Originally Posted by
Dan The Man
If you are going fast, the knee might give you some asymetric drag to help the turn along a little bit against the air instead of against the contact patch. I prefer to start a turn with my weight high, and then kind of fall into the bike by the end of the turn.
On a related note. I recently tried to just turn my handlebars while going straight at low speed, no leaning, just to see if I could. I found that I was unable to turn the handlebars more than 5 or so degrees. I am not sure if it was a psychological barrier or a physical one. But atleast for me it seems impossible to just turn the handlebars without also leaning onto the bars and shifting my weight.
Balancing the bike requires steering the front wheel, however minutely. It's possible to ride a bike with tiny wheels (no gyroscopic effect), short wheelbase, long wheelbase, etc, but lock the steering and any normal rider will fall over.
It's pretty much impossible to turn the bars without turning or leaning; it's how two wheeled things work.
Okay, it's probably like saying it's impossible to fold paper in half more than 8 times. Mythbusters did 11 folds I think, using a huge piece of paper (100 yards x 100 yards?) and using a bulldozer and steamroller to help fold. I'm sure that a super wide tired bike (think 2 foot wide slicks off the back of a dragster) could be "steered" without leaned. But a normal bike, no.