Are we seeing the decline of motorcycling in the UK?

[WaferThinHam]

ZX10R NIN said:

I'd say it's on the increase but I'd say the number big bike sales has dropped.

I'd say Superbike sales are down, but everything else is up pretty much.

MT10 and Africa Twin are bossing it at the moment.

[LuS1fer]

Pothole said:

I found my bigger, older, less popular superbikes were almost invisible to thieves (CBR1000FM and RF900R)

Back in 1992, i had a 1988 CBR1000F.
I could largely leave it most places without a lock, back then but before the year was out, it was stolen, ironically from across the road while i was visiting my cousin - the speed of the theft was incredible, steering lock forced and it was gone in under 10 minutes.
My 2013 MSX125 and 2016 SV650S have both come with datatag - is this a deterrent or not?

[Dr Jekyll]

When I started riding in the eighties. It was pretty typical to justify the bike by using it as a transport tool, then ride for fun at weekends. These days there seems to be a split between pure transport devices, typically big scooters, and weekend toys with very little in between. So for the type of motorcycling I want to do, dodge the traffic during the week, ride for fun at weekends, maybe an occasional tour, all on the same bike, there is a decline.

Using a superscooter as a transport solution without fun being a consideration, or running a sportsbike for weekend excitement without transport practicality being a consideration are both legitimate enough activities, but not 'motorcycling' as I see it.

[ZX10R NIN]

Dr Jekyll said:

When I started riding in the eighties. It was pretty typical to justify the bike by using it as a transport tool, then ride for fun at weekends. These days there seems to be a split between pure transport devices, typically big scooters, and weekend toys with very little in between. So for the type of motorcycling I want to do, dodge the traffic during the week, ride for fun at weekends, maybe an occasional tour, all on the same bike, there is a decline.

Using a superscooter as a transport solution without fun being a consideration, or running a sportsbike for weekend excitement without transport practicality being a consideration are both legitimate enough activities, but not 'motorcycling' as I see it.

I think things like Street Triples VFR's etc cover both bases.

[av185]

Pothole said:

av185 said:

Wooderson said:

-
- Sharing the road with inattentive drivers - is getting farcical!

You appear to have excluded the many inattentive and moronic RIDERS from your comprehensive list.

OK, I'll bite. I have yet to have one of these risk my life.

You clearly haven't driven a car/ridden a pushbike north on the A682 and A65 on a Saturday or Sunday late afternoon when the crazed Kirkby Lonsdale death wishers return South. Unless you don't consider 200kg of bike plus say 90kg of rider with excessive moronic tendencies totally out of his/her depth in terms of riding capabilities coming straight at you a threat to your life. Happened to me at least four times. Yes, yes, we know there are some morons driving cars as well.

Try it and do report back....:

[catso]

black-k1 said:

Biking in the UK is being propped up by aging old farts like most of those on here, me included.

I agree with this. As one of said aging old farts I don't see very many youngsters on anything other than a CBT bike and seeing that many of us oldies have several bikes, this actually makes the problem worse because only one is on the road at any given time.

Government don't need to ban it, rather just discourage newcomers and in a generation or two mainstream biking'll be a thing of the past only participated by weirdos.

There'll be a huge fall in the number of bikes on the road once us old farts have hung up our leathers/died...

[ZX10R NIN]

My mate runs a bike school in SE London & he says he's pretty much booked up until december, I am noticing a lot of the small Ninjas round my way sporting Akro exhausts (no doubt no less annoying than mt RS125 with spannies) making noise all over the place they sound terrible but if this is the future of biking then let's roll with it.

[Kickstart]

When I am down in London I see tons of bikes but up in Manchester not so many. Most bikers I bump into are late 40s or older and there are a lot more cyclists around than bikers. At my office there are about twenty youngsters (from late teens to late twenties) and not one of them rides a bike even though there is free underground bike parking. When I was the same age lots of my friends rode bikes.
I don't think this complicated and expensive testing helps the issue and I do wonder if I had to wait until I was 23/4 (don't know exact age) rather than 18/19 to get a big bike I would have bothered.

[Dog Star]

I don't know how many on here remember biking and the state it had got into back in the late 80s and early 90s, but it was dire, really dire. People weren't buying them at all.

I think the riding test now will be having a bad effect, however. Mind you that's what people were saying 30 years ago when they brought the L plate bike size down from 250 to 125. If it makes better riders then I guess it's hard to argue that it's not a good thing though - I remember when I was younger going to an awful lot of funerals - all bikers of a similar age to myself. This has got less as their experience has increased and now I'm at the stage where I go to funerals because people have simply got old.

[black-k1]

Dog Star said:

I don't know how many on here remember biking and the state it had got into back in the late 80s and early 90s, but it was dire, really dire. People weren't buying them at all.

I think the riding test now will be having a bad effect, however. Mind you that's what people were saying 30 years ago when they brought the L plate bike size down from 250 to 125. If it makes better riders then I guess it's hard to argue that it's not a good thing though - I remember when I was younger going to an awful lot of funerals - all bikers of a similar age to myself. This has got less as their experience has increased and now I'm at the stage where I go to funerals because people have simply got old.

And, the problem is that the current "improvement" in motorcycling is mostly down to people of your (and my) age who survived riding 250s with L plates and who now find that, with the kids gone and the mortgage paid off, have time and money to spend on biking. Once we go there is very little to replace us.

[Kringle]

Well, very interesting thread and I am inclined to agree.
I started off with a scooter then a Cg125 then a 600cc and attended a couple of big rides, did a couple of weekend trips to Wales and Belgium. Then a family came and the car came along. The bike was a time consuming thing to get ready to ride and to look after.

Times are changing really, the young generation are focused on car ownership and socialising by technological means. The biking bug never goes beyond scooters. It's down to a couple of factors. One is the barriers to entry, I cannot think of a quicker way to an early grave than a young bloke on a superbike but if a car test and bike test are about the same amount of work but you have to wait two years until you can have a bike over 33bhp the ticket to fun lands with the car.

Also both pursuits are prohibitively expensive to someone who's just starting out in their working life and unfortunately it's one or the other. This again pushes the biking sector further back and in to the older generations hands.

Where I work there was a huge bike scene, the pin board in my messroom has many photographs of ride outs, track days and machines of pride. However the photos are all at least 15 years old, the riders are still here, some still have bikes but they no longer meet up, no longer ride to a pub for a lunch, no longer ride together for the sake of riding. Most importantly, no one under 30 is riding, me included.

I tried to get back in to the game but the choice of bikes today don't appeal. Electrical sounding and full of techno gimmicks just make them come across that they're trying too hard, trying to stay cool and trying to be relevant.

I don't really know now where I'm going with this or where the motorbike genre should be going so I'll stop here.

Tldr: too expensive to enter and maintain, quicker more comfortable ways to socialise, cars ultimately win the battle, it's irrelevant with no way back. Phew!

[.blue]

As a yoof I thought I'd weigh in with a view that's more an anecdote than actual fact...

A bunch of my friends have been riding on CBTs for well over a year. It doesn't help that most forums, people st on smaller bikes like 250s/300s advising everyone to "just wait for your DAS". People wait, putting off buying a bigger bike and for lots I'm sure this just drops off the list of priorities before they've actually experienced a bigger bike.

Potentially the new licensing rules are actually helping get people off CBTs onto 125cc+ bikes so could help get more younger bikers off the CBT sooner.

[oilspill]

Wooderson said:

Does anyone else have a niggling feeling that motorcycling in the U.K, as we know it, is on a slippery slope towards oblivion?

• Towns and Cities have, or are looking to, ban or punitively tax older vehicles, including bikes, from entering city centres.

Hasn't the motorcycle industry continually resisted fitting cat-converters and had special treatment to a lax MOT regards to noise? shot self in foot much?
To have any form of concessions bikes will need to run cats and standard pipes. Something the industry in the UK has lobbied against and even had EU proposals overturned in defence of the UKs aftermarket industry.

Wooderson said:

* Blanket 20mph and 50mph speed limits curtail the joy ‘making progress’ and beating congestion

• Bloody dashcams meaning that even a cheeky wheelie could see you on trial by social media and the Daily Mail.

spot the link! wheelies, loud pipes, speeding hard acceleration everywhere. us bikers have been immune from laws, so draconian calming measures were expected from me. 2 local towns completely transformed by speed bumps. The locals love it, the boy racers have all disappeared.

Wooderson said:

* Sharing the road with inattentive drivers – mainly using phones - is getting farcical!

bikers might not become inattentive, but they still take stupid risks along with the f"ck everyone else attitude of Harley riders. No surprise other road users eventually found their own way of living in their own bubble and becoming selfish.

Wooderson said:

While it isn’t all negative, I do think that new technology will be the savior of power two-wheel transport – be it driver-less cars that are better at looking out for bikers than humans or the development of electric motorbikes and E-bike push bikes that will get more people onto two wheels of some form.

I remember Zero motorcycles entering then promptly pulling out of the UK market claiming 'the UK isn't ready for quiet bikes' Look on any UK bike forum or media publication many reviews of new bikes claim "needs a pipe" that sums up the attitude.

Also the UK has never thrived on smaller bikes. electric bikes at the moment seem quite small. Theres a stigma theyre for learners and most cant wait to get rid soon enough. I think other countries will see a merger and those Bultaco, Stealth -Bomber size electric bikes will become more common in cities.

I can see Driver-less cars making current bikers stick out even more like sore-thumbs with the speeding and noise. Perhaps bikers not being allowed to filter as not to confuse the cars, possibly electronic speed restrictors in town and around driver-less cars and likely bright/dayglo crash helmets becoming compulsory (these are already becoming popular in Belgium among commuters and have been used by the bike Police for nearly a couple of decades)

There's no doubt the roads being used as personal race tracks will eventually cease.
A lot of european cities have calming measure in place and a more sophisticate culture. UK is like the wild-west in comparison.

Edited by oilspill on Friday 30th September 15:34

Edited by oilspill on Friday 30th September 15:35

[MarshPhantom]

Wooderson said:

Does anyone else have a niggling feeling that motorcycling in the U.K, as we know it, is on a slippery slope towards oblivion?

I not taking about conspiracies for wholesale banning motorbikes from the likes Brake!, but more that a number of external/passive factors are interplaying that are/will lower the number of riders on the road and make motorcycling less attractive and/or less viable for transport or leisure.

Off the top of my head these factor concern me!

• Decline in the number of riders on the road and it becoming an increasingly old man’s game. At one end of the age spectrum people aren’t training beyond CBTs, while at the other end the generations of riders brought up riding during the golden era (1950s to 1990s?) are getting on a bit/dying off!

• Towns and Cities have, or are looking to, ban or punitively tax older vehicles, including bikes, from entering city centres.

• Blanket 20mph and 50mph speed limits curtail the joy ‘making progress’ and beating congestion.

• Mainstream media seems to consciously ignore motorcycle sport or actively promote motorcycling as a viable transport option. On a related issue, the likes of Sweden’s rather dystopian ‘Vison Zero’ seems to have absolutely no place for motorcycles within a civilized society.

• Sharing the road with inattentive drivers – mainly using phones - is getting farcical!

• Bike theft – especially in London - is beyond farce. I hate that I can’t realistically hope to park on the streets a ‘nice’ bike – be it a Panigale, a Street Triple or a GS - without a serious doubt that it will still be there come home time. I don't want to commute on an old stter!

• Bloody dashcams meaning that even a cheeky wheelie could see you on trial by social media and the Daily Mail.

While I appreciate new bike registrations have increased year-on-year for the past 4 years or so, is this not a due to the huge popularity of ‘cheap’ PCP finance? The impact of this huge shift in how we ‘own’ and live with our motorbikes has yet to be felt, but it strikes me that this system of leasing new bikes for 2/3 years at a time is instilling a totally different mindset and attitude towards, for example, home mechanics and modifying.

While it isn’t all negative, I do think that new technology will be the savior of power two-wheel transport – be it driver-less cars that are better at looking out for bikers than humans or the development of electric motorbikes and E-bike push bikes that will get more people onto two wheels of some form.

Sorry for slight negatively, but I’m genuinely interested to hear where and what BB thinks we’ll be riding in 20 years’ time

Edited by Wooderson on Thursday 29th September 12:50

Helmet cams appear more widespread than dashams.

[Pothole]

oilspill said:

I can see Driver-less cars making current bikers stick out even more like sore-thumbs with the speeding and noise. Perhaps bikers not being allowed to filter as not to confuse the cars, possibly electronic speed restrictors in town and around driver-less cars and likely bright/dayglo crash helmets becoming compulsory (these are already becoming popular in Belgium among commuters and have been used by the bike Police for nearly a couple of decades)

Edited by oilspill on Friday 30th September 15:35

Why does a driverless car need me to wear a dayglo helmet?