I float around hondahornet.co.uk a lot for obvious reasons. And I've never heard a real complaint about their stepped licensing, in fact most people seem to like it a lot. It reduces fatalities, and promotes rider skill. There was one guy who was talking about riding his restricted (33bhp) Hornet with a bunch of unrestricted ones (95hp) who had done direct access. He was keeping up with and passing them no problem through twisty stuff, he was doing way better then the guys he was riding with ever could.VermilionX wrote:hmmm... good thing we don't have such restrictions.
do bike manufacturers over there complain about those restrictions? they could be making a lot more money if they could sell their better more powerful bikes to anyone.
so what's the most popular beginner bike over there? is it the CBR125?
Now here's the interesting question, the bikes have exactly the same dimensions, the same engines, the same tires, the only difference is a couple of washers and a bolt that fit on the carbs to prevent air intake effectively limiting the bike to producing 33HP. But he was outriding them. In starting on a smaller less powerful bike he learned to wring every little drop of speed out of it by cornering faster, accelerating better, and generally proved himself to be a more skilled rider.
It's something I would LOVE to see in North America, or failing that Canada. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who aren't willing to govern themselves, so they need someone to do it for them.
I'm glad to say that in this case it worked.
