March 8, 2026
Motorcycle politics. The good, the bad, the ugly.
This episode of Throttle and Roast, hosted by Niels Meersschaert, delivers a thorough and thought-provoking exploration of motorcycle politics—covering how political decisions, laws, and community debates impact every rider’s experience. Beginning with the deceptively simple question, “What is a motorcycle?”
Niels highlights the complex legal and practical definitions that can vary across regions and legislatures. The episode delves into how vehicles like trikes, scooters, and three-wheelers challenge lawmakers to define what counts as a motorcycle, and how those definitions directly impact which vehicles are subject to motorcycle laws, licensing, and safety requirements.
Niels discusses helmet laws and licensing systems, bringing attention to the patchwork of state-by-state requirements in the United States and contrasting them with the tiered licensing in Europe. The conversation extends to the deep-seated tension between personal freedom and government regulation, as some riders advocate for the right to choose, while others support measures that enhance safety for all. Noise restrictions and access to public spaces emerge as additional battlegrounds.
Niels examines the politics of noise ordinances—how they influence motorcycle design, performance, and rider behavior—and the ongoing debates over where motorcyclists should be allowed to ride, particularly in parks and shared public spaces. He also raises questions about the fairness of toll charges, asking why lightweight motorcycles often pay the same fees as much heavier vehicles, despite their vastly different impacts on road wear and congestion. International trade policy, such as tariffs on imported motorcycles and parts, is another major theme.
Niels notes that most bikes in the U.S. are imported, so tariffs can significantly raise costs for riders, limiting access to affordable options and increasing maintenance expenses, all due to political maneuvering rather than consumer demand.
The episode also explores how advocacy organizations, like ABATE and the American Motorcyclist Association, strive to represent riders’ interests in these political debates, while acknowledging that even within these groups, opinions and priorities can differ.
Niels
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00:00 - Introduction
00:36 - What is a motorcycle?
03:46 - Safety and licensing
05:38 - Noise restrictions
06:48 - Where you can ride
08:38 - Tolls
09:07 - Tariffs
10:56 - Advocacy
12:15 - Motorcycle club politics
13:44 - Brand as politics
14:38 - Wrap up
WEBVTT
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Motorcycle politics. The good, the bad, the ugly.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, we'll look at the good, the bad, and the ugly side of politics and motorcycling. We'll look at how politics define what a motorcycle is, what licensing and equipment you might need to ride it, restrictions on where you can assigned just to bikes, and even some politics within the motorcycle community.
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So let's begin with some politics that play into a little bit of, well, what is a motorcycle? I mean, most of us, we probably think of a motorcycle as a vehicle with two wheels, right? Well, dig into that a little further. Is there a distinction between a step through design versus a step over? Think of like a scooter versus a traditional motorcycle.
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Is one a motorcycle and the other is not from a legal perspective? what about if I have a CVT or a sequential shifter? Does that make a difference to make it a motorcycle or not? What about those trikes from like Harley?
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Does it matter if the wheels are in the back? Does that make it no longer a motorcycle? What about a three-wheeler with the two wheels in the front? Like a Piaggio MP3? These two close front wheels, they even allow the vehicle to stay upright when it's stopped. Is that still a motorcycle? Is that still a motorcycle? Or bikes like the Yamaha Niken? This was another motorcycle that had those two front leaning wheels and gave it a very different characteristic.
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All these things are giving us a different perspective of what is a motorcycle and what is not a motorcycle. Or even look at the Can-Am These originally were kind of starting off as snowmobiles where they took the front skis, turn them into wheels, and then replaced the rear track with a big wheel.
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What is that motorcycle? So, now you have a three-wheel with wheels up in the front, but they're further apart than we saw with either that Niken or that Piaggio MP3. Is that still a motorcycle? Now, all the examples that I've talked about, all of these have handlebars, which is what we traditionally think of how we impart steering action into a motorcycle. What if I have a steering wheel? Is that still a motorcycle? Think about vehicles like the Polaris Slingshot. Well, and this is actually what's really interesting is there's actually a bill in the House of Representatives in the United States right now that would redefine the definition of a motorcycle. It would require a seat or a saddle that the rider sits astride, and not more than three wheels, and steering is controlled by handlebars, with acceleration and braking controlled by handlebar, and foot controls. Thus, the Polaris slingshot specifically would be excluded from this definition.
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you may hear that and say like, well, who cares? That's just one vehicle out of there. Well, the reality is that there's a number of other of these type of auto cycles, which they've kind of come to be known as, If this is a car, they're in a full, it's actually a vehicle in terms of a motorcycle that have been able to slip in without the testing requirements of traditional automobiles, but they aren't exactly like traditional motorcycles either. So think of bikes like the Polaris Slingshot, the Morgan Three-Wheeler, the Vanderhall Santa Rosa II. Each of vehicles would be excluded from the definition of a motorcycle, but they also don't meet the requirements for a car.
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So what are they? This limbo land creates a problem. And this is where we get into some political conversations about like, well, how do we define these? What are you doing to keep in mind, what are you looking for? And who are the various parties that are asking to exclude these vehicles? Who are the parties that are trying to make sure that they are still included? And there's tensions that run between these two different areas.
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Now, politics also plays a role into some of the safety and licensing requirements. Here in the United States, if you have to wear a helmet or not is decided on a state by state basis. Where I am in New York, the very next state over, 10 miles from my house is Connecticut, and there are no helmets required there. The same thing goes for Pennsylvania, which is also another state in the other direction. So two states within very close proximity don't require helmets.
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Well, what if a rider starts in Connecticut and then goes into New York? Can they still ride even without a helmet because that's what their home turf is?
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Get into these weird malaise of different political rules and laws that affect us. And there are some individual riders who are vehemently against the idea of having a helmet being mandated by a law or a government. And therefore, they want to have the own personal choice to whether they decide to use a helmet or not. And there will be, in a group that is either the driver's license or the rider's license. And there will be individual advocates who will advocate for both either direction. Now, Europe, of course, has graduated licensing tiers. And this restricts you in terms of what kind of a motorcycle you could ride based upon the level of motorcycle license that you have, whether it's an A2, an A1, or a full A license. Whereas here in the United I could be a 16-year-old kid, I just get my license, and I can go and buy a 230 horsepower sport bike completely legally. Is that right? Is that wrong? This is where politics play a role. And there's going to be people who are pushing for both sides of the equation in terms of restricting and or allowing some of that behavior in this tension we have between freedom as well as protection and avoiding any sort of safety issues that we might concern ourselves with.
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We also have this playing into noise jurisdictions. Many jurisdictions will restrict what kind of noise noise levels you can have in this have. We've seen this happening with, for example, as the restrictions become much more strict, we have to put in all this quieting effect. We may even have to dampen down the tuning of how much power comes into the bike sort of noise. We may have to walk back to the bike in the bike. As the bike. And if you're passing by, how does that sort of equate? So we get this adjustment of the power band of a motorcycle just to meet these noise restrictions, Whereas when you're outside of that band that you're being tested in...
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they'll probably make a lot more noise. And this is something where it's the letter of the law but not necessarily the spirit of the law. So is that really making sense? And we have these political fights back and forth of, well, what are we trying to do? Is it the angry people who are saying, Hey, these motorcycles are making so much noise in my neighborhood and therefore we want to make it quieter? Or is it the people who love the sound that the exhaust allows their motorcycle to make?
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That's part of the experience.
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These tensions go back and forth with politics in motorcycling. Even think about, we talked about a couple of episodes ago of being able to have access to highway vehicle areas, just to be able to ride a dirt bike, for example. And we want to have a lot of these people, and a lot of people that are like, well, the road, the road. And so, you know, we want to have these people who are maybe hiking or walking along...
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...and they don't want to have the noise or the loudness or the... ...any sort of destruction of the trail that happens from having a motorized vehicle through there. And that's a tension point that's coming in. Meanwhile, you're disallowing people who really love that experience, from being able to enjoy it because it breaks with your view of what a recreational activity in a park should be. Again, this is why politics will push both sides of where you want to be. Think of another one, HOV HOV lanes here in the United States are usually an area where a particular lane allows for flow of ...it's easier to get through, especially in certain high traffic time zones. So think of rush hour in the morning and the evening. In many locations, if you're on a motorcycle, even if you're a single rider on it, that still allows you to go into an HOV lane. So is that really correct? It's not really a high occupancy, it's just an efficient vehicle for travel.
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They also will do a similar thing for electric vehicles. Is that really the intention? Is it making it a more efficient use?
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Is that the goal or is it really about high occupancy? And these tensions that we have, again, this is where politics become a really interesting thing. And as much as we may think politics has no place in motorcycling, it's in our face, no matter how much we want to avoid it, it is there.
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Look at tolls, you go and you ride your bike across a bridge and there's a toll on my vehicle, my motorcycle is 500 pounds, let's say, and there's an SUV that's driving right next to me. That's 5,000 pounds.
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Should I pay the same amount as a vehicle that weighs 10 times as much? Is it right that they are going to be causing that much more damage and maintenance required on the road than my light motorcycle and I'm going to pay the same amount as them?
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Does it even make any sense?
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And then we get into another area and this is something that's probably very US-centric, so I'll apologize to some of our listeners and other parts of the world, but tariffs are a reality that we've had to deal with. Now, as I'm recording this, the Supreme Court has actually said that most of the tariffs that have been pushed forward thus far are actually illegal, but the administration is going to try to come up with another legal theory onto which to run the tariffs. So, the net result is that for most of us here, the vast majority of brands of motorcycles are not made in the United States. we're going to be impacted by tariffs no matter what and this is limiting our ability to be able to get the vehicles that are the right price for us, the right make, the right maintenance, all the things that really appeal to us. So, we can't really get if we're limited in terms of to only one brand or only one country of origin of the bikes that are being made. So, these politics that are playing in are having a serious damper onto us, and since the tariffs not only apply to new bikes, but also to parts, if you have one of these bikes, let's say you have a Japanese bike which you got because it was a good quality, affordable bike like any of the Hondas, Yamahas, Kawasaki's, these are all really good bikes.
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But now, the cost for you to buy parts to maintain your bike goes way up, what, 25, 50, 75% in some you're making it such that it is an range for us as motorcyclists to be able to use.
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And not because we're advocating for this, but because a manufacturer might be fighting for it or because we're getting into aspect of believing that, hey, there's a trade imbalance.
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Well, yeah, there's a trade imbalance because there's not a lot of motorcycle manufacturers in the United States. That's not a fault of the rest of the world.
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That's something that the United States has not done a good job of making these.
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And so, all these political concerns that we have, this is where we come to find how do you kind of advocate for what you want to do. And the good thing is that there are a number of advocacy organizations around the globe. Things like ABATE or the American Motorcyclist Association here in the United States. Both of these organizations really aim to be a voice for the motorcyclists and really advocate to make sure that they are having their voice heard for all of these sort of divides. Now, even within those organizations, what they advocate for isn't always agreed by all riders. So, there's still some distinction within them. In Europe, of course, we have the British Motorcyclist Association, the Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations, that kind of aim to do much of the same idea by advocating for what is necessary for riders within those jurisdictions. So, if you do feel passionate about any of the type of things that we've talked about thus far in this episode, get involved with these organizations. Tell them what matters most to you, and they can then take their force of an organization and advocate on a much larger endeavor than you could as an individual just crying into a Facebook post, for example, about, hey, this thing happened. So, there are ways that we can kind of advocate for it.
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You know, in many ways, a lot of the stuff that I've talked about thus far has really been, what I'll say is kind of government effect onto us as a riding community and the politics that are involved there.
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But the really sad thing is that there's actually politics that happen even within our own internal organizations. If you think about motorcycle clubs, they'll often be politics that are involved in those. There's favoritism where, you know, some members of the club will get or benefits that not everybody else does. Or leadership changes could completely change the dynamics of a club for where you really thought it was something that was going in the right direction. It was aligned with your personal value system and now it's going in a different direction. So these politics are always a part of it. So when people will say, hey, don't talk about politics onto anything. I just want to talk about motorcycles. It's really hard to disconnect these because politics is part of everything.
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And that doesn't mean that you have to give them to people like, because of what you're talking about. Now that doesn't mean that you have to get it into a tribalism aspect, but you still have to think about, well, what really matters to me? What are the things that I want to advocate for? What are the things that I believe will really help in terms of the community? what is the other posing viewpoints? Because maybe there's something I haven't fully understood about them. And I think it's valuable to do this.
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Even though I'd say in a motorcycle club, look at what the other people are saying.
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Listen and understand it. Don't get into an immediately reactive perspective. It's not a completely reactive perspective, but just understand why is there a viewpoint in that way? What are they doing?
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Another that we'll see within the motorcycle community is where brand affinity starts to become political. So you might have some riders of certain brands where they consider the brand really a part of their own identity. And they may shame riders of other marks or look down on them in some way.
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And this tribalism can manifest in a number of different ways.
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You might see people who have this sort of mindset, they won't wave at riders who are riding on the wrong brand of bikes. Or they won't compliment you on a bike when you've just complimented theirs. They'll be like, oh, you're riding that.
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And it doesn't have to be just one specific brand. This can happen in many different directions. But there is that tribalism that can occur within even our own community. And I think it's important for us to just be aware of that and recognize it.
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So let's wrap up.
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Politics, for better or worse, are a part of every activity in some way. And whether it's the definition of what a motorcycle is, or laws regarding safety equipment, noise regulations, licensing, or even where you can ride your bike. Even internally within the motorcycling community, there are politics that may divide us rather than unite us. So my question for you is, what is something you'd like to see changed about motorcycle politics, and why? Share your thoughts through the text to show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.
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I'll talk to you next week.
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