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WENTWORTH — Motorcycle owner Nadean Trimyer hadn’t been out of Rockingham Community College’s safe-riding course three weeks before it saved her from serious harm.

She was headed down U.S. 158 when a car with a blinking right-turn signal suddenly veered left into her path. With a millisecond to respond, Trimyer relied on a “press and lean” maneuver she learned at RCC to smoothly evade the threat.

“I truly believe all new riders should take this course,” Trimyer said. “It will save your life at a time when you never expected it.”

The intensive, weekend course has been among RCC’s more popular during the past several years, with a waiting list of up to 80 names, said RCC course leader Michael Murphy.

Trimyer’s brush with catastrophe is the best argument for even experienced riders taking a safe-riding course and relearning some of the basic techniques, Murphy said.

“It is not a matter of if it’s going to happen, it’s a matter of when,” Murphy said of the odds for a close call.

The course, offered periodically, lasts three days, beginning Friday evening with classroom study, then continuing Saturday and Sunday with more hands-on training atop motorcycles that RCC provides.

The course costs $150 and is offered next weekend. A limited number of seats remain. Enrollment in the course slackened in recent months, probably because of the economic downturn, Murphy said.

But even in a tough economy, the basic skills and more in-depth knowledge are worth the investment, Murphy believes.

He finds his best students among those who have never ridden; experienced motorcyclists often have bad habits that are difficult to break. Murphy has seen more than a few couples taking the course where the wife is just learning and the husband is a veteran rider who learned on his own. Guess who finishes the more skilled rider.

“Really, at the end of the course, she will come out a better rider than him because we don’t have all those bad habits to break,” said Murphy, a retired North Carolina state trooper and an avid motorcycle rider since he was teenager.

And he knows first hand about the dangers lurking out there for riders with blind spots in road skills: He was in a wreck of his own making as a teen rider in the early 1960s.

“I thought I could ride a motorcycle. The last thing I remember, I was flying through the air like a frisbee,” he said of the crash caused by going too fast on N.C. 67 north of Winston-Salem. “I was in Baptist Hospital for a week.”

When he learned proper technique some years later, he was surprised at all he didn’t know: “Actually, the motoring public is not the biggest threat (to the rider), it’s the motorcyclist himself.”

Those who pass the written and riding skill tests at RCC  can waive the road exam that is otherwise required by the state Division of Motor Vehicles for a motorcycle riding endorsement.

Murphy is hard-pressed to name one skill or course nugget most important to rider safety.

 He mentions that leaning maneuver Trimyer used to avoid an accident, proper braking, correct use of the clutch, training the eye to scan the proper distance ahead, and preparing properly for an upcoming curve by not “setting up too fast for it.”

All the lessons were invaluable, agreed former student Trimyer, who believes everybody should be required to take such a course before being allowed to ride the roads.

She took the course four years ago with her husband, Buddy, who rode dirt bikes before but changed to street riding after the RCC course.

“You learn things that people normally don’t think about or expect,” Buddy Trimyer said. “You just have to be superconscious every minute you’re on that motorcycle.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com