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Comment by sema4hacker | Hacker News Reader

This is two-wheelers, not cars.

Motorcycles. Or perhaps scooters - they are form we rarely see in the US so I'm not sure exactly what to call them.

I usually call the scooter ones mopeds, even though they lack pedals. Or sometimes Vespas, even when they're not made by Piaggio.

The US, broadly speaking, does not make a distinction between step-over and step-through two wheeled motor vehicles in any category.

Again, broadly speaking, over 30mph is a motorcycle, under 30mph is a moped (unless it's an ebike with pedal assist, but only in some states). It's complicated.

You used to see a lot of scooters (step-through motorcycles or mopeds) in California college towns but ebikes have decimated that market.

It's a lot more reasonable to use a motorcycle or scooter as your main form of transport when the max speed you are likely to encounter on the roads is 40MPH. In the US you will be sharing freeways with people going 80+MPH in SUVs daily.

As someone who always avoids four-wheeled cages if possible, I can say highways are more or less safe if you have a fast enough motorcycle, compared to slow lane filtering with big vehicles on the road. Tiny spaces, poor visibility, and things that crush you on a slighest mistake is a dangerous combination.

If you look at the "motorcycling countries" (SEA, India/Pakistan, Africa, Latin America, etc.), most terrible accidents happen because trucks share the road with an army of scooters. I've been to a few of them on a motorcycle and it's a nightmare. For the same reason, big cities in China introduced dedicated scooter lanes separated by concrete barriers.

Legally, they’re all motorcycle. Unless they’re mopeds (50cc, speed limited).

But colloquially, if it’s a step-through, it’s called a scooter. Most of which have a CVT transmission, where most motorcycles have a 6-speed manual (toe shift) transmission.

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