It's the texting mommy in the Suburban that makes motorcycles dangerous. Then of course there are the guys who want to ride a wheelie down the interstate. Just wait until you do your ER rotation...

 

Yeah, ER is something I'm NOT looking forward too.
hat shit's hectic as hell for someone who is just getting into the field.
Will take time to grow on me but for sure ill be giving it my all.

 

Having grown up on & rode bikes most of my life, I'll throw in my thoughts on that. Yes other people and stupidity are the biggest threats when riding a bike. The next biggest threat is lack of skill. There's not a gixxer made that is suited for a beginning rider.
Sport bikes take top level performance and pair it with a relatively low entry price. That puts the average guy in a place to buy a whole lot more than he can handle. That gets you into trouble. Getting on the power to early when coming out of a curve, wanting to explore the speed, etc all equate to a bad time.
It's like buying a supercar (Ferrari, lambo, or whatever else) and not having the driving skills to actually use what you have. It's a recipe for disaster. Learn to drive fast in a low power car allows you to transfer those skills to a high power car. Same with a bike. Starting out with high power isn't good. You'll never learn anything about how to ride because it'll either scare you or hurt you.

 

I agree bikes are dangerous moreso because of other people but you get very used to paying attention all the time and predicting what dumb shit people are going to do. I've been dailying my cbr600rr for a couple months now and it's my first bike and I've had a couple close calls with idiot drivers but I always knew they were gonna do some sus stuff and either slowed down or sped up before they could. Bikes can be safe if and only if youu are always on your toes.

I don't agree with needing to start on a 300 to be safe or fast though, and I'm living proof of that lol. Just respect the bike and know that every second you're on it, it's trying to kill you, and you'll be ok. If the op does get a bike and does start on a 600, just take it very easy for a month until you can start to get a feel for the bike and predict what it's going to do, then you can gradually push the bike more and more until you approach the limit.

Sure you'll learn faster on a 300 than a 600 but you'll also get bored In a month and your wallet will take a nice fat hit when you sell it and buy a 600.

I guess what I've been getting at is that bikes can be safe but only if you're a safe rider and learn to recognize and avoid seemingly benign but potentially dangerous situations.

 

Bikes. They will improve your situational awareness dramatically. Or they will mame/kill you. One of those two things.

I can't emphasize enough, get a small bike to start. Small bikes are more nimble and fun to toss around anyway. The fun of a bigger bike is the virtually limitless power. The fun of a smaller bike seems to corelate with the S.

They are really making some cool new small bikes that are suitable for entry level, but that you won't need to graduate to a larger bike. Two of my favorites are:

KTM Duke 390
CBR300

 

Hey guys just found another car we didn't discuss compared to the 3 we did (Honda S2000, Mazda MX-5 Miata, BMW E46, Porsche Boxster).

Was doing more research and came across another car that fit my range:
Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class SLK280

They are selling for around $9500 for 90k miles (2006) which I'm guessing isn't too bad.
They are V6 engines which is great.
They come with convertible hardtop which is great.
They come with manual transmission which is great.
They look comfortable (so it seems) for long trips which is great.

I tried to do some research on their maintenance costs etc .... but couldn't find much info on them.
They seem pretty reliable.
What do you guys know about this car compared to our previous 4?
Would you go for this 1?

 

Question:

You mentioned you wanted to get a S2000 for $8k but then have been wondering about getting a E46 M3 or a SLK for more, why not just up your s2000 budget to that?

Also, I don't want to assume things, but if you're a traditional student, you might want to go get an insurance quote on these cars as well. I'm assuming a SLK or M3 won't be cheap.

On the SLK, I'm not sure on reliability.

 

I canceled out the BMW/Porsche/Audi because of their maintenance costs & the reason I was thinking about paying more for them is because they looked good and thought their re-sale value would be higher but when I added in their maintenance costs I realized (also people on forum told me) it would be way past any "re-sale" value.

So then I went back to the $8000 area in which I was going to go with the Mazda Miata as you can't get a decent Honda S2000 for that price range.
But now for around the same price range as the Miata I found the Merc SLK 280/350 so wondering about it b/c I couldn't find much info on it myself.

 

As bad as it gets for maintenance cost. The higher cost of any vehicle when new correlates almost directly to maintenance cost. People buy the most expensive car then complaine about cost to own.

 

German cars. The cost to maintain them can be shocking, and only goes up as they age. Cars value naturally goes down with age, then the high maintenance makes the value go down much faster. Hence you can buy high end used German cars for surprisingly cheap. But unless you will do the maintenance yourself, you will pay a lot for that inexpensive car.

There is a saying, there is nothing so expensive as a cheap Porsche. The same can be said for most any high end German car.