Training Program Bill Would Make Lee Parks A Monopoly In Colorado
A screen grab from the MOST program website.
I’ve been digging into this story of Senate Bill 15-286 and it’s getting curiouser and curiouser. I spoke today with Dave Tolbert, who runs the Motorcycle Training Academy. Dave has been very busy all day talking to legislators and other operators of training outfits, all of it focused on this bill.
The word on this bill, mentioned by Robert Frank in the notice from him I ran here, and reiterated by Dave, is that Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg introduced this bill on behalf of ABATE and T3RG. Very interesting if that’s the case considering I belong to ABATE and go to meetings and I sure hadn’t heard anything about this.
While the original bill didn’t say this, amendments late on Friday night added wording to this effect: The bill repeals the motorcycle operator safety training program and instead requires the department of revenue to issue a motorcycle endorsement to an applicant who:
* Provides proof of completion of a motorcycle training program; and
* Attests that the program used the curriculum established by the National Association of State Motorcycle Safety Administrators.
Dave explained this to me. Many of you may be familiar with Lee Parks and his Total Control program. Parks is, in Dave’s term, a “curriculum vendor.” He offers a fully developed curriculum for rider training and markets or franchises it across the country.
So according to Dave, Lee Parks asked the State Motorcycle Safety Administrators (SMSA) organization, “Can you verify that my curriculum meets the NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Administration) model standards?” These standards were only recently introduced.
“SMSA had never done that before,” said Dave, “they’re not an accrediting agency, but they said, OK, sure, we can evaluate that. And now Lee Parks is the only curriculum vendor who has sent his program to SMSA because the rest of the vendors say, ‘well they’re not an accrediting agency. Why would we send it to them?’ So he is the only vendor who has curriculum that SMSA says has met the national model standards.”
Look back at that second bullet in the amendment to this bill: Attests that the program used the curriculum established by the National Association of State Motorcycle Safety Administrators.
In other words, if a student rider wants to take a course and get accreditation so he or she doesn’t have to pass the driving part of the licensing test, the only curriculum vendor whose program would meet that standard is Lee Parks. Currently, most rider training courses in the state use the curriculum offered by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, a competitor of Lee Parks. All the MSF training in Colorado would lose the ability to offer students automatic exemption when they went to get licensed.
Can you understand that Dave Tolbert and a lot of other outfits around the state are in a tizzy?
But what about ABATE? The ABATE training is MSF based. Why would that group support this?
As I say, curiouser and curiouser. I hope to have more information soon.
Another Biker Quote for Today
Accidents hurt — safety doesn’t.
Tags: Colorado MOST program
