As a recent transplant to the bay area, I'm surprised so few people ride motorcycles - I know that it's not tenable for parents and people with medical conditions, but there are so many people here who could.
I cut my commute time in half, I got a lightly used motorcycle + gear for less than the price of a used Prius, I get mileage that's comparable to an economy car and performance that rivals that of a performance car.
Heck, I even took it to Los Angeles and back over the New Year's and I was surprised at how comfortable I was for the entire trip despite doing ~90 mph in 45 degree weather. In particular, my back would be uncomfortable if I had spent 6 hours in the car, but 6 hours on the bike was great.
It's just so cool that a machine that works so well in congested cities can also work so well on the open road. It's not like driving a large sedan or SUV - where the open road is a joy but city driving is terrible. If we could just get 25% of people out of cars and into motorcycles, we could reduce congestion dramatically -
https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/
I would find the risk unacceptable. Basically any flinch of anybody on the road can literally kill you. In a car, you are at least surrounded by the steel walls, so if somebody decides to do something stupid, in most cases, it's metal that gets smashed. In a motorcycle, the only thing between hunks of metal wizzing around and your flesh is a thin layer of leather. Not enough for me.
You're not wrong, and this is the same argument used in regards to bicycling. Something I hear all the time: 'You ride in this city?! Isn't it super dangerous?' When the solution is armor-up with a car and contribute to problem I just think we're thinking about it wrong.
Yeah I try not to bicycle on roads without a dedicated bike line too. If I were in a city with European-style dedicated and separated bike lines I would use them gladly. But I am not, so when the choice is between risking my life (in the most literal sense, not like "I am risking my life by voicing an unpopular opinion on Twitter" but literally risking being killed) and getting a car, I know what I choose.
If and when the circumstances change, the calculus may change too.
It's the same argument but here in Sweden there a lot more people dying in motorcycle accidents (6x) and a lot fewer riders (1/100x). I think riding a bicycle is considered more scary because everyone can do it and you only consider the worst outcomes, but my 10km bike path is considereably more safe than almost all forms of transport (based on statistics of accidents).
The noise nuisance from motorcycles can also be a terrible blight on urban areas.
Although many motorcyclists do ride well maintained, quiet machines responsibly, there's a minority who modify their exhausts to increase noise and pollution in pursuit of a little more power. The noise levels can be ridiculous!
Personally, I can't wait for electric motorbikes to take over.
Loud motorbikes are very bad for your own hearing and disturbing everyone else's peace, but it does make you safer as cars can hear you come. Except if they are playing some loud Metal on the car stereo.
> Loud motorbikes are very bad for your own hearing and disturbing everyone else's peace, but it does make you safer as cars can hear you come. Except if they are playing some loud Metal on the car stereo.
My car would be more noticeable (and therefore safer) if I held my horn down while I drove around.
You know what else is stupid loud and annoying? Ambulances. Fire trucks. Diesel buses. Electric ones arent great either if they have those wire systems overhead, those hanging systems make lotta noise too. Sometimes they're separate but they have to make an obnoxiously loud whirring sound while accelerating anyway. Large trucks used for hauling stuff. (Ever notice how loud a ups truck is?) Buses with air suspension that raise and lower and beep all the time with stupidly loud systems (PSSSSST!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEP BEEP WWHOOOOOOOSH BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!).
I've lived in enough metro areas to know loud bikes are low on the list. There's plenty more annoyances. God forbid you live near an airport, hotel (idling diesel buses), or a plethora of other annoyances.
A motorcycle isn't much more cost-effective to run than an economy car but a motorcycle has huge performance advantages and radically better / cheaper parking options.
The emissions are worse, but not worse than older cars that are still legal to drive.
> Riding a motorcycle amongst CA drivers is taking on a significant injury risk.
More than in anywhere else? Citation needed.
I ran the numbers for myself. Statistically, the amount of time I save per day by riding a motorcycle in San Francisco heavily outpaces the number of average life-minutes lost due to the risks of riding a motorcycle.
> Statistically, the amount of time I save per day by riding a motorcycle in San Francisco heavily outpaces the number of average life-minutes lost due to the risks of riding a motorcycle.
Those are the minutes spent stuck in traffic vs the minutes spent being dead. Some people might want to use a weighted model here.
When I lived there a buddy on my pool team (when the billiards/pool scene was active and places weren't closing) was a motorcyclist. He lost half his face driving to Santa Cruz because an asshole was going 90 on the 17.
This is pretty subjective, but I disagree. There are some ways in which they're slightly more difficult (e.g., a manual transmission) but that's an incredibly minor additional challenge. On the other hand, on narrow city streets, they're often much easier to drive since your margins of error on either side of you are so much larger.
It's just a matter of what you're used to. Now when I hop into the driver's seat of a car I'm amazed at the extra cognitive load of having to pilot a vehicle ten times wider than myself where I can't see the sides or edges, where my vision is obstructed by the A-frame, and where I can't use aural cues to know what's happening around me. It's just different, not harder.
> 2. They're more dangerous for the driver.
Fair, but IMO this is a tragedy of the commons. For every car on the road that's replaced by a motorcycle, the road becomes net safer. This is the same situation with SUVs just in reverse: SUVs are often safer for the driver than a passenger car, but they make the road more dangerous for everyone else.
We should find way to disincentivize driving over other forms of transit like motorcycling, public transit, and cycling to help combat this.
> 3. They're uncomfortable in rainy weather. (And even more dangerous during icy weather.)
Honestly, they really aren't even slightly uncomfortable in rainy weather. Most motorcycle jackets will have a waterproof liner in them, helmets are intrinsically waterproof, many armored gloves are waterproof, you can buy a pair of overpants for like $20 that slip over whatever you're wearing in ten seconds and are totally waterproof.
The only thing that won't necessarily be waterproof are your shoes (unless you're ATGATT). But you can choose to wear boots on rainy days, or even if not, most shoes will hold up long enough to get to your destination (for common weather and distances in San Francisco, which GP was discussing).
FWIW I'm not arguing with your thesis that these things are often why people don't ride. It's true! I just think that these concerns are actually more overblown than people realize.
If motorcycles were safer, I would agree with you. A fender bender or flat tire in a car is one thing. The same thing in a motorcycle is almost certainly either fatal, traumatic, or life-altering levels debilitating.
I wouldn't be surprised if most people knew of someone who's been killed or injured in similar circumstances?
I used to ride moto-x as a teenager. Never in a million years would I ride a motorcycle on a public road, you are just so dependent on other people looking out for you and, in my experience, most car drivers aren't doing this. My partner once remarked: 'You always move over for motorbikes, nobody else does?.
I ride in LA and agree with you 100%. The whole city has become so much more accessible thanks to lane filtering and splitting since I started that it's hard to imagine giving it up.
It’s tempting but I don’t want to increase my chance of getting killed, it looks scary to me, and a smaller concern is wearing leathers in 30 degree C heat.
> It’s tempting but I don’t want to increase my chance of getting killed
I commented elsewhere but having run the numbers for myself, the number of minutes I "gain back" per day by riding a motorcycle over other forms of commuting more than makes up for any increased danger.
It doesn’t make up for it if you’re dead, and even if you gain a boat load of minutes in some twisted sense, dying early still leaves loved ones grieving and bereaved all the same.
Sometimes I wish we as people weren’t so self-destructively impatient. I’m not trying to single you out here, and I’m far from innocent, but really, what kind of world do we live in where we decide we’d rather DIE EARLY than sit in traffic? Why not just move? There are so many more options.
I heard some emergency room nurses call motorcycles "donor-cycles".
In college, I sat next to a guy in class every day and one day he was absent. A couple hours later in chapel, they put his picture up on the screen and said he got hit on his motorcycle and died instantly.
Motorcycles are hands-down the fastest way to get anywhere in the city. This gap only widens when you consider that parking instantly becomes a non-issue.
We have perfect weather for it year-round. Lane filtering not only gets you to your destination faster, it's actually statistically safer. They're cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, cheaper to insure, cheaper to fuel, and dramatically cheaper to park (at home, at work, on the street, and in terms of not worrying about parking tickets from street sweeping since you can often park off-street).
If do you need to carry more cargo than the bike will carry, you can always take a Lyft or Uber.
I get that a motorcycle isn't a workable option for some people. But it's certainly a better option than car ownership for many in the city, and I'm astonished that it's an option that so few people seem to consider given how perfectly-tailored this city is for it.
I cut my commute time in half, I got a lightly used motorcycle + gear for less than the price of a used Prius, I get mileage that's comparable to an economy car and performance that rivals that of a performance car.
Heck, I even took it to Los Angeles and back over the New Year's and I was surprised at how comfortable I was for the entire trip despite doing ~90 mph in 45 degree weather. In particular, my back would be uncomfortable if I had spent 6 hours in the car, but 6 hours on the bike was great.
It's just so cool that a machine that works so well in congested cities can also work so well on the open road. It's not like driving a large sedan or SUV - where the open road is a joy but city driving is terrible. If we could just get 25% of people out of cars and into motorcycles, we could reduce congestion dramatically - https://newatlas.com/motorcycles-reduce-congestion/21420/