> but given their safety profile (terrible!)
I feel like there's kind of a cycle of unsafety with motorcycles on the social level in the U.S.
There's a societal understanding in the U.S. that motorcycles are unsafe, which results in an increased number of people purchasing motorcycles with the intention of showing off how unsafe (dangerous) they can be. And the cycle perpetuates.
Obviously, motorcycles are inherently less safe in certain ways, like your body is going to fly if you get into a high-speed collision, and that's pretty much unavoidable. But when I visit European countries, it seems motorcycle culture is _so_ much healthier. They are mostly seen as simple transportation tools, a far cry from what I regularly see in the U.S.