MP3: A Bad Idea

Piaggio MP3, 250cc, $7000 plus delivery charge, license, dealer prep, you look like a sucker, and first drive devaluation charge. Don't you want one? 

There's a scooter that costs $7K because it has two wheels in the front and one in the back and still allows you to lean around corners, yet locks you upright under 10 MPH so you don't have to put your foot down at stoplights. Because that's really terrible. It's called the Piaggio MP3, and while it's popular enough in Europe, where it costs half as much as they charge in the USA, its not a big seller here, mostly due to cost. Almost like they don't really want to sell them.

The MP3 has competition, another trike with a big engine for the Harley crowd, the Can Am Spyder. They're $17-19K and after often for sale used, the same way that MP3's in America are often for sale used, low miles. There's a good reason for this: they aren't popular. Probably because they aren't very fun or worth the money. In the old days of the 1970's, people used to take wrecked VW bugs, cut off the body, save the drive train, mount a chopper wheel to the front and fit a Barcalounger over the middle and a box over the engine and call it a trike. People still ride these. They're comparatively cheap too. The one in the video is a much fancier presentation, moving the engine up into the center. Not traditional. Probably safer though.

Speaking of tradition: nearly everyone has a bicycle or ridden one enough to have an opinion about them. Most say they're fun, just not that practical for transportation once you can get a car and start going actual distance to things like a job, a girlfriend, away from all the obnoxious stuff a bike is just a toy or for exercise. Fair enough.

I want you to imagine that the argument used by MP3 owners, that 2 wheels in front is safer, were used on a bicycle. Make it lean too. But charge twice as much. Would anyone buy this? Anyone who isn't as rich as Jay Leno, whom I approve of his car collection and enthusiasm because he has a huge place to store them and paid mechanics to do the work to maintain them. Jay Leno is rich. He's retired. He is allowed to have toys.

A normal person? Not so much. Would those who accept the argument about safety apply it to a bicycle too? Would they regret it because its slower and makes them look like a doofus? Its belt-and-suspenders. If they had a choice between the two front wheels on a bicycle or a (beater) car, for the same price, which makes them look better and which is actually more fun? And safe.

And if you got to choose between the doofus bike and say a motorcycle for the same price, which is better? I just finished reading an article about the number of bad accidents on bicycles, half of them self inflicted, are hard to track because bicycle accident statistics don't necessarily result in emergency room visits. If accurate statistics existed, would bicycles be regulated as viciously as cars and motorcycles? Would the ability to balance on two wheels be discarded as surely as the right to imbibe in nicotine by smokers before 1988? Yes smoking kills. So what? Living kills, eventually. I imagine these same Nerf Herders would conclude that we should THINK OF THE CHILDREN and bicycle accidents would be reduced by mandating (unpaid) dual front wheels for added grip. So imagine our present socialism takes this and mandates that 2-wheeled bicycles are "unsafe", riding them is a crime with criminal and civil penalties, just like they're done with self defense firearms or making your own choices about health insurance, or that time that they banned adult beverages and funded the Mafia back into political power back in the 1920's. It's not that hard to picture is it? They keep doing stupid things, after all, and blame the children for it.

Imagine if your two-wheeled bicycle was made illegal and you had to replace the front fork and wheel with two of them, and a fancy suspension but it made you slower, added weight, and doubled your front contact patch from 1.3 square inches to 2.6 square inches. Plus 12 more pounds to the bike frame. Wow! So helpful. Since you never ride in the rain anyway. We will call this the BP3, the Bike Power 3 (wheels), a sort of reverse leaning trike.

Well, what's so wrong with that aside from weight and cost and being slower. Its got double front grip and takes up twice as much space on the road so you're far more likely to get side-swiped in traffic but you don't have to put your foot down at a stoplight. Because that's a huge hardship on a bicycle. Major. A total deal breaker for cyclists everywhere. And if you see a bump in the road, you're going to hit it. No more dodging stuff like you did on two wheels because the contact patch is barely an inch or two wide and now its two and a half feet and you're halfway into the lane and cars are honking at you in town and right up against your rear tire. Because cars are really respectful to vehicles that move slow enough to be pedestrians. And always see them, the which is totally why recumbent bikes are so popular in traffic and have to carry flags to avoid being smooshed. Where do you park this huge thing? You can't just hang it on the garage wall anymore. It's too big.

Because all bikes use designated trails and bike lanes are totally wide enough as it is and nobody ever parks in one and roads don't narrow, ever, and shoulders aren't rough and full of broken glass. Yep.

These are problems that the MP3 can avoid, sort of, by having a motor. They're still as invisible as any other motorcycle and have small wheels like a scooter so potholes remain a huge danger which big wheeled scooters and motorcycles can roll through more safely. And cars just find annoying rather than dangerous. A car that costs the same or less than an MP3 does.

I get that there's a market for MP3 scooters in Paris, where streets are crowded and wet and the city is so dense it predates cars so there's no parking anyway, thus on-sidewalk parking of scooters is sensible, and the rain makes that double front grip much safer, and the puddles and dog crap are things you don't want to put your expensive barista/banker loafers in, in Paris. What about the rest of the world? Maybe this is why the MP3 doesn't sell in the USA. And why they don't bother lowering the price, and why the WHO isn't publishing statistics on bicycles injuries and deaths to enflame the shrieks of "What about the CHILDREN!!" from the sad lonesome Nerf Herders who need to save everyone from free choice and fun.

Maybe insuring nobody buys an MP3 is a good thing? After all, it could lead to this:

Do you really want to share the road with that? Or ride one in a rain storm with a cross wind? And no heater. So thank you Piaggio. You're doing us all a service by keeping these things off the road.