The common man’s judgment between a car and a motorbike is largely guided by their price, the risks of driving the vehicles and the insurance coverage received by them, rather than the technical details.

Although the price depends on the product being bought, the average cost of owning an average motorcycle is less than that of an average car. However, the price of fuel used in a motorbike is more than that used in the car. This is owing to the fact that car fuel contains certain friction moderators that lowers the price of this fuel. But, some technicalities prevent the use of such friction moderators in the motorbike fuel.

Photo by Mike Birchall

In case of accidents too, motorcycles seem to score a little low, with their reputation being a little on the darker side of the line. Statistics show that 776.57 motorcycles meet with accidents for each 100 million miles ridden. The number of cars facing accident for each 100 million miles ridden is 423.13 i.e. almost half of that of the bikes. Then again, the rate of fatalities in bike accidents is almost 4 times that in case of car accidents. The figures collected for the number of cars causing fatal accidents is 15.72 out of 100,000 registered cars.

The same data in case of motorbikes reads 64.88 bikes out of 100,000 registered bikes. However, some studies also show the innocence of bike drivers in case of certain accidents. It is often seen that, in case of a car and bike crash, the car driver is the one responsible for the accident. This is because, they usually tend to overlook the motorcyclists due to the latter’s small size.

However, all these negative reviews about a motorbike concerning accidents, have lead the motorcycle insurance companies, including the likes Carole Nash, the most popular insurance company in the UK and Ireland to refrain from providing coverage for personal and passenger injury to the owner of the insured motorcycle. These coverage thus have to be bought separately by the owner. The owner of a car, though, faces no such discrimination.