Why Some Riders Quit: Exploring the Real Reasons Behind Hanging Up the Helmet

So I'm gonna start with something that is probably more common for riders who quit early in their riding career rather than those who've been riding for an entire lifetime, and this is where they've had a negative experience.

And all too often, that negative experience is usually the wrong bike.

Especially for a brand-new rider, they might have gotten a bike that was too big or too heavy.

They're intimidated by the weight, and they felt that they couldn't manage it during parking, and quite frankly, it just psyched them out.

They were convinced by that one friend that started on a Street Glide that it'd be fine.

You can have that big bike, no big deal.

But for most people, you need to work up your comfort with a bike.

Jumping from a maybe 20-pound bicycle all the way up to an 800-pound dresser or 900-pound dresser is an enormous change, and they likely would've been better served starting with something smaller and then moving up as their needs dictated it.

Now, another reason that they might quit is too much power.

There's a reason that there is graduated licenses in most of Europe.

You start with something lower power, and then you move up over time.

A brand-new rider with a 200-horsepower sport bike is not going to end well in most cases.

Whiskey throttle is accentuated by all that power, so starting with a bike that has less than 50 horsepower and less than 650 cc on the upper end is going to be more likely to ensure that you're gonna have a good experience with a bike.

Another reason why some people will have gotten the wrong bike for them as their first bike is they got something that was too expensive.

You dreamt of getting a Harley, and you splurged $30,000 for it, but now you're terrified to drop it, so you only ride it in perfect weather and on perfectly straight roads.

You're never able to grow as a motorcyclist because of the worry.

Now, a cheaper bike would've allowed you to try out more and not been so worried about doing something as inconsequential as scratching the paint.

And it doesn't mean that you will have no care at all about a bike just because it was a cheaper bike, but there's less of a psychological barrier to worrying about having any of that damage occur, which means you're more likely to grow and learn with a bike that isn't so putting you into dire straits just from an expenditure where you're worried about how much money you have into that and any sort of impact on it.

Now, the last category I'll say that for getting the wrong bike, and this is, this is actually a pretty natural one and one that at first glance doesn't appear to be a problem, but this is where you got the same kind of bike as your friends.

And you hear that and you say, "Well, but that makes sense because then I have something to ride with." And that is a good thing, and riding with friends is a great experience.

I'm not diminishing that in any way.

But the thing is, you are the new rider, and while your friends might like that particular category of riding, that may not be the category of riding that you actually enjoy.

And one of the challenges is that there could be such intense peer pressure, saying, "No, you have to ride this way, and this is the only style," that you start to think that that's the only kind of riding that you can do, and so you give up because it just doesn't resonate with you.

And it doesn't have to be that it's only one versus another.

This can happen in whatever category your friends might be doing.