on to the rider’s waist - grabrails are fine when you’re at
ease.
5. Sit centrally on the seat to keep the balance of the bike right and
then pretend you are an immobile sack of spuds. The less you do the better.
6. Get comfy before riding off.
7. Related to 6 - don’t wriggle about when on the move or, if you
must, wait until you are going along in a straight line at speed, or
stopped. Never move on the bike on a bend, corner, or during a slow
manoeuvre. And if you can tell the rider, do, as in "I need to move my
feet, OK?"
8. Related to 7 - it’s OK to look around but don’t shift your body
weight when you do, just move your head.
9. When the bike goes around a bend or a roundabout, neither help nor
hinder the lean - the bike will move you just right if you let it (see
5).
10. Anticipate sudden moves/stops and keep your helmet back out of the
way or you’ll bang into each other.
Tips for riders carrying passengers:
1. Adjust the preload as necessary.
2. Adjust the tyre pressures as necessary.
3. Adjust the headlamp(s) beam(s) as necessary.
4. Sit firmly on the bike with it off its stand and your legs spread
as wide apart as possible and both hands on the bars before allowing
the passenger to mount.
5. Be aware that the bike will be light at the front and will handle
badly, especially on slow manoeuvres. Where you may normally roll-up to a junction and keep slowly moving forwards whilst checking for a gap, with the passenger you may have to stop and then look. Slow riding with a passenger, especially while looking behind, is much harder.
6. Don’t go too fast or show off - s/he will never ride passenger again.
7. Remember, if your passenger isn't used to bikes then everything will seem much faster than it does to you and even fairly small angles of lean will seem, to them, like the bike is flat on its side.
8. Brake, accelerate and change gear smoothly, or your helmet will get
a bashing. Screaming it up to the red-line and then grabbing the next gear will feel awful to your passenger.
9. You may need to drop down a gear more than usual for hard
bends/roundabouts and hills.
10. Get stable as in 4 before allowing the passenger to dismount.
11. Have a signal that means "hang on" - normally a squeeze of their knee - so that they are prepared when you suddenly accelerate to get past a queue of cars, but remember Point 6.
12. Don't hang off the bike, keep your body upright to it.
13. Use the back brake more to slow you down gently, rather than grabbing handfuls of front.
14. Make sure s/he reads the tips for new passengers if s/he hasn’t done it before.