this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Jesus that's quite a first motorcycle. In the UK you have to ride a 125 until you pass an extra test. Although I suppose there are certain "intensive training programmes" where you can ride the school's bike until you get your A-license and then buy your own afterwards.
Haha I always love Europeans take on Americans first motorcycle!
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. :)