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.

Big Fun In Little Packages

It seems to be the norm to define motorcycles in terms of size and dimensions.  How big is your motor?  How wide is your tire?  How big is your fuel tank?  For some reason, it always seems to follow that the bigger anything is, the better it is. However, there was a time when small capacity bikes were sought after not only by beginners, but also by those who wanted a fun little machine to bop around town or just because they enjoyed all that came with riding around on a small bike.  Over the years, bikes got bigger and bigger and somewhere along this progression the small capacity bikes somehow got phased out from the mainstream.  Perhaps it's due to the evolution of the biker image or maybe it's simply increased machismo and ego that keeps us believing that we have to lug around a nine-hundred pound tourer or a two hundred mile per hour missile to truly enjoy riding, but recent trends seem to show that there's room for the revival of the small motorcycle.