[litesong]

Motorcycles are dangerous. If you are poor & don't have good medical insurance, you can find yourself permanently injured, instantly on the gov't dole, in a rest home & worse. Scooters are inherently unstable & even more dangerous. Since they are slower(which you may think is safer), you'll slow following drivers(specially on hills), & that in itself may be dangerous. At the least, it is not fun if you have a stack of cars behind you, with your throttle floored.

Riding a cycle to save money often doesn't work out. Despite better mpg, tires wear out quickly. Often the rears wear by 5000 miles. I had a front tire that wore to 11,000+ miles, but would wash out in gravel, even at slow speeds!

BBBUUUUTTTTT....... riding a cycle is GREAT! My 1980 Suzuki 450, w/engine balancer was wonderful. If you can do without big HP, you can get excellent used smaller displacement bikes fairly cheaply, despite the great increase in new cycle costs over the last 2 decades. Lots of people buying smaller displacement bikes, quickly move to larger displacement bikes.

Tho smaller displacement, smaller bikes have lots of power. I even changed my sprocket, counter sprocket & chain, to lower rpms by 15%, & gained 10% in mpg(to 75mpg). Suzi even gave 67mpg, fully loaded for a camping, spotting scopes & camera gear vacation around the western U.S., even to 14,000 foot Colorado mtns. Suzi was much smoother & highway fitted with the higher gearing. Hopefully, in present times, smaller bikes should already be geared properly for highway travels.