Ask the Motorcycle Safety Foundation
Recently the MSF was asked… “When riding two up, who should be responsible for the hand signals, the operator or the co-rider?”
MSF response…
”Only the operator should make the hand signals.” “It is the operator’s responsibility!”
Reasons
- “A passenger cannot always anticipate what the operator will do that would require a hand signal.”
- “If the operator had to tell the passenger to to give a particular signal, valuable time could be lost or the operator could lose attention to riding.”
Check out more signals here!
This may be true when riding alone but when riding in a large group, not necessarily so. In a large formation, it is the leader’s job to give hand signals and then all passengers are to give the signals so they get passed back through the pack. (That’s the way they generally do it in the HOG groups anyway.)