Risk of riding a scooter vs riding a motorcycle vs driving a car?

I’ve ridden a number of two-wheeled vehicles with engines, from very small to pretty big. With the caveat that it depends on what kind of road you’re on, I feel much safer on a bigger machine. This is probably because I want to be able to ride in any traffic, on any road, and my neighborhood is bounded on all sides by 45MPH+ roads where people often do 60MPH.

Did I ride my scooter at its top speed of 53MPH on those roads? Sure, but very carefully. When you get to the top speed of a cycle, your safety declines dramatically, because you need to be able to accelerate out of danger more often than you need to brake to avoid danger. If your machine has a 50MPH top speed, it’s fine for cruising around the neighborhood, to the corner store, or in urban areas where heavy traffic prevents high speeds.

Beyond that, the weight of the bike matters a lot. Scooters and small motorcycles are light, and will get squirrelly with handling at high speeds or in strong winds. My scooter didn’t handle too well at its top speed, and my GS425 started getting uncomfortable around 80. I have a big cruiser now, and 90MPH feels pretty much the same as 50.

Regarding those crash stories: people like to tell those stories as examples of “how motorcycles will kill you,” but there simply aren’t enough details to make that assessment based on anecdotes. The thing that is often never considered is “What would the incident been like if the motorcyclist had been in a car instead?” Accidents which cause serious injury to motorcyclists would probably cause serious injury to car drivers as well.

Statistics are tricky, too. They don’t delineate between motorcycle crashes where the rider was sober, awake, riding cautiously, geared up (though there are some helmet vs no helmet statistics) and crashes where the rider was drunk, sleepy, in flip-flops, speeding (extremely excessive speed is possible on many bikes), and hotdogging. Don’t be a douche and your risk of crashing goes way down.

Besides that, even though the statistic is that motorcycle crashes are 35 times more deadly than automobile crashes (again, including the aforementioned douchebags), fatalities per mile driven for either are quite small.

Still, a motorcycle crash carries higher risks than an automobile crash, no matter what precautions you take. When you think about driving a car, there’s lots of advice about “what to do when you’re in X situation” – a skid, hydroplaning, flat tire, someone pulls in front of you, dodging obstacles, etc. While it’s still important to know what to do in those situations on a motorcycle, it’s ten times as important to know how to not get in those situations. Situational awareness is everything on two wheels.

But I digress.

Scooters are definitely fun, but knowing what I know, I would choose a motorcycle every time. For the price of a decent scooter, you can also get a decent motorcycle – and the motorcycle will be heavier, more stable (on bigger wheels), have a higher top speed (for safety, you don’t have to use it every day), and be better suited to taking a passenger if that matters to you.

With regards to danger, that’s a risk/reward calculation. I get a lot of reward from my bike, and I seek to minimize my risk by riding within my limits, being predictable and visible, and exercising my situational awareness. I dare say the motorcycle has made me a better car driver, too.