Motorcycle

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2008, stunt rider Robbie Maddison launched a motorcycle 107 metres through the air, setting the world record for the longest motorcycle jump ever landed. It is a scene that captures something essential about the machine: two or three wheels, an engine, and a rider trusting physics they may not fully understand. A motorcycle is any two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by handlebars from a saddle-style seat, and today it is nearly as common worldwide as the car; in 2021 alone, manufacturers sold 58.6 million new motorcycles against 66.7 million new cars. Motorcycles are also far deadlier per mile traveled than cars, and their story begins not with a single dramatic breakthrough but with a scattered handful of nineteenth-century inventors racing to attach an engine to two wheels. Who got there first, and why has the machine never shaken its reputation as the more dangerous ride?

• 2. Racing to Build the First

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  A patent application for the French Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede, filed in December 1868 by Pierre Michaux and Louis-Guillaume Perreaux, may represent the earliest attempt at a two-wheeled motor vehicle. Around the same time, American Sylvester H. Roper of Roxbury, Massachusetts, built his own steam velocipede, and had been showing his machine at fairs and circuses across the eastern United States since 1867. Roper went on to build about ten steam-powered cars and cycles before his death in 1896.

  The first practical attempt at a three-wheeled design for the road came from Edward Butler, an English inventor who exhibited his plans for what he called the Butler Petrol Cycle at the Stanley Cycle Show in London in 1884. It was finally built by the Merryweather Fire Engine company in Greenwich in 1888, driven by a 40cc flat-twin four-stroke engine with rotary valves and Ackermann steering, technology considered state of the art at the time. The machine had no brakes at all; stopping meant raising and lowering the rear wheel with a foot-operated lever until the frame's weight settled onto two small castor wheels. Butler never found the financial backing to put it into production.

  Credit for the first true motorcycle usually goes to Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, who built the Daimler Reitwagen in Bad Cannstatt, Germany, in 1885. Unlike a bicycle, it had zero degrees of steering axis angle and no fork offset, so it relied on two small outrigger wheels rather than balance to stay upright while turning. Daimler and Maybach called it the Reitwagen, or riding car, and built it purely as a testbed for their new engine rather than as a vehicle meant for sale.

  It took until 1894 for a motorcycle to reach series production. That year, Hildebrand and Wolfmuller became both the first production motorcycle and the first vehicle actually called a motorcycle, or Motorrad in German.

• 3. The First Motorcycle Companies

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  Excelsior Motor Company, originally a bicycle manufacturer based in Coventry, England, began building its first motorcycle model in 1896. Two years later, in 1898, Charles Metz built the first production motorcycle in the United States, the Orient-Aster, at his factory in Waltham, Massachusetts.

  Triumph Motorcycles began production in England in 1898, building over 500 bikes a year by 1903, as engines grew more powerful and dedicated manufacturers multiplied across Britain and America. Royal Enfield followed in 1899, Norton in 1902, Douglas Motorcycles in 1907, and the Birmingham Small Arms Company in 1910. In the United States, Indian began production in 1901, and Harley-Davidson was founded two years later, in 1903.

  By the outbreak of the First World War, Indian had become the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, producing more than 20,000 bikes a year.

• 4. Motorcycles at War

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  When the First World War began, despatch riders on motorcycles replaced mounted messengers on horseback, carrying messages, running reconnaissance, and serving as military police.

  American manufacturer Harley-Davidson devoted more than half of its factory output to military contracts by the war's end. The British firm Triumph Motorcycles sold over 30,000 units of its Triumph Type H to Allied forces, a machine with a 499cc air-cooled four-stroke single-cylinder engine, belt-driven rear wheel, and no pedals, the first Triumph built without them.

  Introduced in 1915, the related Model H carried a 550cc side-valve four-stroke engine, a three-speed gearbox, and belt transmission. Its riders nicknamed it the Trusty Triumph, and many historians regard it as the first genuinely modern motorcycle.

• 5. Records, Racing and Rivalry

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  By 1920, Harley-Davidson had become the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, with dealers selling its bikes across 67 countries. Among British builders, Chater-Lea stood out for speed rather than volume, first with twin-cylinder models and then with large singles through the 1920s. Starting from a converted Woodmann-designed OHV Blackburne engine, Chater-Lea became the first manufacturer to push a 350cc motorcycle past 100 miles an hour, recording 100.81 miles an hour over a flying kilometre in April 1924, and later set world records for both 350cc and 500cc machines at 102.9 miles an hour, earning popularity among racers at the Isle of Man TT.

  German manufacturer DKW took over as the world's largest producer by the late 1920s or early 1930s. In the 1950s, attention turned to streamlining, and the so-called dustbin fairing raised the possibility of radically reshaping racing motorcycles. NSU and Moto Guzzi led that push with designs well ahead of their time, but NSU abandoned the effort and quit Grand Prix racing after four of its riders died between 1954 and 1956. Moto Guzzi kept racing competitively and won consistently through the end of 1957, before the FIM banned full enclosure fairings from racing in 1958 over safety concerns.

  From the 1960s through the 1990s, small two-stroke motorcycles became popular worldwide, a trend traced partly to engine work East German manufacturer MZ's Walter Kaaden carried out during the 1950s.

• 6. Machine and Motion

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  Strip away the styling and most modern motorcycles share the same basic recipe: a steel or aluminium frame, telescopic forks holding the front wheel, and disc brakes, paired with a petrol engine of one to four cylinders, occasionally as many as eight. That engine typically connects through a five- or six-speed sequential transmission to the swingarm-mounted rear wheel, driven by a chain, driveshaft, or belt.

  Staying upright while rolling comes down to a physical property called conservation of angular momentum in the spinning wheels, which keeps the axle pointed in the same direction unless disturbed. Turning a motorcycle, though, works against intuition: riders lean into a corner using countersteering, briefly turning the handlebars in the opposite direction of the intended turn, a technique that confuses many newcomers and even some experienced riders. A short wheelbase can also generate enough torque at the rear wheel, or enough stopping force at the front, to lift the opposite wheel off the road entirely, producing wheelies and stoppies.

  A streamlined, fully faired Honda XL125, built by Matzu Matsuzawa, achieved 470 miles per US gallon in the Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge, run on real highways under real conditions. More typically, motorcycles average 44 miles per US gallon in the United States, a byproduct of low engine displacement paired with a high power-to-mass ratio. Electric motorcycles push efficiency further still, running nearly silent and emission-free, though their range and top speed remain limited by battery technology.

  Sport riders lean forward into the wind with footpegs set below or behind them, cutting frontal area for higher speeds; standard riders sit upright with feet below them, a stance shared by touring, commuting, and dual-sport bikes; and cruiser riders sit low with legs extended forward and handlebars high and wide, trading cornering clearance for comfort. Custom subcultures have shaped factory design just as much: cafe racers, choppers, and streetfighters all began as independent builds before manufacturers copied their visual cues, and Harley-Davidson built its own soft-tail model to mimic the hard-tail chopper look while secretly keeping rear suspension underneath.

• 7. Today's Global Market

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  By 2022, four companies dominated global motorcycle production by volume: Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki. Much of that volume now comes from small-displacement bikes under 300cc, built mainly in China and India and sold across Asia and Africa. Honda's 1958 Super Cub became the best-selling vehicle of any kind in history, reaching its 60 millionth unit in April 2008.

  Hero MotoCorp has become the world's largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, and its Splendor model alone has sold more than 8.5 million units to date, alongside major domestic rivals Bajaj and TVS Motors.

  In Nigeria, motorcycles known locally as Okada have drawn repeated controversy over safety and security, leading Lagos, the country's most populous city, to ban them in 2020. In Iran, women are not permitted to ride motorcycles at all.

  A 2013 survey of 4,424 US Consumer Reports readers, covering 4,680 motorcycles bought new between 2009 and 2012, found Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha statistically tied on reliability, each with 11 to 14 percent of surveyed bikes needing major repairs, against 24 percent for Harley-Davidson and 30 percent for BMW. Despite that gap, Harley-Davidson and BMW owners reported the highest satisfaction, with three-quarters saying they would buy the same bike again, ahead of 72 percent of Honda owners.

  Piaggio Group Americas has promoted scooters as an environmental choice, claiming a 65 percent reduction in per-mile carbon emissions compared with an average car. The math cuts both ways: because most motorcycles still lack a catalytic converter, their exhaust can carry 10 to 20 times more nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons than a similar-year car, and only 54 percent of tested 2007-model motorcycles in the United States carried one at all. In Vietnam, motorcycles are estimated to produce up to 87 percent of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City's carbon monoxide emissions and 94 percent of their hydrocarbons.

• 8. The Cost in Lives

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  United States Department of Transportation crash data from 2005 puts the danger in stark numbers: 18.62 fatal crashes occur per 100,000 registered passenger cars, compared with 75.19 per 100,000 registered motorcycles, four times higher. Measured per mile traveled, the gap widens further, 1.56 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles for cars against 43.47 for motorcycles, 28 times higher, and motorcycle accident rates have kept climbing since the late 1990s even as car fatality rates have fallen.

  A motorist pulling out or turning directly in front of a motorcyclist, violating their right of way, causes the single most common type of motorcycle accident in the United States, an occurrence riders call SMIDSY, short for sorry mate, I didn't see you. Britain's Institute of Advanced Motorists and Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents both offer advanced rider training beyond the basic licence test, sometimes earning graduates lower insurance costs. In South Africa, the Think Bike campaign, strongest in Gauteng province but also active in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Free State, trains marshals for events and runs an annual Motorcycle Toy Run.

  Since 2010, Ireland has required training before a rider ever reaches the road, as have the UK and Australian jurisdictions including Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory, all mandating a basic course before a Learner's Licence is issued. In Canada, training is compulsory only in Quebec and Manitoba, though the Canada Safety Council's Gearing Up program operates nationwide and can qualify graduates for reduced insurance premiums.

  As of 2024, medicine still has no cure for the hearing loss and tinnitus that wind noise, tyre roar, and engine noise can cause in motorcyclists and scooter riders, leaving specialized earplugs as the best available protection since even a properly worn helmet cannot fully guard against it.