Born-again bikers: Why I've never got on a motorbike, and why so many men my age suddenly are

I HAVE NEVER ridden a motorbike. Not once, not even round a field as a teenager, not even on the back of one as a passenger.

It isn’t that I dislike them. I love the look of a nice retro Norton as much as the next man, and there’s something about the sound of a Ducati that I adore. I just know myself well enough to know it wouldn’t suit me.

I like doors. I like a roof.

I like the small, boring comfort of being in a metal box when something goes wrong, rather than being the only soft thing on the road. I also just don’t have the coordination. I stumble getting out of bed in the morning and hit my shin on the edge of the bed I’ve got out of for years.

So I watch the world of biking from the outside, and lately what I’m watching is interesting. A good few men I know, roughly my own age, have taken it up in the last year or two. Not lads starting out.

Men in their late 40s and 50s, mortgage mostly paid, kids mostly reared, suddenly turning up with a bike in the driveway and a look on their face I haven’t seen since they got their first car.

Born again

It turns out there’s a name for this. Bikers call it being a born-again biker: someone who rode in their 20s, gave it up for family and career, and comes back to it once life settles down a bit. It happens everywhere, not just here.

A Canadian study a few years back found injury rates among older male riders climbing sharply while the figures for younger riders and women stayed flat, and put it down to exactly this: a wave of men in their late 40s and beyond getting back on two wheels as a leisure pursuit.

I mention all this because the Road Safety Authority published a new report recently, the Motorcyclist Spotlight Report, covering fatalities and serious injuries between 2021 and 2025. It’s sobering reading, and buried in the numbers is a detail that lines up with exactly what I’m seeing among my own friends.

The single biggest age group among motorcyclist fatalities in Ireland over that five-year period wasn’t young lads on their first 125. It was riders aged 46 to 55, who made up 22% of the total. Not far behind them was the 16 to 25 age group, at 21%. Two very different kinds of rider, two very different stories, showing up in the same grim column of the same table.

Between 2021 and 2025, 117 motorcyclists were killed on Irish roads and 954 were seriously injured, and 2025 was the worst year of the lot, with 30 deaths, the highest since 2007. The sad passing of Glen Hansard (a man in his 50s but also someone who had been riding motorbikes for almost his entire adult life) also brought this into sharp focus in recent weeks.

So if you are one of these men or are thinking about becoming one, what does getting on a bike actually involve in Ireland in 2026?

Getting back on the bike

The first thing that surprises people is that you cannot simply throw on a helmet and go. Motorcycling is the one area of Irish licensing where you are legally required to complete structured training before you’re allowed on a public road at all. It’s called Initial Basic Training (IBT), and it has to be done with an RSA-approved instructor before you can ride even as a learner.

First timers do 18 hours of it, covering everything from basic control and slow-speed manoeuvres to emergency braking and road positioning. You do your theory test, get your learner permit, complete the IBT, and only then are you legally allowed out with L-plates front and back.

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The licence itself is tiered by power rather than being one-size-fits-all. A1, available from age 16, covers small machines up to 125cc. A2 covers medium-powered bikes up to 35kW, from 18. Full Category A, no power limit at all, requires you to be 24, or 20 if you’ve already held an A2 for two years and want to step up through what’s called progressive access.

If you’re in the born-again category, there’s a decent chance you already hold a full licence from decades ago and never lost the entitlement, in which case you can walk into a dealership tomorrow and buy whatever you like. Legally, at least. Whether your reflexes and 30-year-old habits have kept pace with a modern bike is a separate question entirely, and one worth being honest with yourself about.

This is where the RSA numbers earn their place in the conversation again. Failure to observe was the single most common factor recorded for both motorcyclists and other drivers in serious crashes. Losing control accounted for over half of single-vehicle injuries.

None of that is exclusive to older returning riders, but if you haven’t been on a bike since the Berlin Wall came down, a refresher course before you go anywhere near a fast road isn’t admitting defeat. It’s just sense, in the same way that a driver who hasn’t been behind the wheel in years might do a lesson or two before a long motorway trip.

What should you buy?

On the bike itself, the advice from people who actually know what they’re talking about is fairly consistent, and it isn’t what your ego wants to hear. Don’t buy the biggest, meanest machine in the showroom as your first bike back. The genuinely well-regarded starter and returning-rider bikes tend to be forgiving middleweights.

Think Honda’s CB650R or CBR650R, Kawasaki’s Z650 or Ninja 650, Yamaha’s MT-07, Suzuki’s SV650. All are A2 compliant in restricted form, all are considered friendly rather than fierce, and all are common enough on the used market that spare parts and expertise are easy to find.

A modern middleweight will comfortably outperform whatever superbike lived in your memory from 1994, so there is genuinely no need to go straight for the biggest number on the spec sheet.

If you’re at the stage of actually shopping, DoneDeal’s motorbikes section is worth a browse, whether you’re after a first bike, something to ease back into it, or the gear that goes with it. As with any secondhand purchase, take your time checking the history and condition, and don’t let enthusiasm outrun good sense on the test ride.

As for me, I’ll stay where I am, behind a windscreen, envying the sound of a nice bike going past on a Sunday morning without ever being tempted to buy one myself. But I’ll admit there’s something admirable in a man deciding, in his 50s, that there’s a version of himself from thirty years ago worth getting back in touch with.

Just do the training, buy sensibly, and remember that the other driver very often simply doesn’t see you. The numbers are quite clear on that point, even if the rest of us on four wheels would rather not admit it.

To hear more on the topic you can listen to DoneDeal Cars sponsored Driver’s Republic Podcast where we cover the topic this week in depth with Mark Noble and Dave Humphreys. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Paddy Comyn is the head of automotive content and communications with DoneDeal Cars. He has been involved in the Irish motor industry for more than 25 years.

Journal Media Ltd has shareholders in common with DoneDeal Ltd.