fewer and fewer young people are starting to ride motorcycles and in this video we
discuss why we think that is statistically fewer young people are riding motorbikes and
Honda are doing research into this and try to find out why that is but we're gonna tell you
why we think it is now one of the reasons why this is the problem it's the motorcycle
licensing laws in the UK at the age of 16 you can get a 50 cc motorcycle you can do
a compulsory basic training and put L plates on and you can ride it for as long as you like you
can take the test and if you do take the test you can get the L plates off and you can have
a pillion passenger but that still only allows you to write at 50 cc so 17 years old you can
ride at one to five if you've done your CVT when you were 16 then that's fine you can go straight
on to one to five that's not a problem if you hadn't then obviously you'd have to do a CVT
again but that would only last for two years so if you've done it when you were 16 and then you
still wanted to ride you want to drive over 18 you'd have to do you see with you again
so if you've reached 17 then we've got your C BT neon you're one to five with L plates you can ride
around if you want to take the old plates off and have a pillion passenger you can take the
chest and that would be the same test exactly the same as you would have taken on the fifty
CC but nobody bothers to take the test on the fifty CC because why would they so you can go
and do it on the one to five but you can ride the one to five 20 17 and 18 but if you take the test
on the one to five that won't allow you to ride a more powerful black for the one through five so
nobody bother to take the test on the one to five they wait till they are 19 which will come on to
for the next stage of the licensing process 19 is I would you continue license test which would
be the same test you would have taken on the 125 or the 50 which Noah does which is a theory test
and then a practical test that has to be on a bike between 20 kilowatts and 35 kilowatts there which
no one knows what that is but 35 kilowatts is just under 47 horsepower but obviously once you pass
that test you can ride one of these still it's not probably you have to take the test or something
it's more powerful now to do your a to test it has to be alone minimum cc of 395 cc so assuming you
take that at the age of 19 you can ride the bike for as long as you like on that license unless you
want to upgrade to the next license which is the a is the a1 yeah that's the full license for any
powered bike we'll come on to that in a minute because there's still more confusion with the
a2 license so there's also a power to weight ratio restriction which is 0.2 kilowatts per
kilogram so that would mean if you wanted to get a sort of 250 Racing enduro bike that would be too
light for its power even though the power would be something like 42 horsepower it's too light
it's like four times too much so but then the other end of the spectrum this is a very heavy
bike but this would be too powerful to start with to restrict it so you could get something
like a Harley iron which is only slightly over the horsepower but she could then restrict
so when you're 21 you could do your a license which is a full license so long as you've done
your a to license when you were 19 we said it was a 1 license for this all nice and it's actually a
license but if you did you're a 2 license when you were 20 they then have to wait two years to 22 if
you did it when you were 21 you'd have to wait two years to you're 23 to do the full license
if you do it within 23 and after one year to be 24 if you didn't do it at all you could just do
the a license when you're 24 considering you've done a CVT and then the normal test you would
have done before three you four times already exactly the same before then go straight onto a
Honda Fireblade and probably kill yourself now if you want to ride a full-sized unrestricted
motorcycle you need a category a license and as my son explained the different ages you can
do that at but you have to take the test on a motorcycle of at least 595 cc and at least 50
kilowatts of power which is 67 horsepower and it has to have a minimum curb weight of 180
kilograms so if you can remember all that you can then take the test so what people tend to
do is hire the bike on the test riding facility and use that by it's positive test then you can
go out and ride any motorcycle in the world I think the government's idea behind it all was
to allow people to progress from 50 cc all the way up to something bigger gradually but they've
kind of shot themselves in the foot because most people can't be bothered to wait I've
just get a car 17 and then wait and they might do the a2 license but they probably won't and
then they'll get on a bike when they're 24 they could have never ridden a bike
pass the test within a week in a training centre and going by a thousand CC to point
or something as heavy as this which is far too powerful for someone who's not experienced and
very talky and very heavy so they probably crashed it into a bush as soon as they will kind of show
now so we've highlighted the problem we're now going to come up with our solution and we'd like
to know in this video your opinions on this whole issue because it's a minefield of confusion now I
think 50cc at 16 is good but I would actually say 50cc at 14 to be honest I think the countries like
Spain pretty sure they start with 14 or even 15 14 or 15 would be a good age and then maybe at
17 start with a 1 to 5 and that's fine but if you do the test it should be only 1 to 5 like I know
that years ago and once you've done the test you do it once and once only and that's it if you've
proven your competence you've passed your test the insurance groupings could then define which
bike you can have at different ages so you don't have to go through the city process at home to do
the training and the tests and all so many times the same test each time so I think the progression
should be that way so definitely 17 1 25 19 400cc would be fine and maybe 20 21 more powerful bike
you can even progress to 23 let's say or 22 for a full-size bike but I think you need to have some
progression built in and as we said about being 24 and going straight for an a license on a big
block if you've never ridden before after a week of training is totally wrong and I can understand
the government trying to assess the dangers on the roads of people and bikes but that isn't the
answer the current system is not the answer let us know in the comments below what you think is
their solution - this whole rubbish but I mean whatever it is it's definitely better to be on
one of these and sat on a bus or a train but much rather be on one of those so now one of
the other problems that this whole conundrum makes happen is that the manufacturers try and
build bikes to fit in with the licensing laws so that means that there's probably gaps in the
potential motorcycles they could make there's another point if you had the money you could
go and buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini age 20 and drive it but you can't ride a 800 cc motor bike
that's if seem stupid to me is that they haven't thought it through this much probably much more
dangerous to be a 650 horsepower Ferrari than it is in a 50 horsepower motor but
of course now we've had Rexy and one of the main points for that was that people want to
have our own oars but this is clearly an oar on our own because no other country in Europe has
had city bike laws like this so we want to hear if you're from another country what your laws
are like and how different they are to eyes and don't forget to leave a comment if you haven't
done already and leave us a like and subscribe to the channel also lockdown obviously there's
a lot of blanks and I not to come but we can't get them because of the lockdown so in a few
weeks once we've cleared this virus problem we're going to be testing some amazing bugs