Re: Fear!

Thread approved.

Re: Fear!

I started riding my dad's motorcycle at the age of twelve, but the real motorcycling instincts came way later. I upgraded from a RX100 (absolutely bonkers and an outright hooligan) to a Dominar 400 (a rather sane motorcycle). But that's something I would never recommend a newbie.
As far as motorcycles are concerned, start slow. Practice on an old or used motorcycle. Have a friend or a grown-up supervise you. Do make mistakes but don't get disheartened. If you stall the bike or drop it in the parking lot, no worries. Be it the average biker or Rossi, everyone started somewhere. Since all motorcycles are not same, learn how a motorcycle functions, work on your motorcycle, get some skills, prove it to your parents that you have what it takes to ride or own motorcycles. Having their support helps tremendously.

Most importantly go ride the damn thing...!

Re: Fear!

In the west, they have dedicated motorcycle schools and even for trained motorcyclists, they have seminars for skill improvement.

The least you can do is, learn from an elder. And follow all traffic rules. Drive slow in the beginning. Then, there's some video tutorials on YT to improve your basic skills - Motojitsu, Bret Tkacs, Moto Trek, Chaos Causes etc.

Always treat every ride as a new ride. There is always a surprise waiting on road, no matter how experienced or old biker you are. It's that fear of surprise that often saves you from making mistakes.

In Germany, learning to ride a bicycle is a basic skill and school subject (like swimming etc).
Then you can take gradual steps up to the big motorcycles, if you want.
As Zapps mentioned, we have mandatory motorcycle riding schools.
Riding highway (>> 100 kph) and at night. And 9 basic riding skills like brake and swerve or slow slalom and fast slalom etc.
For the unlimited mc license your riding test bike must have at least 44kW (60hp). It will probably weight more then 200kg.
That will do it for daily riders to feel comfortable to ride any reasonable bike.
If you had a long riding break or just want to refresh your skills, there are a lot of 1-2 days riding classes with professional instructors. On the race circuit or in the dust/mud or just common traffic. But best is to stay in training.