My motorcycle pet peeve is that if you ride bicycles routinely the control differences between bikes and motorcycles become potentially dangerous, especially while riding the motorcycle. I'm not sure how to align their controls more, but if your bike has a rotary handle shifter and one day on the motorcycle you "shift" with the throttle, it's not going to go well. There are a number of other possible control goofs you can do that aren't great.
I ride both regularly and I don't really have a problem switching between them. For me, the overall experience is so entirely different between the two, that my brain knows to treat them differently. Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
(Blipping the throttle accidentally should never cause an emergency unless other things are already going wrong: for example, if you are riding a bike whose power is way beyond your skill level or you are following someone too closely.)
> Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
My riding mower is tank-steer (zero turn)... pretty hard to use those skills on a car. But steering wheels basically work the same on all the equipment I've got with those; some easier to turn than others depending on geometry and power assist. The pedals are more likely to be different --- the mower has a friction lever on a panel to set the throttle / engine speed and levers you hold to go forward and back on right and left (so this does steering too); the tractor has similar throttle level, and then a pedal that you rotate to go forward or back with both wheels (all wheels if you put it into 4x4) and it has a splitable brake pedal if you want to brake on one side or the other.
But yeah; none of that makes it hard to go back and drive a car. Other than sometimes it'd be nice to do some tight turns at the expense of my tires if I could control each side individually.
I regularly swap between a scooter and motorcycle, owning both.
The big difference being left hand leaver on a motorcycle is the clutch, rear brake is right foot, on a scooter, no clutch so the left hand leaver is the rear break.
When I first got the scooter I was expecting the obvious accidental muscle memory confusion with the left leaver when swapping vehicles. For some reason it just never happened, never accidentally gone for the clutch on the scooter and never accidentally gone for the rear brake on the bike.
Another problem is that on most bycicles right leaver is the REAR brake, while on motoryclces it FRONT. It make difference when braking in turns. I was actually considering swapping my bike brakes left to right but it turns out one of the cables is too short. :(
The UK and Us drive on different sides of the roads and are taught to user different arms for signals as a result. If I'm going to turn I need to both slow down by using the brakes and signal to others. thus I want the rear brakes (even thought front can stop faster I don't want to risk losing traction on that wheel in traffic)
1991, first time riding a motorcycle... After a 15 minutes instruction course near the barn from which we extracted the 200 cm³ bike, off we were in Idaho's mountains. As a 15 years-old French person, the whole experience was exhilarating and it wasn't long before I started to relax and open the throttle a bit on the dirt track...
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.
I standardize all my two wheeled vehicles to the motorcycle layout for this reason. It bothers my push bike friends to an amusing degree but it's much safer for me. Plus I feel I have greater control of the critical front brake with my most dextrous and strong hand.
I regularly ride both bikes and motorbikes and this never has been a problem, even though the lever that is the rear brake on the bike is the front brake on the motorcycle.