Listen, I can't teach anyone critical thinking skills. That's why I'm sincerely hoping that if you're reading this piece (or heck, RideApart in general; might as well aim high, right?) that you already have them. And also, that you have a reasonably good grasp on how to tell what's real from what's not, whether or not you agree with it.
I also have a sense of humor about most things, probably including things that I shouldn't. But motorcycle safety is a topic I take pretty seriously, and that's why it makes me incredibly mad that someone seems to have taken advantage of an unfortunate yawning gap in MSF basic motorcycle safety course options in the Northern Illinois/Chicago area to completely hallucinate a course that appears to have NEVER existed.
At the top of our piece, you'll find a screenshot taken from an extremely sketchy-looking article that calls itself, "How to Enroll in the College of DuPage Motorcycle Safety Course." Now, if you have zero familiarity with the Chicagoland area and its geography, nor with how MSF training has been offered here in recent years, then none of this will spark your spidey-senses.
I may not actually be Pepperidge Farm, but I do still remember.
As I've mentioned before, I've spent my entire life either in or around Chicago and the surrounding area. Although I love to travel, this is the area I know down to my bones. Chicago is famously located in Cook County, but DuPage County is one of its neighbors, and the College of DuPage is that county's community college of note.
Now, in the past, it's true that there have been community colleges in Northern Illinois that have offered Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) Basic RiderCourse (and additional RiderCourse, in some instances) offerings to the public. Usually, they're a part of those schools' Continuing Education programs, and a really cool thing about the state of Illinois is that the basic course has been subsidized for a long time.
Riders could pay just $20 (for real), bring their appropriate gear to the three-day class, and learn on the school's beginner bikes in the parking lot of their selected community college. Classroom and range instruction was part of the package, and as long as you put in the work, you could get a certificate at the end saying that you passed the course. In Illinois, that meant you could then head to your local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) location, pay the requisite fee to have your license updated, and get that beautiful M endorsement added to your license.
With just 3 days of work, you too could easily become a fully licensed motorcycle rider in the state of Illinois. Brilliant, right? I certainly think so; I mean, I've been making good use of my license ever since I got it! But alas, I digress.
It's A Great Motorcycle Safety Program, But This Specific School Has Never Offered It
Now, back to your critical thinking skills. If you take a look at this sketchy AF article, even if you have no idea about the geography or history of motorcycle safety training in my area, the images (they're not photos; I don't know what to actually call these) used to illustrate this piece are clearly messed up. The longer you look, the wronger they get.
They're pretty evidently AI-generated slop, and they're almost like some kind of extremely dumb eye test. The top one has a little banner across the top saying it's from the "College of Dulrage Continuing Education Center," overlaid on an imaginary word situated in between it and the word "photography." On the wall in this image, there's a misspelled sign that reads, "How do I enroll in the College of Dulage Motorcycle Safety course?"
The misspellings are both plentiful and inconsistent. The AI can't even decide what the name of the school is. Heck, the first mangling of "DuPage" has a strange character that seems to split the difference between a lowercase 'j' and an 'r.' Duljrage? Dujage? Gul Dukat? My head hurts from trying to even parse this, you guys.
The second image, which I've (un)helpfully screencapped and annotated in the image at the top of this piece, is even more ridiculous. Where to even begin?
There's an inexplicable mirror coming out of what I assume to be the instructor's arm (he's wearing an orange safety vest and the other riders aren't). The road sign he appears to be pointing at has a cross on it, for some reason? Not a perpendicular intersection; a straight-up cross, which I've never seen on a road sign. Have you?
There's a weird "Helmet On, Always" sign below the hi-viz orange and black cross sign, the bikes look copied and pasted, the two male learner riders on the left side are either identical twins with identical taste in motorcycle gear and captured at exactly the same angle, or else they too are copypasted. The one female rider is in yoga pants, a sports bra, and an open-faced helmet, because why on earth would she be wearing proper motorcycle gear to A MOTORCYCLE SAFETY COURSE THAT ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES YOU TO WEAR PROPER SAFETY GEAR IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE?
Yes, I'm yelling, because it's absolutely absurd. And yes, I know some riders don't wear all the gear all the time, but if you're taking A MOTORCYCLE SAFETY COURSE, I can tell you that your instructors will insist that you do for the duration of the class, at the very least. What you do on your own time outside of class is up to you, but in one of these courses? Nope, because it defeats the entire purpose of the class. It'd be a bit like showing up to a math class and expecting not to have to do any equations, or showing up to a movie theater and not expecting to see a movie, wouldn't it?
And that's before we even get into the text of the thing. The 'information' it offers seems to be general info about the MSF Basic RiderCourse, which is a curriculum that programs offering MSF Basic RiderCourse instruction offer to all their students, regardless of location. That information, such as it is, isn't completely terrible if we take it as a general indicator of what you can expect to learn at any random Basic RiderCourse.
What IS a problem is the AI's feeble attempt at localization. Because the thing is, the College of DuPage does not currently and has not offered this course in the past, period.
If you're familiar with MSF courses in this area, you're probably experienced enough that you're not the hopeful person this piece is targeting in the first place. But if you don't know any better, and you're just looking for a place to take an MSF course and learn how to ride a motorcycle, then you're going to be sorely disappointed because the AI decided to hallucinate an entire motorcycle safety course at a community college near you.
I don't know about you, but that really bums me out.
MSF courses in Northern Illinois have had a tough time in the past few years, and hopeful students wanting to learn have either had to enroll in much more expensive private courses, travel quite far to take an MSF course elsewhere in the state, or else put their dream of riding a motorcycle on hold.
I dug into this a bit in 2025, because I learned that a new rider had actually died a few years back while taking a three-wheeler course at Harper College. In fact, there was an entire lawsuit about it that got dismissed; and yes, I've read the court documents, which are public record. People I spoke to during the course of my research did not specifically confirm this as a reason that MSF training in the region was disrupted. However, they did mention that the rising cost of insurance was a factor.
In any case, I have reached out to COD to let them know that this misinformative slop exists, and also to ask if they have any plans to offer such a course in the future. They got back to me quite quickly, and told me that they are not currently offering motorcycle safety courses at the time of writing (March 2026), and that they have notified the head of their department about this AI slop page so something can be done about it.
Think Local, Read Global
This is a hyperlocal example, but the fundamental concepts are, I believe, universal, as this is far from the only example of AI-generated hallucinatory slop out there, even in as specific a niche as motorcycle training.
If the bots (or the people telling the bots what to scrape) think it'll get someone's eyes on it and it can generate revenue for them, they'll pull it, and it doesn't matter to them whether there's a single grain of truth to it or not. Or whether it's helpful, unhelpful, inaccurate, or downright unsafe. Who cares if the money's green, right? So that leaves us humans no choice but to be vigilant.
But you, reading this right now, I'm guessing that most of you are probably human, and that most of you care about motorcycles, powersports, and probably also your fellow riders. Even new ones; after all, without new riders, any sport or interest dies out, right? And you want them to have good, useful information.
So I'm asking you to please call out nonsense like this when you see it. Don't let it slide. Don't ignore it and say to yourself, "well, people should know better." The way this trash proliferates is if we all collectively pretend that we don't see it.
Instead, we should all treat it like roadside garbage. Some jerk left it there, sure, and it's unfair and annoying that we have to clean up someone else's mess. But at the same time, we can all benefit if we clean it up and throw it in the bin where it belongs.
Leave the Internet better than you found it. Take a few minutes, look up the pertinent email address, and let the appropriate people know when you find something extremely sus like this.
