#innovations

What a time to be a motorcycle rider. Why, you ask? Because motorcycles today are faster, safer, and more comfortable than ever before. Moan all you want about motorcycles becoming too smart for their own good, but it’s this very technology that allows us to be faster, safer, and more comfortable. Today no one will deny the motorized bicycle being superior than the horse and carriage, nor will they deny the advantages of electric starters over the kickers of yesteryear. But it’s really been the last five to ten years that we’ve seen a huge technological jump in motorcycling. Here are some notable advances seen on today’s motorcycles.

Looking back 30 years at things auto- and moto-motive is like stumbling into those caves in France with the caveman art. I remember my dad’s Volare wagon with the slant-Six and the newfangled emission controls on the carburetor that ensured it ran like crap when it ran at all… Actually Japanese motorcycles were way ahead of cars at the time, but the miracle of modern electronics and the computer chip has rendered everything of that era antique. And the rate of progression of the last decade or so, if it keeps up, makes it impossible for my Cro-Magnon brain to even imagine what lies ahead. I tried anyway.