Why Don't We Have Tiered Licensing?

There are few things that brings more worry to someone working at a dealership than someone who steps into a dealership and announces they want a liter bike.  Talk to anyone who has been working at a dealership long enough and they will undoubtedly be able to tell you about the guy who comes strutting into a dealership without a motorcycle license who is dead set on purchasing a liter bike because their friends all ride "thousands" or they are too big to ride anything smaller.  In many places outside of the United States, there is a system of tiered licensing which forces new riders to spend time on easier to ride machines before being allowed to freely purchase the bike of their dreams.  Unfortunately, the idea of such restrictions begins to tread into controversial waters.

One particular incident with a pretty new rider comes to mind when I think about riders who start on bikes they aren't ready to handle.  A year or two ago, we had a new younger rider walk into the showroom and say he was looking to get on a sport bike.  The salesman asked some probing questions about the customer's riding experience and it quickly became apparent that this was a brand new rider.  Despite our urging him to reconsider getting on a liter bike, the customer insisted that he had ridden all of his friend's bikes and had no problem being able to control the thousand.  What could we do but take his word for it and run the paperwork?  We all held our breath as we saw the new rider take a solid twenty minutes (without exaggeration) to maneuver the machine about ten feet along the building and around the corner.  As the bike disappeared out of view, we just crossed our fingers that he would be alright.  This was early in the season so everyone was busy and the thought of that bike left our minds. A few weeks later, I remember seeing a motorcycle being brought in by flatbed with an indicated one hundred sixty miles on the odometer.  Luckily the rider was mostly okay, but the bike had several thousand dollars worth of damage.  While inspecting the bike, I thought that there had to be a better screening process for new riders to ensure that incidents like this could be avoided.

To quote Ron Swanson, "The whole point of this country is if you wanna eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can! You are free to do so!"  However, getting on a land rocket without adequate experience or training could not only spell disaster for the rider, but it can also bring harm upon others.  If the only harm that could come from someone getting on a bike they can't handle was completely self-inflicted then it might not be such an issue, but this isn't always the case. As it stands, a new rider with a fresh motorcycle endorsement is able to go to a dealership or private seller and purchase a bike that has the potential to cut a car in half by sheer virtue of its speed and mass.

The rider in the story I recounted above walked away without much in the ways of physical injury, but what if the same had happened in a worse situation?  In many other countries, there is a tiered motorcycle licensing system that gives first time riders a probationary period that only allows them to ride certain sized bikes or bikes that are restricted to certain horsepower levels.  A system like this relives the moral burden from those who sell high powered motorcycles and also relieves the pressure some newer riders feel to live up to certain expectations.  If your only choice is to ride around on a forty horsepower bike by law then the ridicule of your friends and peer pressure don't make a difference in the purchasing of your first bike.  Luckily there seems to be a prevailing trend that is pushing newer riders to make the smart choice and start small, but I feel it may be prudent for the rest to implement some kind of tiered licensing system.