Passes and Canyons Blog

I’ll cut straight to the chase. I still disagree with U.S. DOT Secretary Mary Peters in her effort to divert money earmarked for motorcycle rider training to promote helmet usage.

The Motorcycle Riders Foundation sums up the issue in this way:

The . . . funds were a direct result of years of intense lobbying by state motorcyclists’ rights organizations and individual motorcyclists from across this country, and were intended for two very specific aspects of motorcycle safety — motorcycle rider education and motorist awareness of motorcycles. These two aspects of motorcycle safety have been grossly under-funded at the state level for years, often solely at the direct expense of motorcyclists themselves through licensing and registration fees. . . . Should Peters get her way, that trickle becomes nothing but a drip.

A little background. I wrote about this first in this post after reading about it in American Motorcyclist, the monthly magazine of the American Motorcyclist Association. I was pretty down on her. Randy Bingner then replied that what Mary Peters is doing for the motorcycling community is substantial and overall, “It is very difficult to be critical when you look at the big picture.”

I told Randy I’d take another look and delve deeper into the issue. Well, I’ve done that. I wrote favorably about her efforts in general two days ago but I still have to disagree on this one point. And I’m not the only one.

Here are three quotes from three organizations that sum this matter up pretty succinctly:

The only true steps to motorcycle safety are proactive measures which prevent a collision from occurring at all rather than reactive steps that may offer some level of injury reduction only after a crash has already taken place. — Motorcycle Riders Foundation

The evidence is obvious: Crashes kill bikers. Conversely, Crash Prevention saves lives. — ABATE of North Carolina

We all know that “safer crashes” are no substitute for “crash prevention.” — ABATE of Arizona

This is what I’ve said right from the beginning. To quote myself, I said “That’s why I believe that diverting funds from motorcycle safety training to mandating helmets is wrong-headed. We all need to wear helmets at times; some of us wear them all the time. We should all also take an occasional refresher training course. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation and ABATE have expanded their offerings lately due to demand. What we don’t need is some bureaucrat, even one who rides, cutting training funds.”

I stand by that statement. The point I want to make however goes back to what Randy was saying. We are better off having a biker sitting in her chair than not. Mary Peters has done a lot of good things in her tenure in office. But nobody is perfect, and even family members can disagree. What we need to do now is not scream obscenities at her for her one mistake, we need to applaud her for the good things she is doing and work diligently and patiently with her in trying to help her see the error of her ways in this one area. And fight it hard in Congress if that becomes necessary.

Biker Quote for Today

Most vehicles have one person in them. So if you have one person riding a 400-pound vehicle, and another person riding a 4,400-pound vehicle, why are you putting the restrictions on the motorcyclist? You should really be putting the restriction on the person driving the SUV. — Jay Leno

We all know that bad legislation that would unfairly affect motorcyclists gets introduced and sometimes passed in legislative bodies at all levels. Who should we thank when these proposals are defeated or revoked? I’ve mentioned the American Motorcyclist Association on numerous occasions, and they do a lot of work in this area. Another organization fighting for our rights is the Motorcycle Riders Foundation.

Here’s what the MRF says about itself on its website home page:

The Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF), incorporated in 1987, is a membership-based national motorcyclists’ rights organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. The MRF monitors and when necessary, sways federal legislation and regulatory action that pertains to street riders. The MRF concerns itself with what is going on in the arena of motorcycling safety education, training, licensing, and public awareness. The MRF provides members and state motorcyclists’ rights organizations with direction and information to protect motorcyclists’ rights and motorcycling. The MRF sponsors annual regional and national educational seminars for motorcyclists’ rights activists and publishes a bi-monthly newsletter, The MRF Reports.

Well, the MRF is coming to Denver. Every year the organization holds two regional and one national conference. The Meeting of the Minds, MRF’s national conference, will be held in Denver this year Sept. 25-28. This is the kind of conference you will want to attend if you care passionately about protecting our rights. Registration before Aug. 18 is $60 for members, $70 for non-members.

The agenda includes topics such as “The Motorcycling Community - Working Together,” an international transport forum on motorcycle safety, impaired riding, state legislative updates, and more, as well as some fun activities and — or course! — a ride.

I’ll be bringing you more information about this as it draws near, and with any luck I’ll manage to attend at least part of it. If you want to attend, here’s the link for registration.

Biker Quote for Today

Training, the best safety and performance “equipment” you can get!

I wrote an unfavorable piece about U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters that you may recall, about her efforts to divert money earmarked for rider training to promote helmet use and state laws requiring helmet use. Randy Bingner replied to that and I’d like to share our discussion.

Randy’s initial response was this:

I suggest step back from your focus on helmet laws and look at everything Mary Peters is doing for the motorcycling community. It is very difficult to be critical when you look at the big picture.

I was interested and wanted to know more. I sent Randy this reply:

I appreciate your comment on my Mary Peters post. I’ll be completely honest with you and say I don’t know much at all about what she has done or tried to do except what I read in American Motorcyclist. I would be really pleased if you would write a guest post addressing that topic. Something to balance out my frankly more superficial take on the matter. Are you interested?

Here is Randy’s answer:

I have been at the Sturgis rally the past week and just got home. You could Google and find no end to information. Basically, in my opinion, the most telling quote from Mary Peters, and I will paraphrase, is that when highways are designed, constructed, and maintained, the motorcycle should not be an afterthought. I am attaching a recent article I wrote for the back page of another newsletter. The fact that this initiative exists is due in large part to the fact that we have a rider at the head of the USDOT. I am an AMA member, but I do not agree with all positions it takes. Motorcyclists are a comparatively small group when you look at all users of the transportation system. The more we get divided, the easier it will be to lose rights and privileges. I am for freedom of choice. I chose to wear a helmet and leather.

So that’s a starting point. I intend to follow Randy’s suggestion and do some research to learn more about what Mary Peters has done, and I’ll pass that along to you. And I want to thank Randy for offering his take on the matter.

I do want to make one other point, however. I stand by my original argument that taking money from rider training to push for helmet requirements is inappropriate. Helmet usage becomes moot if accidents are avoided in the first place. I think rider training is the most important of the two.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride as if your life depended on it!!

Are you aware that your insurance company may be excluding you from coverage on accidents where you are on a motorcycle? It’s a crock of bull but it’s a reality. Some insurance companies refuse to cover injuries incurred while doing totally legal things, like riding motorcycles, even if you are in no way at fault.

How would you feel if you were sitting stopped on your bike at a stop light and some drunk who has already lost his license for driving drunk hits you. You were completely legal and he was completely illegal, and yet your injuries are not covered while his, if he has any, are. It can happen!

This is an issue raised more than 10 years ago by the American Motorcyclist Association, and it was presumably resolved by legislation passed by Congress in 1996. But a funny thing happened on the way to implementation: the federal agency charged with formulating the rules around the legislation wrote rules that directly contradicted the intent, making it absolutely legal for insurance companies to do this.

Well, Congress is trying again. The HIPAA Recreational Injury Technical Correction Act, Senate Bill 616, is now under consideration, and we all need to let our Congressional representatives know we want them to pass it.

The AMA makes it easy for you to tell your senator what you want. This page on their website lets you click to bring up a form letter addressed to your senators. We all need to press to make sure this legislation gets passed. Do it now! This is really important.

Did you know this? I didn’t. Heck, if you’d asked me I’d have had to admit I couldn’t even name the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. But I know it now. That’s her in the photo.

So Mary Peters has been making some news lately, and raising some hackles. In her efforts to promote motorcycle safety she is accused of ignoring the law that prohibits federal bureaucrats from lobbying for or against specific state laws. In the June 2008 issue of American Motorcyclist, the publication of the American Motorcyclist Association, they have this to say:

But that doesn’t appear to be stopping Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who told U.S. senators and representatives she wanted to lobby states to divert federal money away from motorcycle safety training and awareness programs and instead push for mandated helmet use.

Here’s my take on this. She crashed on her Harley and escaped serious injury thanks in part to her helmet. Now she’s a helmet evangelist. I’ve seen this before. About 15 years ago there was a young woman who suffered a head injury when the guy she was riding with hit the median on Orchard Road while going about 70 miles an hour. This was the first time she had ever been on a motorcycle but she told reporters from her hospital bed that she intended to devote her life to making helmet usage mandatory for all motorcyclists all the time. The difference between that young woman and Mary Peters is that Mary Peters is in a position to do something about her convictions.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with advocating helmet usage. There is something wrong, however, with becoming focused so totally on helmets that you dismiss other, equally important safety factors. “Divert federal money away from motorcycle safety training and awareness programs”? I’ve made the point before that wearing a helmet is not a be-all and end-all in motorcycle safety. In the report I was discussing it said that “About 42 percent of riders killed were not wearing helmets.” And I responded that what that means then is that 58 percent were wearing helmets — and they were killed anyway.

That’s why I believe that diverting funds from motorcycle safety training to mandating helmets is wrong-headed. We all need to wear helmets at times; some of us wear them all the time. We should all also take an occasional refresher training course. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation and ABATE have expanded their offerings lately due to demand. What we don’t need is some bureaucrat, even one who rides, cutting training funds.

Oh, and by the way, if the law says bureaucrats can’t legally lobby for or against specific state laws, I suggest the Secretary of Transportation ought to obey the law.

Update
I’ve written three follow-up posts on this subject:
Revisiting Mary Peters, Biker and DOT Secretary
Follow-up on Mary Peters, Secretary of US DOT
DOT Sec. Mary Peters Good for Bikers, Wrong on One Priority

Biker Quote for Today

Everyone crashes. Some get back on. Some don’t. Some can’t.

I’ve been receiving three motorcycle magazines for a lot of years now and they’ve all been pretty interchangeable. That is, they’ve all had the same “favorite rides” features, they’ve all focused on the new bikes each year, and they’ve all had columnists writing about various motorcycling issues. No more. One of them has changed.

American Motorcyclist is the membership publication of the American Motorcyclist Association, to which I belong. I recently received the June 2008 issue and oh my gosh has it changed!

Just for starters, to show how much it is now NOT like the others, there is not one bike to be seen on the cover. I’m not sure any motorcycle magazine has ever published an issue that did not have at least one bike on the cover. What is on the cover is a picture of Jay Leno. We all know Leno is big into bikes, so he’s an appropriate subject for a motomag feature, but it’s not him and one of his bikes, it’s just a tight head shot of Jay.

Inside the issue other changes leap out at you. The opening four pages, once you get past the ads, are photos of AMA members and their bikes — apparently a new feature. When you get to the letters from readers, those pages also feature pictures of members and their bikes. Real people, real bikes. Not these unobtanium show bikes that you so often used to see.

In fact, there are a phenomenal number of photos all through this magazine. Apparently the editors decided that they had way too many words and not enough pictures of bikes, so they rectified that problem. Rather than articles that go on for pages with lots of words and just a few photos, the ratio has been reversed.

Then you come to the feature article, “Hangin’ with Jay.” Again, lots of pictures and rather than a wordy interview, they just quote Jay on various topics: On his first ride; On buying his first motorcycle; On old bikes vs. new; etc. And it makes for good reading. They also took a couple AMA members along on the interview and the whole crew took a ride on several of Jay’s bikes. The two members have a chance to say a few words about the experience. One of them, Nicole McMurray, ends her piece saying:

My favorite story of the day, though, came when we had stopped at the top of the mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean. After Jay put on his helmet to go, a guy on a white Ducati pulled up and parked. Its rider walked over to comment on Jay’s bike. The guy said, “Yeah, I was watching TV and saw Jay Leno riding one of those.” Jay’s response, “Nice to meet you. I’m Jay Leno.”

So there’s still a lot of information in the magazine. But the packaging of that information is radically different. I like it. I’m really impressed with what they’ve done. And hey, no extra charge for the subscription when you’re a member.

Biker Quote for Today

To me it’s more fun to ride a slow bike quickly. Going slowly on an old Indian or Henderson is a lot of fun. I used to say that I don’t like any motorcycle you can’t see through, and there’s something to that. I like to see the motor.
–Jay Leno

I got the obligatory newspaper clipping from my mother the other day. You know, the one that talks about how motorcycle deaths are up at the same time that some states are relaxing their helmet laws.

Let’s face it, moms are just being moms when they send these things. They would rather you didn’t ride at all because “it’s too dangerous” but if you’re going to ride “you’d better wear your helmet every time.” They also tend to believe strongly that all states should mandate wearing helmets all the time.

I disagree. I do wear my helmets (I have several) a lot of the time. But there are times when I do not, and I would argue that I know more about the risk I am taking than someone who has never been on a motorcycle in their lives. I’m also a registered Libertarian, so obviously I believe the government has no business telling me I have to wear a helmet.

So let’s look at the information this particular article presents. It came from the Gannett News Service so presumably it appeared in a number of papers, maybe yours.

I’ll give them credit, it talks about deaths rising on the basis of per 1,000 riders. So many such articles say simply that deaths are up, but fail to mention that the number of riders is up as well. And if deaths per thousand riders are increasing then that is definitely of concern to us.

My issue is with the interpretations that people put on the statistics. They’re much too simplistic. Helmets are not some miracle cure for motorcycle fatalities. For example, the article states that “About 42 percent of riders killed were not wearing helmets.” What that means then is that 58 percent were wearing helmets — and they were killed anyway. It also implies that some percentage of those helmetless riders who were killed would have been killed even if they had been wearing a helmet. To me that says the cause of the accident should be more the focus than the gear the rider was wearing.

Another factor noted is the increase in the age of the average rider. Decreasing physical dexterity and slower reaction times are listed as the suspects.

Then it goes on to say that “Half of motorcyclists killed between 2002 and 2006 lost control and crashed without colliding with another vehicle.” This is what I’m talking about above. How did these accidents occur? Surely some involved other vehicles that may well have been the cause but were not involved in any contact. But in other cases, what we are talking about is rider error. This calls for better training but, again, has nothing to do with the gear the rider is wearing.

The article goes on to say that southern states have higher death rates, and they attribute that to the longer riding season. More time on the road equals more opportunity for accidents. That makes sense.

Then it talks about how the National Transportation Safety Board has taken the unprecedented action of unanimously recommending that all states mandate helmets at all times. Their justification for this is that “Medical and other costs for unhelmeted riders involved in crashes are staggering.” OK, then how about this: Let’s require all drivers and passengers in cars to wear helmets. There are a heck of a lot more of them getting into accidents and surely the costs are mega-staggering. Race car drivers wear helmets. Why shouldn’t mom and pop and the kiddies? Of course I’m sure they intend to imply that motorcyclists who do wear helmets and get in accidents cost the system nothing. That is what they’re saying, isn’t it?

And then finally, at the very bottom of this 51-inch article, they mention that, oh by the way, the two states with no helmet laws of any kind, Iowa and New Hampshire, have death rates of 3.5 and 3.0 per 1,000 respectively. Meanwhile, for example, Mississippi and Maryland, which require all riders to wear helmets all the time, have death rates of 20 and 12 per 1,000 respectively. Of course these numbers are discounted, and are explained away saying that in New Hampshire the riding season is short and in Iowa the ground is flat and visibility is good.

So thanks for caring Mom, I love you, too. But I’ll continue to make my own decisions and I’ll continue to belong to the American Motorcyclist Association and support their efforts to protect our right to decide.

Biker Quote for Today

Gray-haired riders don’t get that way from pure luck.

Have you ever had a problem on the road? Or have you gone out to start the bike and it wouldn’t, and it’s not the battery?

At times like this it can get expensive. Having your bike hauled somewhere to be worked on can easily cost you $100. Unless you’ve had the foresight to sign up for MoTow.

MoTow Roadside Assistance is offered by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) for the piddling fee of $25 per year. You have problems, you call for assistance, and they have “people who know how to tow motorcycles” available to help you out 24/7. The service covers all your bikes and it doesn’t matter what you ride.

Now, maybe you have a pretty new bike and don’t generally have mechanical problems. Good for you. On my old bike, my 1980 CB750 Custom, it can get dicey at times. There have been a couple times that bike has just quit on me. But the MoTow guy has showed up quickly and hauled the bike to the shop. Not a dime out of my pocket (not counting my annual membership).

It doesn’t have to be a problem on the road. A buddy of mine called just yesterday hoping I would have some great idea to get his bike running so he wouldn’t have to spend a bunch on it. He has a newer, more dependable bike, but it seems he left it parked all winter, never fired it up, and didn’t put in gas stabilizer. Bad decision. I’m no miracle worker. But he has MoTow so he called and got the bike hauled to the shop. He’ll have to pay for the carb cleaning himself. That one use of his MoTow membership will pay for his membership for three years.

There is a catch here. MoTow is only available to AMA members. AMA membership is $39 a year. So that’s not quite such a savings, right?

Well, you get a lot more from AMA than just access to MoTow. You get a monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, which has a lot of good reading, but that’s not really the important thing. What you get with AMA membership is representation in government. We all know the limitations non-bikers continually try to put on us and it’s not pixies who fight those battles to protect our rights. It’s the AMA.

Here in Denver they recently passed an ordinance that allows the police to ticket bikers whose exhaust pipes are not OEM. The idea is to fight noise but it is so wrong in its implementation. It basically says that it doesn’t matter how quiet your bike is, you can get a ticket if it is not an OEM muffler and pipes. Never mind that while the cop is writing you a ticket, a really loud car or truck may pass by, ignored by the cops. The ordinance is clearly discrimination against motorcyclists. And the AMA is on the case. They haven’t gotten it changed yet but they’re still working on it.

I could talk a whole lot more about what the AMA does, I’m a real believer in the organization. But I’ll save that for another time. Right now, just think about the fix you might find yourself in if your bike breaks down on you and how good it would feel in that case to know that help from MoTow is just a phone call away.

Biker Quote for Today

A friend is someone who’ll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you’re broken down.

Noisy motorcycles have drawn the ire of the Denver City Council and the Council has now passed an ordinance singling them out. This is good and bad.

The good is that the Council is trying to address the legitimate concerns of the populace. Let me give an example. The issue is about noisy bikes downtown when the bars close. Closing time is 2 a.m., so a lot of people who live downtown are asleep . . . until the biker boys rev their engines. My dentist lives downtown and periodically I’ll mention one of my bikes or one of our trips. Then he’ll go into his usual rant about the racket the bikes make late at night. He has every right to be unhappy and I’m sure he welcomes this new ordinance. I’m happy for him.

The bad is that the ordinance wasn’t necessary, and in singling out motorcycles it does nothing about noisy cars or noisy trucks. The city already has a noise ordinance and what the police need to do is enforce it, regardless of vehicle type. The way this ordinance works, your bike has to have a muffler with a particular stamp on it, and if you don’t have the stamp you get a ticket. So what if you don’t have the stamp but your noise is within legal limits? Too bad. American jurisprudence is now turned on its ear and you are guilty until proven innocent. In the meantime, while the cop is writing you a ticket, an illegally loud truck drives by unmolested because the cop does not have a decibelmeter to prove that he is in violation. Or to prove that you are not.

The police say they can’t afford to issue decibelmeters to all cops so this discrimination against motorcyclists is warranted. Well, downtown is a very finite space and Lodo, where most of the action is on a Saturday night, is even more so. How about giving those cops decibelmeters, or at least a few of them, and have the ones with the meters come to the assistance of the ones without when needed? No, that would make too much sense.

Fortunately the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) got wind of this and is getting involved. With any luck, their experienced team will lead the Council to an acceptable alternative. But if you ride an obnoxiously loud bike, don’t think the AMA is going to save your butt. They’ve made it clear that they have no love for overly loud bikes making people hate bikes and bikers. If you’re over the noise limit it won’t bother them one bit to see you get a ticket. As long as it’s legitimate and not carried out in a way that illegitimately targets bikers and excludes other actual violators.