Passes & Canyons Blog

“Accidents caused by the infrastructure account for 14% of the total according to MAIDS.”

That quote in a press release caught my eye. I’m signed up to receive press releases from a lot of organizations and this latest one is from the ACEM, the European Motorcycle Industry. MAIDS is the Motorcycle Accidents In-Depth Study which analyzed more than 900 motorcycle and moped accidents during the period 1999-2003 in five sampling areas located in France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

The release went on to say “Poor conditions of many European roads and city streets and the fact that PTW’s specific needs are still often neglected in road engineering are the main reasons for this situation. Rider behaviour in addressing each situation plays therefore a major role in PTW safety.”

PTW, by the way, stands for “powered two wheelers.”

So how often do you think about accidents being caused by poorly designed or maintained roadways? That really doesn’t cross my mind at all, so to see that 14 percent of motorcycle accidents are blamed on the infrastructure is an eye-opener. And it demonstrates the value that can come out of the new motorcycle safety study here in the U.S. If recurring types of such defects can be identified then municipalities and other governmental entities can be more aware of the need to rectify these situations.

At the same time, I consider this argument a little specious. Each of us is responsible at all times for our own safety. If you crashed on a piece of road and someone else didn’t, you did something wrong, while they did the same thing right. We can’t count on all roads we ride being perfect so you’d better ride in control at all times and respond to reality. The life you save may be your own.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Basket-case motorcycle restoration: Hard work, and then satisfaction

Biker Quote for Today

When in doubt, slow down. No one has ever hit something too slow.

I went to the sources and can now give you the full scoop on the status of the Motorcycle Crash Causation Study. I had reported earlier that the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) was withholding the $2.8 million its members had committed because the reduced size of the study–due to lack of money–would not meet their requirement as adequate to the objectives.

What I found when I went looking for answers was that a huge part of the story was being totally overlooked. Yes, the MSF had decided to withhold its dollars, but everything I read suggested this was a final decision. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the words of MSF President Tim Buche, “The MSF has not shut the door.” He said that if new information suggests a statistically valid study can be conducted with fewer than 900 crashes studied, that information will be presented to the MSF board.

The reason this matters is because Dr. Samir Ahmed, the Oklahoma State University researcher heading the study, told me that at present, no one really knows how many crashes must be studied to develop statistically valid data. He and his colleagues are at this time doing a statistical analysis to come up with that number.

I asked Tim Buche whether, if the number arrived at is significantly below the 900 crashes threshold the MSF has demanded, would the MSF be open to reconsidering throwing their $2.8 million into the pot. And he said yes, and the decision the board would make would “depend on the quality of the work and the rationale.” He said the board would also weigh the opinions of other involved organizations, such as the National Transportation Safety Board, which has previously stated its conclusion that a minimum of 1,200 crashes should be studied in order to get useful data.

So that’s it in brief. The statistical analysis should be complete in about mid-December and then it will presumably take some time for the involved parties to study the new information and reach their conclusions. However, even if the MSF is still not satisfied that its dollars would be well spent, the situation will still be open-ended. Dr. Ahmed told me he is continuing to seek additional funding from other sources. Presumably if enough additional money can be raised, that amount might tip the scales such that the MSF’s money will be the capper.

In fact, I suspect that is exactly what the MSF intends. They’re using their substantial dollars as a carrot. This allows Dr. Ahmed to approach other funding sources with the idea that their contribution will be multiplied if it leads to release of the MSF funds. And even if that’s not the MSF strategy, it seems to that it’s exactly the way it will work.

Sure, at this moment, the economy sucks and money is tight, but this study will take several years. Presumably the economic picture will brighten in that time and money will become easier to come by. This is a story that is likely to play out over years, not days or weeks. We’ll just have to watch what unfolds.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Motorcycle Safety Foundation open to reconsidering safety study funding

Biker Quote for Today

You know what I like about motorcycles? Ridin’ ’em!

I’ve never been a dual-sport kind of guy, mostly because I haven’t had the opportunity. Well, I had the opportunity over the weekend.

I hooked up on Friday with Sue Slate, the National Program Chair for the Women’s Motorcyclist Foundation. Sue is in Keystone from now through the end of the International Women & Motorcycling Conference and I dropped by to talk with her about the Adventure for the Cures ride she has organized.

This ride will take a dozen experienced riders with very little, if any, experience on dirt on a tour of the Colorado mountains. The mix is expected to be about 80 percent dirt/gravel and 20 percent pavement. Each rider had to commit to raise at least $2,000 for breast and ovarian cancer research, as well as pay a sign-up fee of $400. The “Dirty Dozen” begin their ride on Aug. 10 and will end up back in Keystone for the start of the conference.

So I met up with Sue, and we talked about the ride and about her motivation for doing the fund-raising that she does, and mostly about her total passion for motorcycles. Sue got her first bike at age 19, used to ride observed trials, and lives and breathes motorcycles. As a public school teacher she used to ride to work every day, would bring motorcycle engines into class as a way of showing unmotivated students that even a motorcycle mechanic needs to be able to read, write, and do math.

Now retired from teaching, Sue works ceaselessly for the WMF and also finds time to be an on-call employee for Kawasaki, working at various motorcycle events around the country.

We covered it all and then she asked me what I was doing that afternoon. I had nothing planned, and was wondering that question myself, because I was in Keystone with my wife, who was there for a conference. “Do you want to go for a ride?” Sue asked.

Of course I did, but I hadn’t planned on doing so and I didn’t have any gear with me. No problem, Sue had extra gloves and a helmet that would fit me as well as a green-white-black Kawasaki jacket. And she had bikes. Lots of bikes. Sue had rolled in from New York the day before in an RV pulling her “toy hauler” with five dirt/dual-sport bikes of various sizes. She would ride her KLR 650. I rode her Versys.

We geared up and off we went. Sue had suggested riding Boreas Pass, which struck me as terrific because I had never gone far on that road, and only on cross-country skis. And I’ve almost never had the chance to ride dirt.

I was sure the road to Boreas Pass ran off CO 9 from a little north of Breckenridge toward the pass but I followed Sue on up to the top of Hoosier Pass, where we pulled off. “Oh yeah, Hoosier Pass, that’s the name,” she said as we dismounted. So no, I didn’t get to do Boreas Pass. Turns out the Versys I was on didn’t have the right tires for dirt anyway.

So we admired the view, chatted with another biker who pulled off there, and then headed back down the pass, up I-70 to Copper Mountain, and then rode to the top of Fremont Pass. Then we headed back to Keystone.

I didn’t get to ride dirt but I did get a chance to ride the Versys, which was a new one for me. It feels a lot different from the inline fours I’m accustomed to but I definitely liked the upright seating position. I was interested to find that the little half windshield did a very good job of blocking the wind blast at speed. I’ve never enjoyed riding without a fairing or windshield for that reason.

The seat was much too hard for me to even imagine taking off for a weeklong ride as we do each summer. Other than that, it was a nice bike. I’d really like to do more off-pavement riding because there is so much of it here in Colorado and I really feel like I’m missing a lot. I don’t have room for a third bike, though, so maybe it’s something to consider whenever one of my current two dies. But that’s not likely to happen soon. There must be another way to work this out.

Anyway, it was fun getting to ride the bike and Sue is a fun person to hang out with. And I’ll have a chance to get some dual-sport riding instruction before the Adventure for the Cures ride sets off. Of course I’ll be reporting back to you on that.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Dual-sport motorcyclists combat cancer

Biker Quote for Today

You never see a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist’s office.

I picked up a flyer yesterday as I was dropping my Kawi Concours off at Mountain Thunder Motorsports for new tires. It tells me there will be a vintage motorcycle swap meet on Sunday, July 26, 2009.

Vintage Indian motorcycles

That’s cool. It’s free to buyers (or lookers) and I’m guessing there will be some interesting bikes to check out. Who knows, someone may even be selling that elusive left side panel I lost from my 1980 CB750 Custom all those years ago.

The thing starts at 8 a.m. and the flyer doesn’t give an actual address, just directions on how to get there: Take I-70 to the Ward Road exit, go north to 48th Ave. (the north service road), and go east on that to Van Gordon. Presumably you’ll recognize it when you get there.

The event is being put on by Legends Motorcycles, which is a bit of a story in itself. I used to live just off Federal Boulevard, up north, and Legends was a couple blocks south of me. It was a convenient place for me to take my CB in for work, and they were very accommodating. I haven’t lived up that way for 13 years now, however.

Recently I was collecting information for an article I was writing and figured I’d call them with some questions. Turns out, they don’t work on bikes at all anymore, they are strictly an online parts company for older models. And apparently they’ve moved now. I guess you have to adapt or die. Glad they were able to adapt.

So, sounds like fun, but it just occurred to me I won’t be able to go. The OFMC is leaving two days before that on our summer week on the road. Dang. Bad timing. Oh well, that shouldn’t stop you.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Motorcycle noise testing simplified, but will governments hear?

Biker Quote for Today

This one’s interesting because the crankshaft is the front axle, and the motor rotates around it. It’s interesting because if you stop, it stalls. So it says in the manual, when you come to a red light, you should “orbit,” and it shows someone riding around in circles.–Jay Leno on his 1920s Mergola

Judy and I went on the Randy Run on Sunday. After doing the Broken Wings series on Randy and Joan there’s no way I was going to miss it.

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you know that going on poker runs and such is not something I’ve done much of. My first poker run turned out to be one without motorcycles, due to cold, snowy weather. This was only my second.

The weather was great but I still couldn’t really do it right. We had a conflict. We had tickets to yesterday’s Colorado Rockies game, which they won, for their 11th win in a row. We weren’t going to miss that.

So we gathered at the appointed time and place, greeted folks and chatted a bit, but then in order to get to the game we took off ahead of the group. We barely had time to get to the final destination and then head straight for the ballgame.

The route was nice, down some roads neither of us had ever been on, and we were taking our time and enjoying ourselves. Suddenly I saw in my mirror that a horde of bikes was racing up behind us. I pulled over and waved them around and the Randy Run group, with Randy and Joan in the lead, roared on by. I jumped in behind them and found that I needed to really crank it to keep up with them.

Arriving at the final stop, I heard the guy we parked next to laughing about how they should call it the “Randy Race,” not the “Randy Run.”

So for me, the jury is still out on doing poker runs and all. The truth was, we were having a very nice time riding the route, taking our time and enjoying the scenery. Once we joined up with the group I don’t even remember the roads we took or the countryside we went through. I was just riding to keep up.

I’m going to have to try this at least once more, and try to do the whole thing, without any competing commitments.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Inaugural Motomarathon event now in progress

Biker Quote for Today

If you ride for the rush don’t rush for the ride!

How hard is it to go on after losing a leg in a crash when all you did wrong was to take your eyes off the oncoming car for an instant to check the cross traffic? That was essentially the question I asked Randy and Joan Savely while speaking with them for the series of articles I just posted on Examiner.com.

What I seem to be doing with some regularity lately is working on a story for Examiner and then giving you the background here. That’s definitely the case now.

I met Randy when I joined ABATE earlier this year. I’m in District 10 and Randy is the district rep, which is to say, he runs the meetings. It didn’t take me long to notice that Randy was missing his left leg from the knee down.

One reason I like going on poker runs, going to ABATE meetings, and getting involved in other motorcycle-related activities is that every time I go somewhere I come home with new story ideas. That’s a good thing considering that I write a minimum of five articles every week, frequently more. I smelled a story in Randy.

First, let me make it clear that this is definitely their story, Randy and Joan’s, not just his. When I first proposed the story idea it was Joan who replied that the two of them would be happy to speak with me. Up until then I had been thinking solely of Randy, but it soon became very clear to me that this was indeed their story.

What I hadn’t counted on was how powerfully their story would hit me. I met with them two weeks ago today, expecting to spend less than an hour in the interview. Going on two hours I finally said we ought to stop because there was only so much that a reader will read.

The next day Judy and I left on vacation for a week and on the drive to Utah it was practically the only thing I could speak of. And this was after spending hours telling her about it the night before. The lead sentences quickly formed in my mind and they made it into the story unaltered, even though I never wrote the rest of it until 10 days later:

When everything finally came to a stop, Randy Savely sat up, thinking, “Well, I’m alive.”
A couple moments later he noticed his boot laying in the middle of the intersection.
“That boot don’t come off,” he thought. Then he turned to the driver who had hit him and asked for his belt to use as a tourniquet on his leg.

For two weeks now this story has haunted me (not in a bad way) and has been in my mind almost constantly. Not out of some fear that it could happen to me, that’s not it at all. Probably a lot of it is Randy. Can you imagine having your leg removed by a car and having the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on yourself?

A funny thing there: I asked Randy if he was wearing a helmet and whether he had any head injuries. No and no. But he told me that he really believes in chaps more than helmets because it was the fact that he was wearing chaps that enabled him to tend to his own needs. They covered up the fact that his foot was gone, whereas seeing a bloody stump may well have shaken him up enough to go into shock.

I could go on and on. As I said, this story has haunted me for two weeks. But I won’t. Go read it yourself. It’s not that I’m such a great writer, it’s that their story is an incredible story. I just can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to tell it.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Broken wings: When a biker goes down hard

Biker Quote for Today

Live every day as though it was your last, but ride to make sure it’s not!

The oil rigs are gone! Motels have vacancies! You can visit Rifle, CO, again!

Judy and I are on vacation in Utah at this moment, so we came through western Colorado the other day and I have to tell you it’s like night and day. A year ago I was advising that anyone considering coming to Colorado to ride not even think about spending a night in the area around Rifle. With gas prices over $4 a gallon, a drive along I-70 at night was like Christmas, with lighted drilling rigs dotting the landscape everywhere you looked. Of course, all those drilling crews had to sleep somewhere, and there was not a motel room available closer than Grand Junction.

What a difference a year makes. First off, we only saw two rigs along the way. The landscape is now dotted with what I take to be pumping stations, where the wells have been drilled and now the machinery is just doing its thing, extracting the oil or gas. You don’t need a lot of people to manage those.

Even more telling are the parking lots of the motels. They’re empty. We stopped at a rest area in Rulison and I asked the fellow tending the tourist center and he confirmed my assumption.

“They’ve all gone back to Oklahoma and Texas,” he said. He told me that at the height of the boom, a new La Quinta was built in Rifle and it was full immmediately. They built an addition and it was full immediately. They built another addition and it was full immediately. Then work was begun on a new Ramada Inn and another motel and work on both has been suspended.

On another note, it appears that Loveland Pass has reopened. I reported last week that it was closed, and the notice from CDOT said they would send word when it reopened. Searching their website it appeared that perhaps the pass was open again, although the main notice page had not been updated with that information.

With that in mind I was all eyes as we came past the turn-off to the pass the other day, and yes we saw traffic on that road. In fact, what we saw was three motorcycles coming down the pass. So now Colorado is truly open for the season.

Recent from the National Motocycle Examiner

Biker Quote for Today
Sometimes the fastest way to get there is to stop for the night.

Would you like to be able to ride your motorcycle to work and find convenient, free parking by the curb? With a little luck we will have that here in Denver this summer. And you can probably make it happen in your town, too. Here’s what you can do.

Denver is fortunate in that we have a mayor who “gets it” and is willing to consider new ideas. He created an agency called Greenprint Denver that is charged with helping Denverites reduce pollution, congestion, and burning of motor fuel.

But you don’t need that degree of commitment; all you really need is a Public Works Department that is open to trying something new. In brief, here’s what needs to happen.

1. Identify unused or under-used spaces on city blocks
2. Have the traffic engineers and parking specialists select the ones they feel would be best suited to motorcycle parking
3. Get the program approved
4. Have crews stripe, sign, and otherwise prepare the spaces to be designated

Presto, you’re in business.

I’ll elaborate further. The spaces you’re looking for are called “end-caps” and they are generally spaces at the ends of blocks that are not long enough for cars. So they sit there empty but they could easily accommodate one or more motorcycles or scooters.

Because they’re sitting there empty, converting the end-caps to motorcycle parking would not cut city revenue as converting a metered space would do. So if your city wants to encourage motorcycle commuting, the only costs would be the time spent devising the program and then the striping and signing.

What more can you ask for? It’s green and it’s cheap. And it’s a way for your city to show that it has the concerns of its citizenry at heart. Your city councilperson might be interested in having themselves portrayed in that manner. Maybe if you sent them an email.

But really, I would start with the Public Works Department. They may already be thinking along these lines and your inquiry may be a helpful boost to get the idea in motion. I got involved in this because a reader of my Examiner.com site wrote urging me to lobby for dedicated parking. I started writing about it and several people stepped up to contribute to the effort and then I discovered that the city was already looking into it. So I don’t claim any influence in this at all, I just lucked into a great news story that no one else was covering.

What I have seen as I have delved into this story, however, is that it’s something that could easily be replicated just about anywhere. I really do think all you need to do is start talking to the right people and you can probably make it happen.

If you do, I’d love to hear from you about your efforts and problems and successes and whatever else. Get on it!

Biker Quote for Today

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly. — Henry David Thoreau