this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Haha I always love Europeans take on Americans first motorcycle!
I know people tend to say "that wouldn't work in America" for things but I genuinely think that wouldn't work out in America with our speed limits and distances outside of cities. My brother and I took a course together where we learned on a 125 bike, he bought a 250, and I bought a 750 (a cruiser though, not a sport bike so I'm not going crazy fast) and he struggles on some roads we go on. Something like a throughway is pretty much out of the cards for him.
Yeah I kind of get that. I honestly don't feel safe on a highway on something less then 400, especially in southwest America. You might be able to pull it off south east America considering how flat it is and highway speeds tend not to exceed 55mph.
To be fair, I wouldn't want to ride motorways here on a 125 either, although entirely legal and possible.
A 35kw bike might be okay though.
It's like 600cc so yeah that makes more sense now.
I'm not American though. I'm from Belgium, but I'm 35 so I immediately went for my full A licence which allows me to ride any motorcycle.
The way I got my full A was.. interesting.
So, in Italy (where I'm from) they changed the law two months before I got my B licence, in 1991.
Before then, a B would allow you to drive any bike, whereas after the change you had to take a written and driving test for the first A (125cc I believe?) then another for 600cc etc.
Long story short, I couldn't drive bikes above 50cc with my B.
Fast forward many years, I moved to the UK, converted my B to its British version, stayed there 12 years, then moved back to Italy and made the conversion again.
I didn't pay any attention to it, until a couple of years later when I walked to a shop to buy a scooter.
They needed a copy of my licence, so I picked it up, turned it around and noticed that it included the A as well.
"Hold on a second, what can I drive with this?"
"The guy has and look and went "EVERYTHING", so I said to forget about the scooter and bought my first bike instead:)
Basically someone at the licence office fucked up when they converted from British to Italian, I never took any test. Oh well.
Oh damn. What a rollercoaster that was. :D
Oh damn nice! I didn't even know that was an option!
Yeah, the way it works around here is that every licence is age-limited. So you can get an A1 at 18, which allows you to ride a 125. A2 at 20, which allows you to ride up to 35kw I believe, and full A at 24 (or 22, and owner of an A2 licence for 2 years).
Is this just for Belgium or all of Europe?
How new is this? Was this reformed after brexit?
35kw is a very strange limitation I wonder how they came to that number.
It is generally standardised across Europe as far as I know, although the age limits can differ across countries.
No idea when this was introduced as I never really looked into it. And I don't really know why they chose 35kw either, but they had to draw the line somewhere, I suppose. :)