J.Kb mentioned the scooter shooter in NYC picking people at random and I wanted to expand on that.

Old time readers know I have a very much standing (and well-founded) paranoia about motorcycles. It took a lot of reprogramming to figure out motorcycle culture in the US is a whole ‘nother animal that the one from Venezuela. First of all, people in Venezuela that need to use motorcycles, could not afford a Harley or any of the big cylinder bikes, nor the super-sporty rice burners or pasta squealers.  By the same token, Americans do not understand that a lot of people down there use low powered motorcycled because they are cheap, easy to maintain and can ride around the perennial gridlocked traffic of the mayor cities. And that ability to lane split (even if it is illegal) make the scooters and low powered bikes and advantage when your business is crime.

Scooters are still used, but they dropped in popularity by the 80s. They were too easy to steal and seen as not very macho for the Latino mind, my buess is the thing with the legs: sitting daintly versus ridding with open legs. Go figure.

This is pretty much the ideal bike for the “motorizado”:

Different variations, permutations and brands from 50 cc to 250cc make it the preferred means of transportation for the poor. They do things with it that we would do with cars, of course, safety is not a big priority.

Now, i can drop another thousand words and not be able to accurately describe the utter madness of tens of thousands of this bikes during your daily commutes, so I add a couple of videos or normal traffic conditions in Caracas.

And, of course, it makes it easy to approach any car and rob the occupant at gunpoint.

Now you guys get why I have this issue with bikes?

I may get better…. one day.