Motorcycle Sign Language
Just search for “motorcycle hand signals” and you’ll find plenty of them.
I got a comment from Mark in regard to my most recent post, wherein I mentioned a rider going the other way tapping the top of his helmet to warn me of a radar trap up ahead. He asked if there were other signals that are used to communicate while riding. I had written about hand signals in a post back in 2008 and I referred him to that post. But that got me to thinking about how it can be good to cycle back to certain topics from time to time because there are always new people coming into motorcycling, as well as readers who didn’t see what I wrote 12 years ago. Just because you wrote about something 12 years ago doesn’t mean you should never mention it again.
On the other hand, I don’t want to just repeat myself. So I figured I would do a Google search for “motorcycle hand signals” and see what showed up. Turns out there are a lot but also not so many. Which is to say, there seems to be one basic chart that you see with many different organizations’ logos slapped on them. That would be one in the image above. I know you can’t read it that small so here’s a link to it.
Here’s a different one, which I linked to in that 2008 post. It’s a gif so it shows motion, which can be useful in understanding just what it is you do.
For the most part, these signals are for things like “start your engines,” “hazard ahead,” and “police ahead.” That’s all well and good, and certainly we should all know and use them. But in some cases there was a little humor injected. In particular, there was this one. Now, I made a decision when I first started this blog not to use language that could be offensive to some people, and this chart is a bit off color. That’s why I’m linking to it, not just dropping it into this post. So you can choose to view it or not.
And here’s another that is similar.
Good for a laugh. But anyway, thanks Mark for giving me a topic for this post. And I also want to mention, any time someone comments on any of my posts, as Mark did, I post a reply. But I’ve never had the blog set up to notify the person I’m replying to that I have replied. Well, I just added such a plug-in. It also works if someone other than me replies to your comment. So hey, comments are always welcome.
Biker Quote for Today
Why bikes are better than women: Motorcycles don’t get jealous if you come home with grease under your fingernails.
Tags: motorcycle hand signals
