http://cellar.org/pictures/bmwscooter.jpg

BMW is trying to address the safety problems of scooters and this is the item they're coming out with. Obviously they're trying to do what cars to and provide a safety zone where the rider is.

Of course, this won't be available in the US.

So what happens in a crosswind?

IMO, people in the 1st World have to become less risk-averse. Either that or while we're huddling in our super-safe cocoons, a bunch of people from developing nations are going to blast by us in nuclear-powered motorcycles and leave us in the dust. And I don't want to have to learn Swahili, Gujerati, Hindi, Russian, etc...

When I was in high school, decades ago, I did a report on nuclear power and visited Peach Bottom. The PR person there went into a mild diatribe about how the US made them install containment vessels around reactors when the Russians didn't have to. He sounded annoyed at this. This was a few years before Three Mile Island and about a decade before Chernobyl.

Sometimes the US is too risk averse, but I personally would still prefer us to err on the side of caution.