Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Mustang wrote:I read a great quote somewhere....When you start riding you have a bag full of luck and a nearly empty bag of experience. You have to hope one fills up before the other one empties.

I'm stealing that quote - it's a good one.

Well i think that if you have never been on a bike before then formal training is the way to go. You actually have to have it over here by law. Its called the cbt (comp bike training). I think its a great thing as when i did it a week ago they taught us all the slow control and everything we needed to know, then out onto the road for two hrs. They are even going to make it harder in two years time for new people.

The govt want to make it harder to cut down on the number of new people getting killed on bikes. My instructor told me that since it was introduced in 1990 ish, it has cut down the number of deaths by over 50%.

If there is a course that you can do, then it should be worth while. there is no point in making it easy for people to pass but then again it cant be too hard for new people who have never been on a bike before.

In the UK here i think the way we do the test and training is what will make it safer for us on the road. The USA have an obsession with cars and such so it would prob cause a lot of bad press for anyone in office to bring in a more hard line attitude towards bikers or car drivers. Our Govt isnt getting any bad press about making the law harder for new drivers. We just accept it as with everything else they say to us. (Actually that is starting to be a bad thing lol)

Not to sound dogmatic or hijack the thread with the inevitable debate, but I think mandatory MSF (or equivilant) is the way to go in the US, much more so than mandatory helmet laws. Trust me, I always wear one but I see the training as possibly preventing an accident from happening while the helmet is there for when it does happen.

Sort of chicken and egg thing

I'd have no problem with mandatory training. We essentially have it with cars as it is part of most public school educations at the HS level (at least that's how it used to be). The public good would more than offset the inconveniencing of the few people who didn't need it. Whatever gets more people on cycles is good for me. More cycling parking spaces - m ore awareness from cage drivers. I'd recommened everyone wear a full-face but I wouldn't legislate for it.