#Evo

We always recommend you wear adequate safety gear anytime you ride a motorcycle, but let’s face it, you’ve got lots of options when it comes to riding gear. We’d like to know where you feel like your money is best spent.

With three wet/dry races in the last four rounds, MotoGP fans should be getting accustomed to strange results. Aussie Jack Miller came out of nowhere to win at Assen on his satellite Honda. Marc Marquez held serve at The Sachsenring, but was joined on the podium by Cal Crutchlow and Ducati pilot Andrea Dovizioso. Today, the abrasive #CalCulator won his first ever premier class race ahead of Yamaha icon Valentino Rossi and Marquez. Cosmic justice prevailed – the biggest day in modern British racing history had virtually no impact on the 2016 season series.

Your friendly Motorcycle.com staff has been there. Really. We all remember that moment when we decided we wanted to become motorcyclists. We will also never forget the day we threw a leg over our first street motorcycle. No moment in life – with the possible exception of parenthood – has so many hopes and fears associated with it.

The cliché about doctors is that people are always asking them about their health concerns – even when they’re not in the office. Well, one of the occupational hazards of being a motojournalist is having people feel compelled to tell you their opinions about motorcycles.

Having a month dedicated to the recognition of motorcycling is a wonderful thing (mom gets a single day, we get 30). But I certainly don’t feel any safer because of the effort. Did you know that April is Distracted Driver Awareness Month? I didn’t until I stumbled across the title while researching traffic safety for this editorial. But I certainly didn’t notice any change in people’s driving habits last month, like texting while driving, even though tickets in California for texting while driving begin at $160.

Riding motorcycles is dangerous. So are all of the finer things in life. Luckily, there are things you can do to minimize the risk. These are the street survival skills I have learned during my three decades of riding to make the mean streets less angry – and I’m passing on to my offspring when he starts riding on the street soon. The ability to negotiate the big congested city on a motorcycle is one of the greatest gifts I think I can give him; it’s also terrifying.

You ain’t Spiderman, but Uncle Ben is talking to you. “With great power comes great responsibility,” he says to Peter Parker in the 2002 movie. Had Peter been giving the lovely Mary Jane Watson a ride on his Spideycycle, Uncle Ben may have issued the same advice.

Earlier this year, after an Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) survey revealed that nearly half of California drivers were unaware that lane splitting is a legally tolerated practice in the Golden State, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) published Lane Splitting General Guidelines. Meant to bring awareness and promote safety among California’s motorists and motorcyclists, the publication also picked the scab off a festering controversy.

Being smaller than the majority of road users is both an advantage and disadvantage of riding a motorcycle. However, many riders don’t give much active consideration to how they can apply a motorcycle’s advantages to help mitigate its disadvantages. Thanks to lane positioning options afforded by a bike’s small size, we can take proactive steps to keep those big, lumbering cars from becoming overly intimate with us.

Riding a motorcycle safely and in control means not just better bike handling; it also means judging road conditions.

Motorcycling has always been about fun and without a doubt it can be a blast, but it’s not a video game, or a trip to an over-safety-engineered amusement park.

Whether you have decades of experience or are a newbie, it pays to realistically size up this activity called “riding a motorcycle,” and to look at yourself as a lifelong learner.