DOT Sec. Mary Peters Good for Bikers, Wrong on One Priority
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
August 25th, 2008 at 11:51 am
[…] 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 […]
September 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[…] I’ll start with U.S. Dept. of Transportation Sec. Mary Peters considering that I’ve written about her here on several previous […]