At least in my country, it's not a question of engine size but of having a step-through frame. A Vespa with a 300cc engine would usually be called a motor scooter, a CB125R with a 125cc engine is a motorbike.
Of course, my country's parlance is wildly inconsistent. Some motor scooters are also known as 'mopeds' despite not having pedals. E-bikes have motors and pedals, and yet aren't called mopeds or motorbikes. The tax authority considers motor scooters to be motorbikes. Certain motorbike tax bands call the vehicle a 'bicycle'. E-scooters are scooters with motors, yet aren't called motor scooters. 'Bikers' refers to motorcyclists, and 'cyclists' to bicycle riders. And so on.
Here, a scooter like that you can't even drive in a highway - restricting its use to a city makes it much safer.
Last time I looked at it small bikes, generally used by delivery drivers to be fair, vastly overshadowed any other motorcycle accidents.
On the same note death rates per vehicle on the road was lower for motorcycles than all other vehicle classes and a large portion of those deaths were passengers on a motorcycle and not the driver.
This was all from the mid 2010s though. The statistics showed more to me that wearing correct protection equipment significantly reduced your chance of dieing, the displacement of the engine or even the type of motorcycle had some impact but definitely wasn't a major factor.
Smaller bikes/scooters (you can drive them with a car license in my country if they are under 50cc) have a max top speed of 50km/h (31mph).
On the other hand, one of the most popular motorcycles (Yamaha MT-07) does 0-100km/h (0-60 mph) in under 4 seconds and can reach speeds of over 130 miles per hour. There is a lot that can go wrong if you are not careful. Also, it is almost twice as heavy.
If one wishes to take the perspective that licensure helps prevent injuries and death, then apply the licensure requirements to these lighter vehicles too. If one prefers the perspective that all such transport is inherently risky, and thus prioritize personal responsibility and assumption of risk, then let's get rid of the licensure requirements, which will surely help get more people out of their 4-wheelers, with knock-on improvements for the environment, traffic congestion, and parking. My problem is with the arbitrary distinction in the middle.
I don't think it's in any way arbitrary. There are speed, engine, and other differences, affecting skill levels required and potential lethality...
Why does that matter to the government? It requires skill to use a knife, and if it's mishandled it can cause severe bodily harm; should we require people to get a license to use a knife in their own kitchen? If it's because of the potential lethality to others, then surely we ought to require licensing for all motorbikes (including small motorbikes); what if a toddler wanders into the bike lane where these small-engine motorbikes are permitted?
> speed
Non-motorized cyclists can hit speeds of over 120 km/h (admittedly an extreme case, but still): https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/tour-de-france/122... . Should we require licensing for non-motorized bicycles simply because the vehicle has the potential to hit a certain speed? Wouldn't it then make more sense to require licensure for anyone who travels faster than a certain speed, and for any two-wheeled vehicle to be registered and plated?
Again I concede that there are naturally differences between large- and small-engine motorcycles. My point is that regardless of which rubric you choose, whether it's safety, skill, whatever, the decision that a mechanical engine requires licensure but an electric one does not, or 125cc motorcycles require licensure but "electric bicycles" do not, wherever that line is drawn is there for historical reasons only, not because of the safety or skill rubric, and therefore is arbitrary, therefore is unjust, therefore should be reformed to be more consistent than just whatever we have today due to historical accident.
It doesn't. It matters to the law, which is a different thing from the government.
And it matters because it matters to society whether someone with insufficient training and testing rides a huge motorcycle, or a truck, or whatever. Especially something like a sports motorcycle which needs more skill than an average car, and is much easier to slip (as accidents stats tell).
>Non-motorized cyclists can hit speeds of over 120 km/h
Rarely and in extreme conditions. Big motorcycles can do it trivially.
The world cycle record is 130 km/h, under very special circumstances and for just 200m or so. The highest end of the speed pros usually achieve is (according to wiki) around 70 km/h, quite less than 120 km/h. Not to mention a motorcycle (especially the kind more heavily regulated) has much more weight than a bike, and thus much more momentum even for the same speed.
>It requires skill to use a knife, and if it's mishandled it can cause severe bodily harm; should we require people to get a license to use a knife in their own kitchen?
I'm pretty sure people are allowed to ride any size of motorcycle in their own kitches or their backyard even. It's when they ride them on the road, and this can kill others, that it gets to be a concern for the law.
The same holds for knives btw. Carrying a knife in the streets in many jurisdictions is considered an offense, similar to carrying a gun. It sure is in mine.
And in general, for all over the US I read "(...) there are often limits on knives or bladed weapons that may be carried. Most states regulate an individual’s ability to carry a knife based on the following characteristics of the knife itself: The type of knife, including the purpose in which it is typically used for; (...) The length of the blade.".
As this is the crux of your argument, please provide data showing how large motorcycles are so much more lethal for pedestrians compared to cars. Because all the statistics I'm familiar with (and I do take issue with them) show risk for the riders themselves, not for others.
I don't deny that, of course, if you hit a pedestrian in a 500cc motorcycle going 50 km/h then the pedestrian will certainly suffer major injuries if not death. The difference is that the rider will as well, unlike a 4-wheeler that wraps its driver in a roll cage, seat belt, and airbags. This mutually-assured destruction, I argue, causes motorcycle riders to generally be safer on the roads vis-a-vis pedestrians, and that this should hold true regardless of licensure.
it has a motor
behold: a motorcycle https://productnotes.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/5/5313...
This is a motorcycle: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpoydU...
Declining to call it a motorcycle because the motor is small relative to other motorcycles is little more than snobbery, and it's a snobbery that discourages people from buying a (larger) motorcycle that fits their needs, because of a historic arbitrary distinction between small and large motorcycles that require separate licensing for large motorcycles; a distinction that should be eliminated either by applying licensing requirements uniformly to all motorcycles or uniformly eliminating the licensing requirements from all motorcycles.