If you ride a motorcycle you'll eventually end up in a situation you really don't want to be in. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it except to hang on and hope for the best. Sometimes your familiarity with your bike and how it reacts to your sudden inputs will allow you to maintain some type of control and get you safely through the emergency.

One of the safest things you can do to prepare for an emergency is know your bike. Familiarize yourself with how your bike will respond under adverse conditions and it just might make the difference between riding it home and wadding it up in a pile on the side of the road.

Know what your bike will do if you have to wind it up and dump the clutch, or if you have to grab a handful of brake in a panic while at speed. The situations we face during real emergencies can often be offset by practicing them under controlled situations instead of leaving them to chance. If you don't try it, you won't know.

I'm not saying to go out and do a bunch of burn-outs on the street, but knowing how your bike will respond, and how YOU will respond when faced with the need to push your bike to its absolute limits can be a good thing. Staying alert, knowing how your bike reacts to hard acceleration and hard braking, keeping a safe zone, and most importantly, ALWAYS having an escape route are key to safe riding.