wikipedia - counter steering to avoid accidents

[RedexRobB]

Am i right in sayin its mainly to do with the gyroscopic effect of the front wheel that you need to countersteer in the first place? Or is that a seperate thread too?

[deviant]

in a word, yes. (mostly)

To make a bike go round a corner, you need to lean. However the faster the wheels spin, the less inclined they are to change direction. To the point where you can hang of the side of the bike and it will stay pretty much upright (as shown by the "no BS bike").

But due to a phenomenon called gyroscopic precession (bringing wikipedia back into the thread... ), if you steer the wheel to the right, it will actually tip the bike over to the left. If you then steer to the left it will stand the bike up again. You can try this by taking the front wheel out of your mountain bike. So to go round a corner, you turn the bars to the right, which tips the bike in to the left. Then you steer left again to control the lean and make the wheels follow round the corner.

If you have more than a passing interest in this sort of thing, I have a book called "Motorcycle Design and Technology - How and Why" by a chap called Gaetano Cocco, who works for Aprilia. The translation from Italian is a bit iffy in places, but it explains bike dynamics well enough to justify the £13 or so I spent on it.