Recently, some students have begun to ride their motorcycles to school, upending the former ideas surrounding necessary transportation. With gas prices soaring students have begun to question if driving a motorcycle would be a good alternative for them.
While it may seem that riding a motorcycle is full of benefits, there is a lot more to it than most people realize. Driving a motorcycle puts your safety in the hands of others, and is far more dangerous than driving a car. According to Insurance Information Institute, for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled, there are 26 times more motorcycle deaths than car deaths. Oskar Holm ‘22 says that this is the reality of driving a motorcycle, “it’s like driving a manual car, but your life’s in danger every second, and you have to watch out for incompetent distracted drivers who are trying to kill you.” Despite these risks, students who decide to commit to riding motorcycles see benefits from it. Oscar Uhler ‘22 notes, “It’s much more fun than driving a car, but it takes a lot more energy.”
Motorcycles also get cheaper gas that is twice the gas mileage as a car. However, Uhler does not think the rest of the student body are suitable to ride motorcycles, as he puts it “they’re all [expletive] awful drivers.” This is due to the fact that most students are often distracted by their phones while driving, and they just aren’t good at driving in general, illustrated by the sheer amount of rear endings in the parking lot.
Uhler concludes “It is more affordable, so motorcycles are less expensive vehicles than cars, maintenance is cheaper, fluids are cheaper, because there are less of them, gas is cheaper.” However he finalizes that it is far more dangerous than any other moving vehicle, noting “people don’t pay attention to the road anymore, which makes driving very dangerous for somebody who’s in a lower profile vehicle.”
