A motorcycle, often called a motorbike, bike, cycle, or (if three-wheeled) trike, is a two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruising, sport (including racing), and off-road riding.
Motorcycling is riding a motorcycle and being involved in other related social activity such as joining a motorcycle club and attending motorcycle rallies.
The 1885 Daimler Reitwagen made by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Germany was the first internal combustion, petroleum-fueled motorcycle. In 1894, Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first series production motorcycle.
Globally, motorcycles are comparably popular to cars as a method of transport. In 2021, approximately 58.6 million new motorcycles were sold around the world, fewer than the 66.7 million cars sold over the same period.
In 2014, the three top motorcycle producers globally by volume were Honda (28%), Yamaha (17%) (both from Japan), and Hero MotoCorp (India).[8] In developing countries, motorcycles are considered utilitarian due to lower prices and greater fuel economy. Of all the motorcycles in the world, 58% are in the Asia-Pacific and Southern and Eastern Asia regions, excluding car-centric Japan.
According to the US Department of Transportation, the number of fatalities per vehicle mile traveled was 37 times higher for motorcycles than for cars.
The development of motorcycling largely paralleled and often coincided with the development of automobile sports. There was a class for motorcycles in many of the old town-to-town automobile road races, the Paris-Vienna race, for example. The de Dion tricycle dominated the sport in 1897, but two-wheelers like the Werner soon set the stage for an entirely different form of racing. In 1904 the Fédération Internationale du Motocyclisme (renamed the Fédération Internationale Motocycliste [FIM] in 1949) created the international cup, uniting five nations: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, and Britain. The first international cup race took place in 1905 at Dourdan, France. The race for the Tourist Trophy (TT) became the most famous of all European motorcycle races, however. The first TT race took place in 1907 on the Isle of Man, on a course that was the world’s most famous for many decades thereafter.
Motocross (or MX) is the direct equivalent of road racing, but off-road, a number of bikes racing on a closed circuit. Motocross circuits are constructed on a variety of non-tarmac surfaces such as dirt, sand, mud, grass, etc., and tend to incorporate elevation changes either natural or artificial. Advances in motorcycle technology, especially suspension, have led to the predominance of circuits with added "jumps" on which bikes can get airborne. Motocross has another noticeable difference from road racing, in that starts are done en masse, with the riders alongside each other. Up to 40 riders race into the first corner, and sometimes there is a separate award for the first rider through (see holeshot). The winner is the first rider across the finish line, generally after a given amount of time or laps or a combination.
Motocross has a plethora of classes based upon machine displacement (ranging from 50cc 2-stroke youth machines up to 250cc two-stroke and 450cc four-stroke), age of competitor, ability of competitor, sidecars, quads/ATVs, and machine age (classic for pre-1965/67, Twinshock for bikes with two shock absorbers, etc.).
