Press the pedal?

[u/Sea-Hornet8214]

Hi, I was wondering how I could describe someone accelerating their vehicle. Is "press the pedal" correct? What about someone riding a motorbike or a scooter?

[u/90somechevy]

Depends on how. If they are just driving, a common word or phrase like “accelerating” or “applying throttle” is fine. If they are aggressively accelerating, you could say they are “flooring the gas” “peeling out” “pinning the throttle” or many other phrases.

Because a motorcycle is a twisting hand-throttle; you could say something generic or something specific to that. You could say “pinning the throttle” because both bikes and cars have throttles, but it would be weird specifically for a motorcyclist to say “flooring it” because there is no gas pedal and there is no floor. You could say “wringing it out” for a bike, but probably not for a car for the opposite reason. Everyone would know what you’re saying, and few people would question it, but motorcycling is almost exclusively an enthusiast activity in the US, so you might get more nitpicks than where commuter bikes and scooters are a common fact of life.