I was shocked as will most readers be. Which is more environmentally friendly: a motorcycle, with its little motor, or a car, with its big one?
The surprising answer, as it turns out, is the car, according to a segment on the Discovery Channel series MythBusters, which opened its new season on Wednesday.
On the show, the MythBusters tested three cars and three motorcycles, one each from 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. They measured fuel efficiency as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitric oxide emissions. Kent Johnson, an assistant research engineer at the University of California-Riverside, oversaw the analysis of the data that showed harmful pollutants from the tested motorcycles exceeded those from the cars tested, the university reports.
