People buy Harley’s for the twin cam engine which vibrates a lot and “if you have to ask why this is good then you wouldn’t understand”. The marketing for Harley’s is very much about buying into “worse is better” for “cool” factor — and for social signaling that you might know how to turn your own wrenches.

The joke is that Harley owners spend more time in the garage with their bikes than riding them. They require a lot of maintenance to keep running. From a risk perspective, the onerously frequent maintenance requirements increase the chance of a mechanic introduced error having negative safety outcomes. The fact that every owner basically “has” to work on the bikes rather extensively means that they are more likely in general to be worked on by not so qualified mechanics. The extensive customization culture surrounding the bikes also comes with a lot of really easy ways for safety compromising designs to be introduced via ill thought out customization.

These may seem like small factors but all of them represent much more real risks than the imagined safety benefit that might come by making your bike excessively loud. Someone telling you to ride a Harley and also telling you to make it loud for safety is not giving good safety advice — to maximize safe riding you should never try to lower the responsibility of the rider to be aware of other drivers not seeing them - you can’t make yourself more visible by being loud and shouldn’t encourage someone to think this will work and thereby encourage them to not proactively defend themselves from a driver who might not see them.

There are other safety relevant issues with the bike design — notoriously bad brakes and gearboxes, poor suspension, heavy with a low center of gravity that makes turning a relatively higher effort activity for shorter riders and generally makes recovery from problem scenarios more difficult, the “Harley wobble” (yes wobble can happen with other bikes but it tends to be more severe with Harley’s) ...

It’s probably also worth pointing out that there have been something like 4 large recalls in the last 5 years for clutch problems that can lead to sudden brake failure. Also, the twin cam engine design is inherently not long lasting with many failure modes which means breakdowns are common (engine failure/fluid leaks are not generally conducive to safety).

If you think more modern Harley's(twin cams, evolutions)are unreliable I guess you'd say the older ones didn't run at all. The fact something can vibrate and shake so much and leave the Stealership with rattling apart is a feat of engineering.

With cam tensioners changed you'll get 100k out of a twincam before needing work with just oil and tires(and whatever parts rattle off).

Harley's trying to innovate(electric bikes/scooters, dual sport). Problem is their consumer base is stuck in past/vanishing. Some people use fountain pens instead of more modern pens, even though they might be more inconvenient/expensive. While I only own Japanese bikes now, I can't deny there is a 'feeling' of riding a Harley.

I fully agree that they're shitty bikes (for the money, everything is relative to cost obviously) but I'm not sure it matters when it comes to safety. Mechanical failure/vehicle performance is still basically a rounding error compared to humans being dumb when it comes to causes of crashes.

Sibling comment has good points. My go-to was years back when HD put a single disc with a single piston caliper up front. Anything Japanese at that point put two discs, usually multiple pistons. Some sport bikes were running monster six piston calipers.

And there’s that fat-ass Harley hauling it’s bulk down with that one scrawny disc and anemic caliper. ‘cuz, you know, style. Always seemed like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Can you imagine a car manufacturer saying, “the braking system is not even close to state-of-the-art because it wouldn’t look good”?