All that said, I don’t understand the obsession testing authorities have with forcing people to do twiddly little U-turns and loops and circles at parade speed. None of that shit will successfully teach you how to ride a motorcycle down the road. It’s pointless frippery for the sake of criticizing people over something that’s truly meaningless in almost all situations. Once you get your license, if you have to get your bike out of a tight parking spot and that requires doing a three point turn and putting your foot down in the middle, is an instructor suddenly going to pop out of the bushes and hand you a fine? Of course not.

The entire point of learning those low-speed maneuvers is specifically to show that you can handle your bike at low speeds.

None of that bullshit is going to teach you how to avoid obstacles at speed, or predict when a speeding car is going to cross your path, or what to do if you get into a tank-slapper, or how to react if you found you entered a corner too fast.

Any idiot can jump on a 600 and go 150, but learning how to manage the bike in any kind of situation (including offroad) is important. I’ve ridden a 600 with very little experience. It’s stupid easy to get incredibly fast.

Avoiding obstacles at speed is something that you learn on a race track, not on public courses.

All of those situations are what cause people to get hurt on motorcycles. Slowly tipping over in a parking lot, conversely, is typically harmless except to your pride and possibly your chrome.

Bikes are heavy. My single-cylinder XR500 is 300lbs. That thing falling on top of me offroad can do real damage.