“It's like my Legs”: Negotiating ageing and mobility in a motorcycle-dependent society

In rapidly ageing societies, ensuring inclusive and safe mobility for older adults is an urgent policy challenge, particularly in contexts where motorcycles remain essential for everyday travel. This study examines how older motorcycle riders in Tainan, Taiwan, navigate their mobility amid intensifying policy, infrastructural, and bodily constraints. While transport policy and media discourses often frame older riders as dangerous and in decline, this paper juxtaposes such symbolic representations with the lived practices of older adults who continue to ride out of necessity, habit, and autonomy. Drawing on Social Practice Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study analyses 92 government documents, 276 media reports, and 20 in-depth interviews with older adults across urban and suburban communities. This integrated approach reveals how discursive constructions and everyday practices interact to shape mobility in later life. Findings reveal a persistent disjuncture between institutional narratives that responsibilities ageing individuals for risk and the experiential realities of those managing mobility through embodied competence, localized heuristics, and emotional attachment to motorcycles. Voluntary withdrawal from riding is promoted as moral governance, yet often occurs in the absence of viable alternatives, especially in rural or transit-poor areas. The analysis reveals this misalignment as a mobility gap – a space where symbolic governance replaces structural provision, and ageing becomes an object of regulation rather than care. By foregrounding mobility persistence over cessation, the study calls for more context-sensitive and justice-oriented approaches to ageing and transport policy. It contributes to emerging debates on mobility justice by showing how older riders are not passive risks to be managed, but skilled actors negotiating constrained environments with dignity and resolve.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2026.102263
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140526000113
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/22141405
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Cheng, Tsu-Jui
  • 0000-0003-2775-6396
  • Liu, Yi-Chien
• Publication Date: 2026-5

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 102263
• Serial:
  • Journal of Transport & Health
  • Volume: 48
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 2214-1405
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22141405

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aged drivers; Driver performance; Driving cessation; Mobility; Mode choice; Motorcyclists
• Geographic Terms: Tainan (Taiwan)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01978615
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 4 2026 5:05PM