Carrying a pillion and luggage: what changes, and what to change

Take a machine at this catalogue’s median kerb weight of 126.5 kg and add an 80 kg rider: about 206 kg in motion. Add a 65 kg pillion and it is 271 kg — thirty per cent more mass, high up and well behind the centre of gravity.

Kinetic energy is ½mv², so at the same speed the same brakes have thirty per cent more energy to shed. The load moves rearwards, so the front tyre carries less weight and has less grip to give. Acceleration falls by about a quarter, because it falls in inverse proportion to the mass rather than with it, and near the bottom of this catalogue’s power range — 5.8 PS against a maximum of 47 — that decides whether you merge or wait.

The suspension is where you notice it first. A spring set for one compresses further with two, using up travel that was there for potholes. The machine sits lower at the back, the steering slackens, ground clearance drops — the lowest here is 135 mm — and the headlamp tilts up into traffic.

• Brake earlier and more progressively. The stop takes longer, and the lever feel gives no warning of it.
• Leave a bigger gap. Same argument as the wet-road one in riding in the monsoon : you are braking from further back.
• Take speed breakers slower. Two-up on a low scooter, one taken at your usual speed will bottom the suspension.
• Raise the rear tyre pressure to the two-up figure on the manufacturer’s sticker. Nearly every machine lists one and nearly nobody uses it.
• Tell the finder whether you ride solo, sometimes two-up, daily or with children — it weighs seat length, suspension and storage differently for each.

Nearly every two-wheeler sold in India has an adjustable rear spring, and the adjustment is free: a stepped cam collar at the bottom of the shock, turned with the C-spanner in the toolkit, usually with five positions.

Turning it up does not make the spring stiffer. It compresses the spring before anyone sits on the machine, raising it back to the height it was designed to sit at when loaded. Preload changes ride height under load, not spring rate — and set right for two-up riding it gives back the travel, the ground clearance and the headlamp aim the pillion took away.

Turn it back down when you ride alone again: maximum preload with one light rider is harsh over broken roads. Two minutes each way, and it is the largest improvement available to a two-up rider for no money.

Then check the headlamp. Most machines have a beam adjuster behind or below the lamp. If drivers flash you when you are carrying someone and never when you are alone, that is why.

A pillion who feels safe sits still, and one who sits still is far easier to ride with. The hardware that decides it costs nothing to check in the showroom.

• A grab rail they can hold with their hands in a natural position. Split rails either side of the seat beat a single rear loop, because a loop makes a pillion lean back and pull against braking instead of bracing into it.
• Footpegs that fold out and are reachable without stretching. A pillion whose feet dangle has nothing to brace against and will hold onto the rider, putting their weight into the steering.
• A pillion seat that is a seat rather than a shelf. Pillion comfort here is scored 40 to 80 as an editorial judgement by this project, not a measurement, and the bottom of that range is unpleasant.
• Enough seat length that they are not perched on the back lip. Sit on it together in the showroom, with the person who will actually ride there.

Brief a new pillion once, properly: hold the grab rail or the rider’s waist, keep both feet on the pegs at all times including at traffic lights, look over the rider’s shoulder on the inside of a turn, and never get on or off until told. That last one causes most low-speed drops with a pillion aboard.

Families carry children on two-wheelers in India because there is often no other way to get to school, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What helps is knowing what makes it less dangerous.

• A child must be able to reach the footpegs and hold on. If their feet do not reach they cannot brace, and a child who cannot brace comes off under braking. That is a physical limit.
• The other limit is staying awake. Children fall asleep on long rides, and only a harness helps when they do.
• Central rules now require the smallest children to wear a crash helmet and a safety harness, and cap the speed while one is aboard. The detail and the enforcement are matters for each state, so check what applies where you ride.
• A child standing on a scooter floorboard has no restraint of any kind and sits between the rider and whatever the machine hits. It is common and it is not safe.
• An adult helmet does not protect a child. It has to fit.

For this a scooter is usually the better machine: a flat floor, a lower seat, a step-through frame that makes getting on and off easier, and somewhere to put the school bag. Scooter or motorcycle has the rest of that comparison.

This is the least ambiguous fact on the site. Every one of the 26 scooters here has underseat storage and apron storage. Not one of the 38 motorcycles has any. That is not a gap in the data — it is the shape of the market. A motorcycle carries luggage only when you add something to it.

Twenty-three litres does not sound like much until you try to carry a helmet on a motorcycle. On a scooter you park, put the helmet under the seat and walk away. For errands with somebody on the back, that one feature decides more than any figure on the spec sheet.

On a motorcycle, luggage is something you add, and how you add it matters more than what you buy.

• Low and forward. Weight carried high and far back makes a machine weave, and the effect grows with speed. A tail bag strapped onto the seat behaves far better than a top box on a tall rack holding the same weight.
• Four straps, not two. Anything that can rotate will rotate. Strap it so it cannot move in any direction, then shove it hard before you set off.
• Nothing loose anywhere. A strap end, a bag handle or a sleeve that can reach a chain or a wheel eventually does.
• Keep it off the exhaust, the number plate and the tail lamp. A bag melted onto a silencer is a small disaster; an obscured plate is a stop.
• A rucksack is the worst place for anything heavy. It raises the centre of mass and in a fall it sits between your spine and the road.
• On a scooter, the front hook is for light shopping. A heavy bag there swings under braking, spoils the steering and can foul the front wheel.

Check the payload figure in the owner’s manual. A machine at the light end of this catalogue’s 99 to 241 kg kerb-weight range, carrying a rider, a pillion and the shopping, can be carrying more than its own weight again, and the tyres, wheels and brakes have a written limit. If you are regularly at it, the answer is a bigger machine — what engine size do you need sets out what that costs.