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Question:

Are the controls on a motorcycle the same in the UK as they are in the USA?

I‘m wondering because they drive on the wrong side of the car and street over there, and their bicycles have the brake levers reversed.

Answer:

Motorcycles have the same controls in the same position since the 1970s when the US demanded that all imports have standardised controls. There are few manufacturers in the UK, Triumph and some small concerns like CCM, most of the bikes here are Japanese. Some older British bikes had the gear and rear brake lever position reversed (and I believe Indians) before the US demands. Racers often use a reversed sequence for gear selection – first up, others down this is to help change gear in corners and is not used on the road (except by wannabees). btw it is the rest of the world, with some significant exceptions – including Japan, that drives/rides on the “wrong side”, thanks (partly) to Napoleon Bonaparte.
I believe all production bikes these days are the same- front brake/throttle on the right hand, clutch on the left, rear brake on the right foot, gear selector on the left. Gearing is 1 down, 3-5 up. There are some vintage bikes, particularly British, where the foot controls are on the opposite sides, and on some of these bikes, the gearing is 1 up, 3-5 down. Also, vintage Indians have the hand-controls reversed, the urban legend about this being that it was a move to keep the Indian riders loyal to Indian bikes, rather than going to Harleys, where they'd have to get rid of their old habits.
Traffic has been using the left side of the road for at least 2000 years; it allowed horsemen to greet or defend against passing horsemen with their stronger, right hand. The change to using the right side is relatively recent, and probably due to larger horse-drawn wagon drivers sitting to the left of their multiple horses in order to control them with their stronger, right hand. Just as in cars now, the driver wants to be sat at the inside of the road rather than at the offside to better judge the clearance for passing vehicles. Some countries therefore switched to using the right side of the road, while others continued to use the left to avoid confusion (especially when they didn't share land borders with other countries, like the British Isles, and didn't have cross-border traffic to contend with). Just as in a car, even though the drivers position switches sides, the throttle is still the right-hand pedal, the brake in the middle and the clutch on the left. Like others have said, motorcycle controls have been standardised for some time also.

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