I was old enough and financially independent when I started riding motorcycles such that it didn’t matter what my dad had to say about it. However, being one of the lucky guys who gets along with his dad, I didn’t want to ruin things. While he rode a Vespa across Europe in nothing but a dress suit during the fifties, a few nasty auto accidents late in life (he’s almost 80 now) turned him into a worry wart.
Your mom might be a different story. Mothers are emotional and sometimes immune to reason, and for good reason. Usually their instincts are right. My dad, on the other hand, is a very logical man. My approach was to smother him in facts. Spend a few hours on Google and you’ll be amazed what you’ll find. A few of the gems I found in one particular study (recent, not the Hurt report):
- 50% of riders killed on motorcycles were not wearing helmets. Almost all of these died of head trauma.
- 30% of fatal motorcycle accidents involve illegal levels of alcohol or narcotic intoxication.
- The MEAN (mathematical average) engine displacement of motorcycles involved in fatal accidents is 1000cc. Do the math and you’ll realize that the number of people who die on 250cc bikes must be a tiny proportion of the total population.
- I don’t remember the exact figure, but I believe something like 60% of all motorcycle accidents don’t involve a second vehicle. This is a great one to counter the “I trust you, but I don’t trust all the OTHER idiots on the road.” This suggests that rider error is the dominant cause of accidents.
- …
Now of course, you can find some other study which will contradict the facts above. In fact, the Hurt report — perhaps the most famous, but horribly outdated, motorcycle crash study carried out in…the seventies perhaps? — looks pretty bad for riders. It suggests that collisions at low speeds with other vehicles cause most fatalities. The thing to remember here is that a) motorcycling as a sport was in its infancy at the time; most people that rode didn’t have an ounce of training, b) the equipment available was much less responsive and easier to crash, and c) nobody wore any gear.
Another thing I did was to stress the performance difference between the bikes she associates with “crazy biker types” and the bike you’d be on. I didn’t tell my dad that I was already drooling over 600cc supersport bikes. I just pointed out that a literbike can hit 60mph in under 3 seconds, and most can hit 100 in first gear…often in around 5 seconds with a good launch. The Ninja 250R, on the other hand, hits 60mph around as fast as a zippy sports sedan (~5.5 sec, like a regular WRX or something), and has a very friendly throttle response. No twitch of the wrist will increase your speed by 20mph instantaneously. Blah blah blah….people are idiots and buy bikes they can’t handle and they die…blah blah blah.
You get the idea. Giving this ammo to your Dad might be the best way for you to go, since it sounds like she might not hear anything you have to say.