When it comes to taking a spill on your motorcycle, the odds are everyone will do so sooner or later. The importance of motorcycle safety cannot be stressed enough. Taking a few precautions such as wearing a suomy motorcycle helmet or some type of atv helmet and having some knowledge of how to handle your bike or ATV in the event of a dump will help a lot towards your long-term safety. Either way you look at, taking a spill on your bike is an embarrassment as well as being extremely dangerous, unless you know what to do ahead of the fact. One of the most common reasons for a bike to fall over or spill results from people failing to put their side stands down correctly. After a long ride, you even find very experienced people get off their bikes and start to walk away from them without putting any thought into considering the terrain under the bike. Many people, in fact, have had their bike on a right-bias slope and had it all fall over to the right as a result. Another common cause of a bike falling over is loose gravel. It can cause a foot to slip away and the bike to lie down unbelievably fast! Fortunately, with these types of spills, there is usually very little damage to the bike itself, and none to the rider.

Unfortunately, it is often the result of carelessness or stupidity that someone ends up under their bike. Choosing one of the best motorcycle helmets on the market, such as a shoei motorcycle helmet or bell helmets go a long way to protecting your life and health when it comes to a spill. Usually, when trading up to a larger bike, it's important to take a brief lesson from an experienced rider to get advice about a new ATV helmet or even a racing helmet and also to learn about how larger bikes react to certain terrain and other influencing conditions. Here is a great exercise that you can practice on your own when you purchase a large bike or are learning to ride one for the first time. With the engine turned off, take the bike onto a grassy area with relatively firm ground and lean it slowly over to the left. This way, you are learning where the center of gravity is located and once you move past the side of the fuel tank most of the weight of the bike will be on your 'down' leg. Now, here is the most important part of this exercise. When you've reached the point where you cannot hold it up any longer, it's important to learn when to let go. A large bike such as a GoldWing is impossible to hold up after it reaches a certain point. Any attempt to hold it up after this point is fruitless and in order to avoid injury, let go of the lower hand grip and quickly step on the high peg as wide away from the bike as possible using your 'down' leg as the bike lies down. If done properly, you'll find that the bike will lie between your legs on its side. It's important to remain standing with one foot on the ground and the other on the high peg to be successful with this maneuver.

The key point to learn with this exercise is to remember to let go of the lower grip before it pulls you to the ground. This is achieved by shifting your weight very quickly to the high peg and stepping away with the other leg. If you own a GoldWing, you'll find that it does not even leave its wheels, because of the engine and saddlebag guards, and for this reason the probability of damage to your bike is minimal. Use caution and try this exercise carefully. Even here, it is a smart thing to wear an ATV helmet. It'll go a long way to increasing your self-confidence! A couple of other important things to remember is to make sure that your bike has some form of engine guard to prevent damage. Also, try using a flat solid surface such as a large piece of cardboard. You can place one edge at the contact patch of both tires to see if anything other than your fold-up pegs and engine guards touch the surface. If they do, they can hit the ground when you dump the bike and break. So keep this in mind, as well.