The personal mobility and feeling of liberation that people had experienced with the bicycle intensified when the motorcycle appeared just before World War I. The 1912 Bradbury motorcycles were one of the earliest with variable gearing. Sidecars were provided primarily for women passengers because it was considered unseemly for them to sit astride on the driver’s seat. Motor cycles and their side car was the most affordable and versatile from of transport during this period. They declined in the late 1920s,when women were socially permitted to ride astride on the main seat.