I'd much rather be on a freeway at 60+ MPH surrounded by 2.5 ton vehicles with poor visibility than riding an urban street. New riders are rightly intimidated by the freeways (they're fast, they're big), but they're far, far safer than the street with all of the starting, stopping, hard corners, folks turning onto the street, and, of course, the king of bike slayers, the "I didn't see them" left turn.

Not to mention all the junk on the streets: the oil, anti-freeze, gravel, wet painted turn arrows.

When freeways become unsafe is when the loose nut behind the handlebars decides to wick it up and just "go around all of these big slow things". But that's not the freeways fault.

First year/10,000 miles is the hardest. But the foundational rules apply: Wear the gear, slow down, don't ride impaired (drunk, high, tired...).

Lightning strikes, it sucks. But, anecdotally, my worst motor vehicle injury was while a passenger in a modern car when my friend drove into a left turning vehicle. "Fender bender", "no biggie". Chronic, notable, back pain ever since. Worst than anything I've ever suffered on a motorcycle.

>That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.

Same with anything in life.

Same with a car, just less so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).

At some point there's a tradeoff people make. Some people make it where the tradeoff slider says "motorcycle", rather than stop at "car". And I'm not talking a tiny niche, but about 1-1.2 billion people globally.

> That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.

Same with a car, or anything really.

The point of parent stands, globally there are billions of people going through their lives with motorcycles as their main vehicles, yet aren't involved in any life-changing accidents.

Some places are more dangerous than others, probably places that doesn't have this already motorcycle-heavy culture, like other countries in the world, has a higher incident rate and more severe accidents, as drivers aren't aware of how motorcycles usually operate.

Get a dirt bike. 10X more fun than street riding and much safer.

Probably depends on the locale. In Europe, riding a moped in a big city is a way to drastically cut your commute compared to driving a car. It's not exactly dangerous when all the other road users are moving at 5m/min, and being able to just skip all the traffic jams is a godsend. By car, my trip to the office was about 45min - it was 15min on a moped, a stop at a shop for some snacks included. And that's with riding speed never exceeding 50km/h.

I had two accidents during my 5 years of commuting, and both times I only got minor scratches and had to replace my shoes. Both happened at speeds a determined bicycle rider could achieve, but I suspect I wouldn't be as well protected on a bicycle (both the machine itself and the protective gear tend to be much lighter there than on a moped). If I needed to do that again, I'd buy a model with two wheels at the front, which would have prevented both accidents - though I'm not sure if added stability wouldn't encourage me to ride faster.

So it's pretty specific, but if you're somewhere where driving culture is not too cutthroat, the roads can support single-track vehicles, and the traffic rather than actual distance is the limiting factor - owning a bike can be an objectively better option.

I'm a motorcyclists. We usually refer to the smaller bikes as "motorbikes". Two wheels in the west is usually a hobby. In other parts of the world it might be a necessity, they don't do it for the pleasure. A lot of people forget this.

And thank God for it.

If every scooter rider in Taipei had a car, the city traffic would move a meter a day.

It's also about convenience, btw, not just cost. It's basically impossible to park a car here. Scooters are also difficult but at least possible.

A huge chunk of people here just take public transit now, as it should be.