Motorcycle Vs. Car - Myth or Madness
It’s a question that has been debated since automobiles were first invented: is it better to drive a car or a motorcycle? Although the safest answer would be to get on both and ride and see for yourself, the decision is much easier when you consider all of the facts.
In this article, we will explore some of those facts - some technical, others personal - in order to try to draw an objective conclusion about whether motorcycles are really worth it. But before we can do that, there are two significant questions that need answering.
First, do motorcycles have the ability to perform better than cars? Second, if they do, can the balance of risks in riding a motorcycle be compensated for by performance alone?
Do Motorcycles Have an Advantage?
For a long time, car manufacturers and drivers alike would answer that question with a resounding “yes.” A powerful engine capable of high speeds can easily win out over a small bike or scooter without much effort. But now that modern motorcycles have increasingly incorporated technology from cars themselves, such as ABS brakes and traction control systems, the answer is becoming less clear-cut. It is even possible that new technology will soon create a situation where drivetrains on motorcycles outperform those on cars.
But let's first consider performance in general before getting into more detail about motorcycle drivetrains. How fast can you travel, and how long can you maintain that speed? For most of human history, people have traveled at around 30-40 miles per hour. This maximum speed for travel was set by the rider - whether by foot or horse - but couldn't really be improved upon by personal effort because the pace of civilization was too slow to keep up with the rate of progress in transportation. This is why it took thousands of years for the world’s fastest land animal, the horse, to go from a maximum speed of around 10 miles per hour on average to 40 in a few hundred years. In the same way, it took hundreds of years for humans to leave Earth’s surface and venture into space. The faster one travels, the more dangerous it is. In order for that increased danger not to negate any gains in speed, that speed must have a significant advantage over slower modes of travel as well as all other alternatives for moving people or things (such as the mail).
Most people today already enjoy faster speeds than they are accustomed to because they are used to high-speed travel by car on good roads. In the absence of good roads, people tend to become used to the idea of travelling on foot at about 30 miles per hour. For this reason, it is not realistic to assume that someone used to driving a car would suddenly be comfortable traveling on a motorcycle at high speeds simply because the additional speed would be faster than what they are accustomed to.
But in reality, even when people are going slow and conditions aren't perfect, motorcycles are often faster than cars. This is because of several factors. First, most motorcycles today have a horsepower rating that at least matches or exceeds that of cars in highway situations. Second, cars today have heavy, over-engineered chassis that are unable to reduce their speed to reflect the reduced load. This means that a typical car weighing 4,000 pounds carries a driver and all of that weight on the front axle yet is still capable of travelling at highway speeds.
But this isn't the full story. Road conditions can be very different in various parts of the world and even throughout the same area depending on what kind of surface is being traveled over (asphalt or dirt). Also, how much load can be carried by a motorcycle is not entirely controlled by whether it has a 4,000 pound engine and four wheels.
Conclusion
In the real world, motorcycles actually have an advantage over cars. They are faster, at least in terms of travel time. Even on badly paved roads, a car can’t keep up with the speed of a motorcycle or scooter on a downhill grade when travelling at maximum speed. Higher cornering speeds cannot compensate for this disparity when both vehicles are traveling at high speeds. If one is travelling slowly and can maintain that speed no matter where the road surface deteriorates, it does not matter if they are riding on an engine weighing 4 or 4,000 pounds.
However, many factors other than speed contribute to how safe a vehicle is as well as how fast it can travel.