How to Ride Across Steel Grate Bridges

The most important thing when crossing a bridge is to check if the bridge is there.

Very good video. I do ride a Harley ultra classic and they are more stable but I have friends that get scared shitless on a grate bridge. I have told them to just relax and don’t fight the weight of the bike and don’t jam the brakes. Thank you for the information. Always good to have a safety reminder and I’ve been riding 52 years but I still know that there’s more to learn.

Thanks. This is very therapeutic. Every time one of these jumps out at me, a decades old cheese-grater incident triggers faulty muscle memory which induces a hang-on-for-dear-life clench. It’s kinda like seeing my ex.

This video brought me back to my experiences on the Macinac Bridge in Michigan. Except it's about 4 miles of grating with 30-40mph cross winds!

Yes that little speed really helps. In India we have scraped roads left without patching for many weeks. when we ride on such scraped patches the bike tends to follow the scraped marks and rider feels like the bike is going to drop. However when we maintain some speed and grab the handlebars softly bike autocorrects its course and it becomes fun. In fact, now I look for such scraped roads and go on those to enjoy and practice 😀

Thanks, I got more understanding about why I’ve always found that going slow in mud, gravel and sand is much more dangerous than riding normally.

Idea for another video: Wildlife on the road! Being from the Austrian Alps I had many encounters with animals. Deer all the time and higher up there are cattle herds roaming free. Back in my Supersport days in the 1990s I was coming around a corner in South Tyrol at about 100mph and there were half a dozen cows lying on the road chewing what they had to chew. The heart rate went up a bit.

Hood Canal bridge actually has placed two “tire paths” of concrete in the grate on entry/exit so if cars or motorcycles want, you can ride those smooth paths (about 20” wide each).

Thanks Bret. Good information. Rode over a steel grate bridge for the first time over the Columbia River going into Hood River this last summer. It was very unnerving! First instinct was to ride slower.... that didn't help at all. Luckily made it across without tipping the bike over. I'm going to have to ride across the Bridge of the Gods now!

Great information even for experienced riders who are encountering metal bridges for the first time

As a fan of silent movies I really enjoyed the intro to this one.

well done. we have so many grated bridges around here that I learned all of that by simple trial and error. In one case, an actual crash on a grated bridge. I had help, though. A young lady, inexperienced driver and not from the US, panicked at the far end of a fairly short bridge deck and braked hard enough to tangle her car with another. just as I had committed to the deck myself. I scrubbed as much speed as I could, but my inexperience applied only the rear in bursts because I treated the deck as if it were ice or some other loose surface. That lasted until I was either going to hit the car or the deck. around was not an option. The grate tore up the bike enough that it was a write off and I lost a bit of skin (jeans are bad, kids. ) Thirty-ish years later - this is absolutely right. Confident. relaxed. its not as big a deal as you think.

Excellent. These “little” films are BIG help! By fully understanding concise topics I can more easily use them in a cumulative manner. I’m getting better!

Helpful. I think more for awareness, moral support and sanity check. Confirms that you really can’t do much other than just relax. I’ve always wondered if there is something specifically technical in handling. Learning that the grates have cross angles (it’s not like you have time to stop and look down) helps to diffuse the feeling that they are just parallel, suspecting that you are going to get flipped and dumped at any moment. My first grate experience was crossing the Mississippi from Memphis to Arkansas on I-40 … and it freaked me out! Everything was loose and minimum speed was 55mph. I hit the grates at 65 (flow of traffic) and had no idea what to expect; plus being a few hundred feet up in the air, plus being surrounded by 18 wheelers, plus … it’s a long bridge. And once I crossed it, I had to cross it back (after stopping on the other side, realising that the Highway on the other side was in bad condition with a lot of construction ripples (worse) and that my casual joy ride had turned into the ride from hell). Weighing my options, I just prayed to Jesus and crossed back over - super uneasy. I think the other point to consider begins before you leave your house … how is that stretch of Highway used? In this case, the I-40 crossing is literally the logistics distribution to the ‘West’ - so, anticipate that there will be a lot of high speed traffic, even on a weekend; expect that traffic to leave debris all over the place; expect that traffic to wear down the roads, leaving ruts, cracks, potholes, shoddy repair patches, gravel and ultimately never-ending construction - resulting in dust, gravel and ripples. Also, this is why I will never ride open face or without a visor - rocks can get kicked up and hit you like a bullet. This was 30 years ago. I grew up treating 10-speed Schwinns like BMX and a lot of dirt bike riding before I got a street bike. Therefore, I never had a lesson - just learned from others and on the way. So, ask these questions. I literally had a ‘crash course’ on encountering every single type of road hazard (except ice) in one Saturday afternoon and it was not fun.

I'm now 60 and I can't count how many times I cross steel grate bridge or covered wooden bridge without any issues! But if you encounter heavy cross wind or raining condition and suddenly the traffic jam in front of you that's another story... It happen to me once, my cruise bagger was fully loaded (gear/passenger). I didn't loose it and manage to keep my underwear clean!

Thank you for this video. I've been riding for 40 years and the only environment I am truly nervous about are steel grate bridges. Of course, the primary one I ride over is the South 1st Ave bridge in Seattle during rush hour, and the thought of having to make a quick avoidance maneuver tends to be a big part of my nervousness. Thanks again!

Hey Bret, thanks for your videos. I'm a brand new Aussie female rider who will be devouring your videos as I'll be doing an outback Australian adventure mid this year. I've really enjoyed what I've watched already. I look forward to putting some of your ideas into practice. Cheers

This video reminds me of a past adventure preparing for a ferry ride across Lake Michigan with a large K1200 touring bike on my own several years ago. I ran into a bunch of unexpected challenges having never taken a bike across before. The bare metal deck of the ferry was as slick as ice in the morning dew and I had to quickly find a way to secure the bike for an extremely rough trip. I saw a few other riders in another party spin out at low speed just riding on board. I have lots of experience riding dirt bikes in the winter on frozen lakes and loading bikes on trucks and trailers, but I never expected it to be so challenging to properly secure the bike with the limited tie down options on the big BMW. As I was tightening the straps to compress the forks kneeling beside the bike, it came off the centre stand and the only thing that prevented the massive bike from running me over (and colliding with the vehicles beside it) were the two rear straps and I added to anchor the bike in place. After this unexpected discovery I added straps between the centre stand and front suspension to ensure the centre stand stayed up during the voyage! I was considering staying with the bike to keep an eye on it during the trip until I found out an alarm sounds indicating everyone has to clear the area, so time is short getting everything secure. Once underway, cars on deck slid around violently setting off car alarms and doing significant damage to vehicles around the bike. I feared the worst, but I couldn't inspect the situation because no one is allowed down in the lower deck (for obvious reasons) while the ferry is in motion. I was very relieved to see the bike was unscathed when we got across to the other side of the lake. Great videos! Please keep posting more of these.

The grated deck coming out of Aberdeen WA by the Ford dealer is especially fun as it requires a bit of turning along with being bumpy… Great time

Interesting, never realized these were difficult. I love going over these, never been on one that long, but find them fun. Hardest part for me was trying to het the kick stand down for a pic.