Passes & Canyons Blog

There has been quite a discussion going on over on my Denver Motorcycle Examiner webpage in regard to a post I made there about a possible British motorcycle ban.

I picked up a news article from www.motorcyclenews.com, a British website, that said the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in England told a committee of Parliament that “Motorcycles are seen in the UK to be, in the majority of instances, vehicles of choice rather than necessity and one might consider if our congested roads are any longer fit for purpose for these motorised toys.”

Well, that’s a show stopper. The article also spoke about an ACPO claim that many street bikes have too much power, and an ACPO request for chips in license plates to help identify bikes even if the police can’t catch them.

The post drew a number of comments from British bikers, such as f0ul who said:

The police in the UK have been as totalitarian as they can get away with over the past few years.

They managed to get at least 7 national shows banned over 2008 – they have been pushing for the national parks to have a motorcycle ban for a few years although I don’t think they will be able to do it because almost all proper laws in the UK are worked out in the EU by today.

With a number of bike manufacturers still in Europe (BMW etc.) this sort of law will be seen as a detriment of trade and there is no way the Germans will allow that!

However, there was another post “on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers” that said:

ACPO does not advocate the prohibition of motorcycle use on public roads. It is nonsense to suggest that ACPO is seeking a ban on motorcycles, given that most police forces in the UK actively deploy and consider motorcycles to be a key part of their transport infrastructure.

So the following day I published this reply as a follow-up post, expressing some reservations but concluding that without actually reporting the document in question I had no way of knowing whose version was closer to the truth.

Then I got comments on that post. John Procter had this to say:

Perhaps you need to look at the rather lengthy report that contained the ACPO statement. It may not be as draconian as initial snapshot reporting suggested, but there could still be some concern. The truth of the matter might be that some police chiefs are VERY anti bike, e.g., North Wales’ infamous police boss. However, a major problem we have here in the UK is very poor policing of our roads with a high dependency on speed cameras. Lack of traffic police has led to poorer driving with consequent effects on vulnerable motorcyclists, leading to worrying casualties.

I thanked John for helping clarify some of the issues here. I didn’t promise to read the report. Then the latest comment was a copy of an updated news report from the (I believe London) Telegraph. The reporter, Kevin Ash, wrote:

In a press release responding to concerns about the ACPO submission, David Griffin, Deputy Chief Constable of Humberside, stated: “It is nonsense to suggest that ACPO is seeking a ban on motorcycles,” even though it is clear in the report that ACPO suggests prohibiting motorcycles from some roads. The press release also said that ACPO does not have a position on imposing specific power limits on motorcycles, yet they appear to have a position in the submission to the Transport Committee.

Another strange claim by ACPO to the committee is that motorcycling presents a problem of “Vehicle Excise Duty evasion on a massive scale.” This appears to be based on a DVLA report published at the beginning of this year suggesting that almost 40 per cent of motorcycles are untaxed, even though an apology was later issued by the Commons public accounts committee when it was discovered the figures were wrong, and the true number was only slightly greater for motorcycles than cars, at about six per cent. In its submission, ACPO used the 40 per cent figure to suggest that motorcycles should be fitted with electronic chips to allow automatic vehicle identification. ACPO did not respond to The Daily Telegraph’s query about this.

A further inaccuracy presented to the committee by ACPO is that, “Production machines are readily available for use on our roads with top speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour.” In fact there are no production bikes capable of more than 200mph, even without the motorcycle industry’s voluntary 186mph speed limitation.

So, he said, no I didn’t, yes you did. It’s looking pretty messy over there. What does that have to do with us in the U.S., or more specifically in Colorado? Nothing directly, but you know that if laws like that get passed over on that side of the pond, someone over here will surely make similar proposals. I know I say this a lot, and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but this is exactly why I belong to the American Motorcyclist Association and why you should too, or else to the Motorcycle Riders Foundation or to your local ABATE. These are the guys fighting to protect our rights.

Biker Quote for Today

The great thing about riding through strange new places is that it invariably shows me just how wrong I am about them until I actually go there. Actual experience beats half-assed assumptions and prejudice.

Dennis announced happily, in an email with photos, that he has taken possession of his new Harley-Davidson FLHX Street Glide. That’s it in the photo.

That means the OFMC now has four Harleys, four Hondas, one Kawasaki, and one Yamaha. Dennis sold his Gold Wing.

The real irony of this is that it could have happened months ago. We were off on the summer road trip and one of the Harley riders had mechanical problems with his new bike. So he and several others hit the Harley dealership in Durango. Stranded there for half a day, they all spent some money, but Dennis had his eye on a Street Glide just like the one he has now.

There’s a real problem when a company has a product that is so in demand that it sells itself. The “salesmen” tend to become “order takers.” Well, this particular order taker who Dennis was talking with had a live one on his hook and didn’t do a thing. So Dennis walked out without the bike, but he knew now what he wanted.

And now he has it.

Biker Quote for Today

Sit tall in the saddle, hold your head up high – Keep your eyes fixed where the trail meets the sky – And live like you ain’t afraid to die – And don’t be scared, just enjoy your ride.

I discussed the recent Meeting of the Minds conference that was held recently here in Denver by the Motorcycle Riders Foundation. At the time there were a couple issues I was unfamiliar with that I wanted to learn more about. I now have more to report.

First off, I was apparently a little off in my description of the issue of mandatory rider training. I said that MRF members “are concerned about a move to make such training mandatory, because they fear that the capacity does not exist to offer that training to that many people.” That was what I thought I had heard, and maybe to some extent that concern exists.

However, I spoke last week with Terry Howard, State Coordinator for ABATE of Colorado, and she gave me a totally different take on the topic. Speaking strictly for ABATE of Colorado, Terry said the only issue she has with mandatory training is that it apply to motorcyclists AND to motorists. That was really a “Doh!” moment for me. Of course. It would be totally discriminatory to require motorcyclists to have rider training while not requiring drivers to have driver training. We’re both operating motorized vehicles on the same roads and highways. And lord knows we all know that those folks in their cars need better training on avoiding those of us not enclosed in steel cages.

But it occurs to me as well, that as much as we talk about how many motorcycle accidents are caused not by the biker but by the rider, the same is actually true of car on car accidents. Probably in most two-car accidents, only one of the drivers is significantly at fault. The other is probably just as much a victim of the other driver’s carelessness as we are when it’s a car on bike accident. So absolutely, if our legislators want to impose mandatory training on bikers, we have got to ensure that ALL motor vehicle operators have the same requirement. Of course, then we really get into the issue of training capacity, as I mentioned originally.

The other unclear issue from MotM is something Terry was not as able to clear up. That was the idea of tiered licensing. She said she doesn’t really know the issue because Colorado doesn’t have it. The only thing she could tell me is that she thinks it is possible Colorado could move in that direction because of the upswing in popularity of scooters. Anyone on a scooter bigger than 50cc has to have motorcycle validation on their license, but below 50cc there is no requirement. Terry told me that some ABATE members have raised the issue because they see these low-maximum-speed scooters as hazards slowing down traffic on busy arterials. But there is no such proposal currently and ABATE is not pushing for it. So I guess for now tiered licensing will remain an issue for other states, not Colorado.

Biker Quote for Today

Bikes parked out front mean good chicken-fried steak inside.

I eagerly opened the latest issue of AAA Colorado’s EnCompass magazine when it arrived the other day. In the previous, September-October, issue they had printed an outrageous letter from a member who obviously doesn’t engage her brain before opening her mouth. I had written in rebuttal, and while I wanted to make sure they had printed my letter, I wanted even more to see if the editor had added an editor’s note in regard to the two letters. Bingo! They printed it and there was an editor’s note!

Let me back up and fill you in on all this.

Two issues ago, EnCompass had a couple good articles about how drivers need to share the road with motorcyclists and informing drivers of things they might not know about motorcyclists, such as issues with oily pavement and that sort of thing. They also spoke about the legal mandate to wear eye protection.

We all wear eye protection

In the subsequent issue, someone wrote in making the bald statement that “less than 50% of motorcyclists conform” to the eye protection mandate. I was blown away, both by the idiocy of the statement and also by the fact that the magazine had printed the letter with no note or anything about the glaring inaccuracy of that statement.

So I wrote a letter in reply. I said that I’ve been riding for more than 20 years and I always look at bikes on the road and have almost never seen a rider without eye protection. I said that with bugs and grit and everything else, it”s not a question of whether you’ll get hit with the stuff, it’s a question of how frequently, and that for that reason we would wear eye protection even if it wasn’t the law.

Then I proposed that the editor or staff take a simple test: Notice for one week all bikes you see and look to see if the rider has eye protection. I said the number without protection would probably be zero.

Finally, I told them I thought they were a bit irresponsible for printing that letter without any verification or asking the writer to provide verification of their statement.

So they printed my letter, but the editor”s note didn’t say anything like “You’re right, we did your test and didn’t see a single rider without eye protection” or anything like that. What they did say was “As in other publications, letters to the editor are not intended to be read as anything other than the writer’s opinion; AAA does not fact-check them or judge the validity of those opinions.”

Oh really. I happen to be a former newspaper editor and I guarantee that that was not the way we operated. We believed we had an obligation to present accurate information to our readers, and if someone wrote a letter making absurd claims there was no way we would print that verbatim without either an editor”s note correcting the inaccuracy or contacting the writer for them to correct it first. Plus, this was not a statement of opinion, the writer put this out there as a fact! We were always happy to let people state their opinions, no problem there. It was the facts we cared about.

So let me make one point that shows how absurd this response from EnCompass is. Does anyone really believe they would have printed the letter without any editing or checking if the writer had said “more than 50% of motorcyclists deliberately run over small children every day”? Or how about “more than 50% of motorcyclists are pedophiles”? Are they really not going “judge the validity” of those statements? Hogwash!

Oh well, at least they printed my letter and I set the record straight.

Biker Quote for Today

The superior rider uses superior knowledge to avoid situations that require superior skill.

The Mongols are in the news this week, although I’m certain they would prefer not to be.

All that chrome

For those of you who don’t live in the states where the busts took place, and may not have heard, the Mongols are a biker gang and a number of their members have been arrested and charged with “murder, attempted murder, assault, as well as gun and drug violations.”

To tell you the truth, until this news story broke I had never heard of the Mongols. Everyone has heard of the Hell’s Angels, the Sons of Silence are well known around here, but the Mongols? Who knew?

Of course the reason I’m mentioning them here is the motorcycle connection. We’re bikers, they’re bikers. Need we say more?

So what I’m wondering is why “motorcycle clubs,” which is less of a pejorative term than “biker gangs,” so often seem to end up in the business of murder, attempted murder, assault, as well as gun and drug violations. I mean, you never hear about car clubs — you know, Corvette clubs, antique car clubs, whatever — getting busted for these things. You never hear of UNIX user groups, or stock investing clubs, or RV clubs getting into this. Why biker, excuse me, motorcycle clubs?

Of course, there’s the outlaw image. Which came first, the outlaw image or the outlaw behavior? The biker mystique in this country is definitely based on freedom. Being out on the road without the constraints of Joe Average, not tied to all the societal taboos that so many people accept. But that’s not really true, to a large extent. We all know that most of the guys with ponytails and earrings and tattoos also have mortgages, wives, kids, and go to work five days a week.

Still, the political leanings of a large percentage of bikers is definitely libertarian. “As long as I’m not hurting someone else, let me do what I want. Don’t hassle me.” I subscribe to that philosophy myself, whole-heartedly. Heck, I’m a registered Libertarian. But murder, attempted murder, and assault don’t fit into my scheme of things. People do get hurt when you do those things.

Of course, the guns and drugs go hand in hand with the violence. If you have lots of cash on hand, or drugs worth a lot of money, other bad guys will want to take them from you. The Libertarian approach (that’s with a capital L) would be to legalize the drugs and take the profit motive away. Then if you want to kill yourself with heroin that’s your choice. But nobody’s going to kill you to take your heroin from you.

I’ve gotten a long way from motorcycles, which is supposed to be what this blog is about. Let’s see if I can wrap up and pull this all together. This is stream of consciousness, you understand.

Why do biker gangs deal drugs? Heck, why does anybody deal drugs? It’s a (somewhat) easy way to make a lot of money. I think that’s really what it comes to. If someone could make more money even easier doing something legal, they probably would, wouldn’t they? And any time free from having a job gives you more time to ride. And all that money allows you to buy that high-priced Harley and spend a ton more on all that chrome and paint.

So that’s the answer. Lay the blame at the door of Harley-Davidson!! Biker gangs sell drugs to feed their Harley addiction! Someone needs to have a talk with Willie G.

Biker Quote for Today

Most motorcycle problems are caused by the nut that connects the handlebars to the saddle.

I saw an item recently about how the legislature in Massachusetts was considering prohibiting anyone under the age of 14 from riding a dirt bike. This ban would apply to snowmobiles and ATVs as well. My research suggests that 10 is the age currently set by law there. Other states range from no legal restrictions to various other ages.

I have real problems with these laws. I was out at Thunder Valley Motocross Park last week and there were racers of all ages. Take a look at this photo of a dad working on his son’s bike in preparation for the race. This is family togetherness, parents and children out doing really fun things together and building strong family bonds. (Also notice the camera attached to the top of the kid’s helmet!)

I can’t tell you how much I wish this would have been my father. My dad was a good father but he was a bit removed and there wasn’t much we actually did together. I was nuts about motorcycles and saved money and planned to buy my first bike when I turned 15, which was the legal age at that time. The day arrived, I had the money, and my mother told me there was no way I would ever have a motorcycle while I was living in her house.

Contrast that to a dad who buys his son a bike and all the gear, takes him out to ride, and spends all that time with him. I loved my father and I miss him but I would have given anything for him to be more like the dad in this picture.

So the idea that the nanny legislators of any state think they have to protect children from their apparently idiot parents just does not set well with me at all. Sure kids on dirt bikes fall down. So do kids on bicycles. And skateboards. We all had our share of bumps and bruises while growing up. That’s what childhood is, a chance to learn what works and what doesn’t work so well. You do something stupid and it hurts and you think twice before doing it again. Protect your child from all injury and what happens to them when you’re no longer there to protect them?

Biker Quote for Today

It’s like this: Whenever there’s a car accident, people go, “Oh, it’s a car accident.” Whenever there’s a motorcycle accident, it’s outrage.–Jay Leno

What Mary Peters started, others seek to continue. I’ve given considerable coverage to the proposal by U.S. Sec. of Transportation Mary Peters that funds earmarked for motorcycle rider training be diverted to lobby for mandatory helmet laws.

Pretty much all major motorcycling organizations have opposed that, and I reported in a report from the Meeting of the Minds that Peters has backed off on that proposal. Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF) President Kirk “Hardtail” Willard cautioned me that despite her statements in that regard, he was still waiting to see her send the letters to that effect to the states.

Well, now the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) reports in the latest issue of American Motorcyclist that a group called the Governors Highway Safety Association has now taken up the issue. American Motorcyclist says:

Christopher Murphy, chairman of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety agencies, made the request in testimony to the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Highways and Transit this summer.

The opposition to this misuse of funds stems from the conviction that the key to lowering fatality rates is not in having safer crashes, it is in avoiding more of those crashes in the first place. As Doc Ski noted at the Meeting of the Minds, you will die if you get in a bad enough accident, regardless of whether you’re wearing a helmet.

So Mary Peters may have heeded the outcry and reversed her stance, but now that the genie has been let out of the bottle it may not be that easy to put it back in. This is why we need to support organizations like the AMA and the MRF.

Biker Quote for Today

Thin leather looks good in the bar, but it won’t save your butt from road rash if you go down.

Some things just take you by surprise. As you may be aware, I write for Examiner.com as their Denver Motorcycle Examiner. I post on this blog three times a week and I post on Examiner three times a week.

Well, yesterday I wrote a piece entitled “Share the road, not my lane.” It was about how a car pulled across the center line–directly into my path–as he was passing a bicycle. I won’t go into more specifics; if you ride you know it all already.

Imagine my surprise when I checked this morning and found that more than 2,000 people had read that post so far and there were six comments. And more surprisingly, three of the six were hostile toward motorcycles and motorcyclists. Two were favorable and the sixth was more neutral.

One of the hostile comments was the sort of thing you just blow off and ignore:

You should cry more.

The woman who was neutral had this to say:

True, but you have to keep in mind how often those of us in cars see motorcyclists zip between us, riding the line on the highway. Maybe they guy just thought, “Well, they do it all the time, why can’t I?” I’m not defending his actions as they were very reckless.

Then, there were these:

Sure thing douchebag, but make sure you don’t share my lane the next time there’s a red light and a line of traffic that you really want to sidle past, m’kay?

And what are you going to do about it when someone does? And another thing, with the engine cooling excuse ready at hand when you pass huge traffic jams, you cannot expect to be taken seriously when you claim that your personal space corresponds with traffic conditions, because basically, that is what you are saying. When guys like you behave normally in traffic jams, normal people will begin to show you some respect, or at least, stop hating your guts.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as jerks but I don’t think we would be wise in doing so. Considering that these are the people who are out on the road with us, and we’re the ones who always lose in a collision, we need to consider any validity there might be in their statements.

The one argument they all make is that bikers share their lanes at times. Now, if you’re in California and you’re lane-splitting, that is absolutely legal. And I can see how that diminishes the argument that motorcycles have a right to the entire lane, just as cars do. We can’t have it both ways. At the same time, that in no way excuses the reckless, dangerous stunt I described. If I hadn’t swerved that driver would have had to choose between a head-on with me or running the bicycle off the road into the rocky hillside.

Elsewhere, lane-splitting is not legal, although here in Colorado I don’t ever see people lane-splitting anyway. I do, however, see bikers passing on yellow lines (because we know that we can do it safely) and ignoring other laws that were designed with cars in mind, not bikes. It might be worth our while to think about how the people in cars see these things. Obviously some of them, rightly or wrongly, see them as unfair, improper, and justification to act improperly toward us.

Food for thought.

Biker Quote for Today

Remember all the others on the road are crazy & out to kill you.