So we've been talking about bikes, spinouts and driving/riding skill. One last issue that I'd like to point out is training. After I had been riding for a few months, I bought a set of Keith Code's books on performace riding. I worked through them and found them to be very good.
The most important part of the book, in my opinion, was the issue of instinctive or fear response. He makes the point that there are several situations that can develop where your instinctive response is wrong. By setting up these situations is a safe fashion and working through them you can condition yourself to handle them in the right way instead of letting your fear and instinct get you in trouble.
The best example is that you're entered a corner too fast. You can tell that you're not going to make it. Your instinct tells you to hit the brake. Hitting the brake will send you into the guardrail in an instant. What you need to do is lean deeper. You're sure the bike is going to slide off the road, but it doesn't. The fact is that your intuitive sense of how far the bike will lean is not nearly as far as it actually can lean.
Does anyone know of any literature that handles these issues with a 4-wheeled vehicle?