Opinion: Self-Balancing Bikes are a Disservice to Motorcycling

I’m a big fan of the Tokyo Motor Show. You better believe that a culture that has developed vending machines for dinner suits and does an interesting line in edible gym wear will usually be able to throw a few curve balls when they let their industrial designers off the leash.

My favourite Tokyo Show concept car was many years ago and amounted to a one-box van with full-length aquariums containing tropical fish where the side windows would go on a van destined for Earth.
But I think the Japanese in general, and Honda in particular, are taking the piss this time around. One of the big two-wheeled concepts this year was an electric motorcycle from Honda. Big deal, I hear you say, electric bikes have been around for ages. And, yes, they have. But what makes this one different is that it’s also a self-balancing motorcycle.

It looked very much like a concept bike rather than a production-ready thing, but that’s not what worries me. What actually really concerns me most is Honda’s clear desire to build a motorcycle for people who don’t like motorcycles. Doesn’t that simply defeat the purpose?

Think about it: balancing a bike on the move and remembering to put your foot down at the traffic lights are skills and responsibilities that you take on when you decide to terrorise the neighbours via a two-wheeler without pedals. Buying a machine that frees you from those responsibilities will only appeal to those who have never done it before. People for whom fear of toppling over in the driveway is possibly the only thing keeping them from riding. So in short, it’s really people who shouldn’t be allowed out by themselves anyway.

Okay, if you somehow lost both legs in a nasty industrial paper-cut incident, then I’m on your side – I’ll help Honda build you a bike. But if you feel you need a self-balancing motorcycle because you’re simply the forgetful type, then, no, you and I aren’t going to find much common ground on this subject.

Seriously, if, as Honda clearly hopes, you’re going to choose one motorbike over another on the basis that one can balance itself, may I respectfully suggest you rack off and collect Star Wars figurines. Oh, you already have? Well, how about curating them? (Notice how ‘curating’ has become the new word for any act of organising, cataloguing, storing, displaying or collecting? Just as your local Non-Hazardous Waste Logistics Specialist used to be called the dunny man.)

Opinion: Progress is Overrated

Also, what about the other dangers of riding a motorcycle (not that I’d previously considered a bike that falls over at rest dangerous, just typical)? What’s going to happen the first time the conehead who buys a self-balancing bike hits a wet tram-track on a busy city street? Or gets doored by a bogan leaping from his Belmont to get a few bob on number three in the sixth? And here’s another thing to consider, Honda (and anybody else considering such nonsense): motorbikes are already, and have always been, self-balancing. Once you’re beyond about walking pace, gyroscopic force from the wheels takes over and you stay upright ’til those wheels are stopped by you (via the brake lever) or some other force (a fence paling through the spokes).

The overriding danger of a self-balancing bike is just the same as it is for many other technologies, things like airbags, ESP, autonomous braking, clutchless gearboxes and, of course, the autonomous car. Via technology, you’re making something available to people who are fundamentally not cut out to attempt it in other circumstances. In other words, we’re fooling with natural selection here.