Yep, perception and the belief that manufacturers are encouraging people to do dangerous things, such as ride at very excessive speeds, on their products. Which is exactly why we have 1) the fastest production motorcycle and 2) the quickest production motorcycle. And that helps sell bikes but it also alerts some other people, notably politicians, that we must 'do something' about this horrible problem, whether it is either horrible or even a problem or not. This is not new either, the big four American car manufacturers signed into an anti- racing plan back in the 1950's when cars started to produce a lot of horsepower and go considerably faster (1957 if memory serves).
Perception trumps reality every single time: red sports bikes doing 80 MPH are far more of a danger, and actually going much faster than an old- man's fat sport- tourer doing 80 MPH, especially if ridden by an old man. Sounds silly but it works the vast majority of the time.
And once is a while someone really does 'do something' about this pressing problem- the French limit motorcycle hp to 100 so bikes such as the C-14 (or GTR1400) have air restrictors put into their intakes, as well as any other motorcycles sold and used in France. Now a realistic look at motorcycle fatalities will show that there is absolutely no need to have more than 100 hp to slaughter people by the dozens of thousands but hey, as long as they 'did something', that is what counts, right?
On a more sane level, Germany was tired of picking up German carcasses and their motorcycle wrecks and instituted a new law; a new motorcycle license holder was limited to 600 cc max. for the first two years after receiving his / her motorcycle license. Then that person could ride anything. And BTW, the person did not have to actually ride <any> motorcycle for the first two years, simply let the two year time- out run out and viola! This actually had a positive effect on reducing motorcycle deaths in Germany, or so I have been told by several German nationals.
Brian
I found this. Not sure why the C-14 is 155, other than the fairing would make it less stable above that speed.
Or the agreement changes from 186 to 155 for certain class of motorcycles.
Best Answer: The OEM Japanese manufacturers decided to limit the speed of any bike that could approach 200 mph to 186 mph.This was done in 2001.Mainly the reason was to keep the goverment from stepping in and setting horsepower limits.In 1980,in the USA,we had senators screaming about "Killer Superbikes" and wanting to set HP limits then. Luckly, it did not happen. This Agreement was widely reported on in 2001 by all the M/C magazines.
Ride safe, Ted