Passes & Canyons Blog

If you live in Colorado there’s a good chance you occasionally ride in Utah and Nebraska, east and west of us. This current legislative session they’ve both had some potentially good bills introduced that have to do with motorcycles, but it doesn’t look like anything will make it into law.

In Utah they have a bill that would allow lane-splitting. Lane-splitting is when bikes go down the road between cars when the cars are stopped or slowed way down in traffic jams. California is the only U.S. state that currently allows this, and it works fine there. More than that, the rest of the world does it and it works fine all over the world. Go to Paris or Rome or just about any place of your choosing and see how well it works. Why do we have to be the dummies who think there’s something wrong with this?

Well, Utah is going to stay a dummy. According to a story in the Deseret News, “Several members of the House Transportation Committee said they had safety concerns about HB281, and they voted 7-1 to table the measure until more study is done.” Can you say “dead”? Why this euphemism about “tabled”? Well the guy who introduced it–a Republican I will note–said he’ll reintroduce it next session. Till then . . .

Over in Nebraska they’ve been kicking around the idea of repealing their helmet law. I don’t care how stupid you might think anyone is to ride without a helmet, I simply believe it should be the rider’s choice. I always wear a helmet these days (not true in my younger days) and so this law would have no effect on me, but I just don’t think it’s the government’s place to forcing us to be “safe.” Why don’t they outlaw using cell phones when you’re driving? They’d save more lives that way, if that was truly what they cared about. Of course they’d save even more lives if they just outlawed motor vehicles. You know what they say: If it saves even just one life . . . !

So will you be able to ride lidless in Nebraska soon? Not likely. As in, fat chance.

They do apparently have the votes to make it happen, if it could just come to a vote. But guess what? The opponents are filibustering it. Who cares what the majority wants, if we can keep it from coming to a vote the minority rules! I couldn’t have been more pleased when the U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the filibuster rules there. The Republicans screamed bloody murder but you better believe they’ll be overjoyed for what Harry has done the next time they’re in the majority.

But hey, it’s just like baseball: There’s always next year.

Biker Quote for Today

“The motorcycle, being poorly designed for both flight and marine operation, sustained significant external and internal damage,” police noted.

I got the update on Sunday as to the revisions in the MOST legislation that are in the works.

MOST, as you may recall, is Colorado’s Motorcycle Operator Safety Training program and it has been under attack from various sides for a variety of reasons. Most recently the issue has been that the state administrators of the program have wanted to direct most of the money to motorcycle awareness programs and the like, away from the rider training programs for which MOST was created.

After attempts to bring about changes administratively, it was decided that the only way to deal with the situation was through legislation. According to Terry Howard, state coordinator for ABATE of Colorado, all of the training organizations who work with the MOST program, “including one of our enemies,” as well as the Colorado Confederation of Clubs, have agreed on some proposed wording for revision of the law. Now the folks who work to ensure that language is right before it gets enacted into law will take a crack at it and it is hoped that two legislators, a Democrat and a Republican, will introduce the bill in the two houses of the legislature.

Here are the changes, as proposed. I have put the new language in italics:

In the paragraph where it spells out the purpose of MOST, language would be added to say “that promotes motorcycle safety awareness including but not limited to, share the road and impaired riding programs and supports courses . . .”

Next it tweaks the mandates for how the money will be spent. The strike-out represents a change to the current language:

(e) The office shall not expend more than fifteen twenty percent of the total cost of the program for administrative costs, and not more than ten percent for promotion of motorcycle safety.

A new paragraph would be added that reads:

(f) Seventy percent of the total program funds shall be used for tuition subsidy for all MOST-approved courses, with the intent of keeping training accessible and affordable, thereby enabling more persons to enroll in and complete such safety training and to encourage persons to seek continuing training.

So now we’ll see where this effort goes. Terry says that, being bipartisan, there should be no reason it fails to pass, but who knows about anything these days.

Biker Quote for Today

We can’t crash an infinite amount of times, so you better learn from every one!

It’s snowing out so probably no one other than Dom Chang is going to be out on a motorcycle around the Denver area in the next few days. Check his blog and you’ll see he rode to work today.

For the rest of us, it’s a bit of down time and that makes it harder to come up with things to write about here. So it’s time for a few odds and ends that I’ve been hanging onto but that don’t have enough to them to make a full post.

Plug Pulled on Sugar Pine Ranch Rally
I never made it down there and now it’s too late–the Sugar Pine Ranch Rally is no more. This rally was down in the Mancos area, west of Durango, and every year I thought it might be a fun one to go to, but I never did. Maybe that’s the same for a lot of people, and that’s why they pulled the plug.

I had some email communication awhile back with a guy who is a volunteer working the rally and I’m sure he’s pretty disappointed. He told me that, “We have put in hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to build a 1/2 mile of road and clear all the deadwood on this two hundred acre working cattle ranch.. it is all worth the effort.” I see from the email that that was way back in July of 2007. Well, at least they had a decent run. Here’s a full story in the Durango Herald.

Enterprise Will Now Rent Motorcycles
Do you remember when nobody rented motorcycles? A long, long time ago I was living with another guy, a roommate, and we decided we’d really like to do some motorcycle riding. So clueless us, we went to a nearby dealership figuring we would just rent a bike for a few months. They laughed us out of the store.

Times have changed, haven’t they? Now you’ve got the big guys like Eagle Rider and nearly every Harley dealership, plus all sorts of small-time guys like, here in Colorado, Colorado Mountain Moto, Sports Rent Colorado, and Western Dual Sport Motorcycle Adventures, and those are just three that advertise on this website.

Well, I guess it had to happen: Enterprise Rent-A-Car is now renting motorcycles. As the email I received with the announcement says, “This launch marks the first entry by a major car rental company into two-wheel rentals in the U.S.”

Initially, it’s just in Las Vegas where this is going on, and they’re only renting Harleys. It will be very interesting to see if the program rolls out across the country. Eagle Rider, you may have some competition.

Trying Out VikingCycle Warrior Motorcycle Jacket
I’ll have more about this later but just a mention here. I get contacted a lot by online motorcycle gear sellers wanting to send me stuff to try out and write about. Of course I’m happy to try out new gear and pass the word if I like it–or not. Although there have been a few times when the products I received were such crap that I decided not to waste my time or yours writing about how bad they were.

Well, most recently I’ve been in touch with some folks at MotorcycleHouse.com and they sent me a leather jacket. The brand and model (I guess) is VikingCycle Warrior. Having, as I said, received some real crap at times, I didn’t know what to expect. I have to tell you, when I opened the box and pulled this jacket out I was pretty impressed. At the very least, my first impression is that this is one heck of a nice jacket. As I say, I’ll tell you about it in detail once I have a chance to really try it out.
_________________________________

OK. Now we just need for this snow to stop and for the weather to warm up a bit. I want to go riding this weekend. I have a new jacket to try out, and I received my cord to use my electric vest on the V-Strom. I have some motorcycling to do, for pete’s sake!

Biker Quote for Today

Crap! I think I got non motion sickness.

I was talking before about ScooTours Denver and David Howard, who just set up this business and is getting it rolling. (Yes, that pun was intended.)

As I said before, making a living renting scooters can be a hard thing to do, and it is not David’s regular job. That other one pays the bills but this one is more fun. He talked about how often someone will work a job for years that they don’t really like, and then retire and take up an interest, which then becomes a business where they make as much or more than they did on that other job all those years, and this one is so much more fun. David decided not to wait that long, but to cut right to it now. Who knows if he’ll be successful; right now business is “inadequate.” But he’s only been at it a very brief time, and meanwhile he does have business.

In addition to the simple matter of renting scooters, it is David’s intention to offer guided scooter tours of Denver, primarily historical tours. One that he has in mind is “Cold Facts on Colfax” tour, starting out west around Kipling and working east perhaps to Monaco. The guide would pull the group over periodically to talk about the history of the area they were in.

I asked if the plan was to have everyone connected by an intercom system but David said no, he had thought about that, but it just didn’t seem a good idea to offer that sort of distraction to a lot of people who were not experienced riders. Those folks need to be paying attention to where they’re going and to traffic around them, not turning their heads to look at some building as they ride past it. I had to agree. Strongly.

Another tour idea would be an arts district tour. He has people lined up who would be good guides for these tours. It’s just a matter of getting the business running so that he could be confident that there would be people actually signing up for the tours. At what point do you turn the switch, he’s wondering.

Actually, here’s an interesting thing. I just got an email from David while writing this and he tells me, “It is actually my wife’s business, truth be told. She has been a substitute teacher up through last week and is just turning her attention to this beginning tomorrow. I have helped get it up and running.”

Well, whoever’s running the show, I wish them well. We’ve just been recently on vacation where renting scooters to tourists is big business, so why shouldn’t it be a viable business in Denver. Lord knows we get plenty of tourists coming through here. And the rate is a heck of a lot cheaper than renting a motorcycle. Motorcycle rental can easily set you back more than $200 a day. At ScooTours the rate is $65 for the first two hours, $85 for the first three, or a daily maximum of $95. And I know in the places we were recently I would far rather have had a scooter than a motorcycle.

I’m rooting for you guys.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Ride report: Spending time on a Vectrix VX-2

Biker Quote for Today

I never fail…sometimes I succeed in finding out what doesn’t work.

Time passes and things slip our minds but out of view from the rest of us things do get done. In this case I’m speaking of the two different motorcycle safety studies currently under way around the U.S. One is the new version of the Hurt study that is being conducted by Oklahoma State University. I haven’t heard anything at all about that one since the guy running it, Samir Ahmed, announced that he was leaving the project, and said he had doubts that it could achieve its intent.

The other is the “naturalistic” study being conducted by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, and it is moving along on schedule.

I got an email recently from Mike Ginocchi, a guy I ran into who was interested in the OSU study. Mike is a retired accident investigator and he felt he was a natural choice to be brought on the team but the OSU guys apparently had other ideas. So he petitioned the MSF to be one of the 100 riders they would equip with tracking devices so as to observe their riding behavior, particularly when it comes to getting into or avoiding crashes. The MSF was interested, so every time he rides now he is being recorded.

A local TV station thought this was pretty interesting so they did a piece on him and the study. You can go watch it here and see just what it’s all about. I agree with the TV staion–it’s pretty interesting.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Lojack announces top five motorcycle recoveries for 2012

Biker Quote for Today

Everyone I know predicted my death when I bought my bike. I say it’s done just the opposite. Even if it does kill me, it wouldn’t take too many days like today to make it worth it.

Every kid who has ever dreamed of riding a motorcycle has at least considered the option of attaching playing cards to their bicycle wheels so the spokes will hit them and make “motorcycle-like” noises. I know I did more than just consider it.

Is that what we need to do with electric motorcycles? After all, they’re so quiet pedestrians are likely to walk out in front of them while busy texting on their smart phones.

This is a serious question, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to know what you think about it. No, not the playing cards, but should electric motorcycles be required to make some noise that warns people that they’re there?

The proposed rule is titled, “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles.” Here’s part of it:

As required by the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PSEA) of 2010 this rule proposes to establish a Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) setting minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles. This new standard would require hybrid and electric passenger cars, light trucks and vans (LTVs), medium and heavy duty, trucks, and buses, low speed vehicles (LSVs), and motorcycles to produce sounds meeting the requirements of this standard.

This standard would ensure that blind, visually-impaired, and other pedestrians are able to detect and recognize nearby hybrid and electric vehicles, as required by the PSEA, by requiring that hybrid and electric vehicles emit sound that pedestrians would be able to hear in a range of ambient environments and contain acoustic signal content that pedestrians will recognize as being emitted from a vehicle.

So the NHTSA is asking for comments. The Motorcycle Industry Council has come out against the rule, for a variety of reasons that I don’t find particularly compelling. Not that I support the rule; I just don’t think the MIC has made much of an argument.

So what do other people think? Well, conveniently, the (currently) 80 comments are all right there for anyone to read, so let’s read a few.

Kipling Inscore (is that his name?) says, in part:

I do not believe that current study shows sufficient evidence of a safety problem caused by electric (EV) and hybrid (HV) vehicles being too quiet; I think further study is needed. I will, however, state my remaining points as if assuming that there is a “quiet vehicle problem” and that the solution is to impose a minimum sound requirement. A minimum sound requirement should apply to all motor vehicles, not just those currently most likely to be too quiet.

Now there’s a familiar argument. Funny, I’m accustomed to seeing it presented in regard to the issue of motorcycles making too much noise.

Joel Stottlemire says that:

The proposed regulation on minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles are at best only minimally effective. At any speed faster than a few feet per second, audible warnings do not give sufficient reaction time to pedestrians and contribute to noise pollution.

Says David B. Rees:

I oppose mandatory noise pollution. The proposed standards do not appear to appreciably increase safety but do increase noise pollution. We should be aiming to make noisy cars quieter, not quiet cars noisier.

And here’s a note from Joe Adams:

Our society is becoming more and more noisy. Many low flow toilets sound like an explosion when operating. Many hand driers sound like a jet aircraft. City streets are extraordinarily noisy. The new electric cars are a step in the direction of achieving more QUIET in society. Adding an artificial noise to these cars is similar to adding the reverse backup “beep” on construction vehicles. The flaw in the concept of reverse backup alarms is that such alarms fail to acknowledge a basic trait in human nature: people tend to filter out irritating noises that go on all day long.

There seems to be a consistent theme there. I didn’t read them all but the comments I did read are pretty solidly in opposition to this rule. What do you think? You can offer your own comments to the NHTSA up until March 15.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
A motorcycling year in pictures – 2012

Biker Quote for Today

You’re a biker wannabe if your $500 boots aren’t scuffed from riding.

Here’s something the Motorcycle Riders Foundation is promoting and everyone who rides ought to sign in and add their name to the list. Unless you like being singled out for a police stop just because you’re riding a motorcycle.

Maybe you’ve heard about the petition process set up where the president has said any petition getting 25,000 signatures will be given consideration. Thanks to a petition calling for the U.S. to create a death star, as in the Star Wars movies, that baseline is being increased to 100,000. (The White House responded that the administration “is not in favor of blowing up planets.”)

Apparently, however, the petition I’m here to promote, one that calls for ending federal funding for motorcycle-only checkpoints, has made it under the wire and will only need the 25,000 signatures.

Here’s the text of the petition, and this is the link you want to follow.

We petition the obama administration to:
Cease the funding of motorcycle-only checkpoints through the NHTSA and other federal agencies.

State and local governments have begun to implement motorcycle-only checkpoints that unfairly target motorcyclists for inspection by law enforcement officers.

Many of these motorcycle-only checkpoints are funded by grants given by the federal government, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

This petition calls for the cessation of the NHTSA’s direct and indirect funding of the motorcycle-only checkpoints through its grants and other measures, and asks that the laws for vehicle conformity and passenger safety be applied equally to motorcycles and automobiles alike.

By the way, from what the site says, the 25,000 signatures must be collected within 30 days. It was created on January 8 and so far there are 3,033 signatures. Tell your buddies to sign it, too.

When you go to the site you’ll need to register and give a valid email address, and then click the link in the email they will send to you. Once you’ve registered one time you can sign other petitions without the hassle.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
LoJack announces top five motorcycle recoveries for 2012

Biker Quote for Today

Bikes are better than women because if your motorcycle smokes you can do something about it.

Safe riding promoters tell you to ride as if you were invisible, because for the most part you are. Well, I took that one step further recently, I almost really was invisible, although I didn’t know it at first.

I recently started a regular day job–something I hadn’t had in nearly four years–and frankly, I don’t expect to ride to work very much. The direct route takes me up I-25 to 6th Avenue and then west. The part on I-25 is a bear, with really bad stop and go traffic. That kind of thing is murderous on your wrists on a bike, as I’m sure you know.

But I have ridden twice. On Wednesday before Thanksgiving I knew traffic would be light, and it was supposed to be a beautiful day. It was, and I rode.

Then the following week, also on Wednesday, it was going to be another gorgeous day so I decided I would take a longer route that would help me avoid the really bad traffic. That worked out OK.

So that evening I was heading home, and it was dusk, getting darker all the time. I started noticing that my headlight wasn’t doing all that good a job illuminating the road in front of me, but I could still see OK so I wasn’t concerned.

But it kept getting darker. And I was starting to have a suspicion that something was wrong. I suspected that my headlight was out. I flipped on the brights and there was definitely light. I flipped them back off and there did not seem to be any light. I wanted to pull up close behind a car and see if I was shining a light on it but couldn’t really do that at highway speed. Finally I just decided that oncoming traffic, I apologize, but I’m running with my brights on. And when I finally did get off the highway and pulled up close behind a car there was nothing when I flipped the brights off.

So essentially, I had been riding in the dark with no light to tell other drivers that I existed. Talk about invisible. And how long do you suppose the light had been out? I don’t ride at night a lot so it could have been a good long time. Now I know; all I have to do is remember to do something about it.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Going over the edge of the Grand Mesa

Biker Quote for Today

When in doubt, PIN IT! It may not help, but it’ll sure end the suspense…