Interesting changes, I guess rooted in the accident/fatality rates for younger bike riders.
I find your faith that those who love telling us all what to do know what they're doing is touching. I'm often suspicious of the motives of those in Brussels and Westminster; I'm certainly sceptical that there is any evidence to suggest that 3 wheeler drivers have seen a sudden worrying increase in accident stats. Maybe it's more likely that it's the easiest way to oblige drivers of 3 wheelers to wear crash helmets - put them into the motorcycle category.
Cast your mind back to the 90's to european commissioner Herr Bangemann's determined efforts to limit the maximum horsepower of all motorcycles to 100 BHP despite a complete lack of statistical evidence that a bike with, say, 125 bhp is inherently more dangerous than one with 100 bhp. In the end Bangemann was forced to back down by a vote of the european parliament - the first time an unelected commissioner had been made to bend before the will of the elected body. At the time, no BMW motorcycle produced more than 100 horses, and the suspicion was that the commissioner had been encouraged by the bavarians in order to limit the attraction of japanese machines, although it would have had serious impact on Triumph and Ducati. For Triumph it would have been catastrophic as a large part of their range had outputs above the limit. I heard a story that John Bloor (boss of Triumph) told the chairman of BMW that if the ruling succeeded, he would not rest until the same principle of limiting power output was applied to cars too - what's sauce for the goose and so on.
