What makes the Honda 3 wheeler more dangerous than a quad bike?

So I was talking to a guy about motorbikes, 3 wheelers and quads yesterday. He said that the 3 wheeler didn't have something and that made it dangerous and was the reason quads are more successful. I know they have no suspension etc and obviously have one less wheel but what else is there? Something about the actual engineering of the vehicle? I'm not talking about inexperienced riders. Anyone help?

The biggest problem is that cornering while decelerating is likely to cause a "high side" crash. Old-timers remember the venerable steel tricycle for children and the introduction of the Big Wheel cycle in the '60s. The upright steel tricycle fairly quickly disappeared from the market because the low design was so much safer.

I have a friend who rode and raced dirt bikes for more than a decade before he tried out a three-wheeler in the desert. He said it really scared him. His biggest complaint was the solid rear axle, even as he admitted a differential would make it worse. Anyway, he was making a turn and ran over a ridge of rock exposed through the soil. The front wheel bit on the rock and made the nose tuck in sharply, and an instant later the rear wheels bit instead, making the nose run wide. He over corrected and had to use body English, completely hanging himself over the side of the ATV, to prevent it from rolling over. He said he expected to have to let it go before it settled down on all three wheels again.

Three wheelers,… Can flip over back-wards very easily, on abrupt acceleration,. Or going up a steep incline… That is the issue with them.

They have not been made for a long time now, because of tip over problems. The government put a stop to them

2 wheels in front is much more stable as the weight pushes toward the front when you slow down and turn. They call them 1-2 or 2-1 referring to the front vs rear wheel setups. Notice the new Can am spyder has a 2-1 setup.

Three wheels and center of gravity.

You can tip most of them over on flat ground with the engine off by leaning.

Turning while accelerating or braking was next to impossible (without a fair amount of skill/practoce).

They had suspension, but they did not have a differential, which means that in a turn the inside wheel is rotating at the same speed as the outside, this in turn means that when turning the trike has compromised grip, which adds to the compression of the inside suspension.

On level ground that makes the trike less stable, but on rough, or worse, sloping ground combined with a high centre of gravity, weight distribution and a short wheelbase (distance between fore and aft wheels), then the result is that it will turn over trapping the rider underneath.

The govt' made them illegal to save us from ourselves. Ridden properly, they are as safe as anything… Look at all the old ladies riding Harley and goldweiner trikes these days.

Physics. It's simple. 3 wheelers are bad designs. Just ask your kid who road that tricycle and kept falling.

About as safe to ride as a nuclear bomb. Very hard to steer. Easy to flip over. Hard to find one still running now.

Biggest problem with them was turning. Due to the lack of a differential the only way to get them to turn was to lift the inside wheel ie lean outwards on the corners. Scary but fun until you found yourself going diagonally down a steepish slope into water & found the only way to not end up in the water was to tip the whole thing over on yourself. Nasty bloody things