Passes & Canyons Blog

I’ve been at the Motorcycle Riders Foundation Meeting of the Minds, which is currently in progress here in Denver, and I’ll have a lot to report over the next several posts. I figure I’ll start with U.S. Dept. of Transportation Sec. Mary Peters considering that I’ve written about her here on several previous occasions.

The word is cautiously good. As I’ve stated before, Peters is a biker herself but, having had a bad spill and escaping more serious injury due to her helmet, she had become somewhat of a helmet zealot. More specifically, she was urging that funds designated for rider training be diverted to efforts to pass helmet laws in all states. I won’t go into all the issues that raises, I did that earlier. Go read that post to get the details.

Her proposal was met with solid opposition from the various biker organizations, including the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA), the MRF, and numerous ABATE groups, to name several. Speaking today with Kirk “Hardtail” Willard, the MRF’s president, I asked about the status of this dispute.

As Hardtail tells me, Peters first backed off saying that the rider training money should not be spent to promote mandatory helmet laws but rather to promote voluntary helmet usage. That was an improvement but still evoked some of the same issues as her original proposal.

After further discussion, Hardtail said, she backed off further, apologizing for the whole misguided proposal and promising to send letters to all state governors explicitly nullifying her proposal.

The reason the word is cautiously good is that those letters have not been sent yet. “We want to see those letters,” said Hardtail. He added that Sec. Peters is planning a press conference today or tomorrow and the MRF is interested to see what she plans to discuss.

As for rider safety, the MRF president reiterated the organization’s position that the goal of lowering motorcycle fatality rates will be accomplished more successfully by working to reduce accidents through rider training, share the road programs for motorists, and impaired riding programs, rather than increasing helmet use. Fewer accidents, not safer accidents, will save riders’ lives.

Biker Quote for Today

Well-trained reflexes are quicker than luck.

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

At the urging of Randy Bingner I have been doing some research to learn more about U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters’ efforts in regard to motorcycles and motorcycling. Let me recap.

Mary Peters rides a Harley. She’s one of us. And as one of us she has used her authority to promote issues of concern to us. For the most part this is very good. You can read the DOT’s recommendations in its Action Plan to Reduce Motorcycle Fatalities. The proposals include:

• Conducting the Motorcycle Crash Causes and Outcomes Study, a comprehensive examination of the factors that causes crashes, which will help the Department develop stronger programs and strategies to combat the rising trends in motorcycle crashes.
• Developing National Standards for Entry Level Motorcycle Rider Training that will set the baseline for novice motorcycle rider training programs conducted in the United States.
• Amending Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 218, Motorcycle Helmets, to address the falsification of helmet certifications facilitated by the current labeling requirements of the motorcycle helmet standard.
• Distributing Roadway Safety for Motorcycles, a brochure containing official guidance on designing, constructing, and maintaining roadways for increased motorcycle safety, to road planners, designers, and engineers.
• Creating a training program designed to educate police on motorcycle safety and the specific enforcement efforts they can undertake to reduce motorcycle crashes.
• Marketing a “Share the Road” campaign kit for use by States, local communities, and motorcycle organizations.

There is no question that reducing motorcycle fatalities is of concern to us all. As reported in the Action Plan, “In 2005, the motorcycle fatality rate was 73 per 100,000 registered motorcycles. By comparison, the fatality rate in the same year for passenger vehicles per 100,000 registrations was 14.” Put a little differently, in 2006 motorcycle fatalities exceeded pedestrian fatalities for the first time ever since records have been kept.

Far too many of these deaths are at least associated with alcohol use and riders who are not licensed to ride a motorcycle. These deaths can be prevented. As Randy said in an article he wrote for his local HOG group, “far too often, we are killing ourselves.”

So what’s the issue? Well, as I reported in an earlier post, Sec. Peters has proposed that money earmarked for rider training programs be diverted to efforts to increase helmet usage. And while we may all be family, family members sometimes disagree. That would be the case here. A number of organizations that you know, and may even belong to, are not happy with this proposal. They include the American Motorcyclist Association, the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, and various ABATE chapters.

I’ll address their concerns in my next post.

Biker Quote for Today

There are drunk riders. There are old riders. There are NO old, drunk riders.

I wrote an unfavorable piece about U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters that you may recall, about her efforts to divert money earmarked for rider training to promote helmet use and state laws requiring helmet use. Randy Bingner replied to that and I’d like to share our discussion.

Randy’s initial response was this:

I suggest step back from your focus on helmet laws and look at everything Mary Peters is doing for the motorcycling community. It is very difficult to be critical when you look at the big picture.

I was interested and wanted to know more. I sent Randy this reply:

I appreciate your comment on my Mary Peters post. I’ll be completely honest with you and say I don’t know much at all about what she has done or tried to do except what I read in American Motorcyclist. I would be really pleased if you would write a guest post addressing that topic. Something to balance out my frankly more superficial take on the matter. Are you interested?

Here is Randy’s answer:

I have been at the Sturgis rally the past week and just got home. You could Google and find no end to information. Basically, in my opinion, the most telling quote from Mary Peters, and I will paraphrase, is that when highways are designed, constructed, and maintained, the motorcycle should not be an afterthought. I am attaching a recent article I wrote for the back page of another newsletter. The fact that this initiative exists is due in large part to the fact that we have a rider at the head of the USDOT. I am an AMA member, but I do not agree with all positions it takes. Motorcyclists are a comparatively small group when you look at all users of the transportation system. The more we get divided, the easier it will be to lose rights and privileges. I am for freedom of choice. I chose to wear a helmet and leather.

So that’s a starting point. I intend to follow Randy’s suggestion and do some research to learn more about what Mary Peters has done, and I’ll pass that along to you. And I want to thank Randy for offering his take on the matter.

I do want to make one other point, however. I stand by my original argument that taking money from rider training to push for helmet requirements is inappropriate. Helmet usage becomes moot if accidents are avoided in the first place. I think rider training is the most important of the two.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride as if your life depended on it!!

Did you know this? I didn’t. Heck, if you’d asked me I’d have had to admit I couldn’t even name the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. But I know it now. That’s her in the photo.

So Mary Peters has been making some news lately, and raising some hackles. In her efforts to promote motorcycle safety she is accused of ignoring the law that prohibits federal bureaucrats from lobbying for or against specific state laws. In the June 2008 issue of American Motorcyclist, the publication of the American Motorcyclist Association, they have this to say:

But that doesn’t appear to be stopping Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who told U.S. senators and representatives she wanted to lobby states to divert federal money away from motorcycle safety training and awareness programs and instead push for mandated helmet use.

Here’s my take on this. She crashed on her Harley and escaped serious injury thanks in part to her helmet. Now she’s a helmet evangelist. I’ve seen this before. About 15 years ago there was a young woman who suffered a head injury when the guy she was riding with hit the median on Orchard Road while going about 70 miles an hour. This was the first time she had ever been on a motorcycle but she told reporters from her hospital bed that she intended to devote her life to making helmet usage mandatory for all motorcyclists all the time. The difference between that young woman and Mary Peters is that Mary Peters is in a position to do something about her convictions.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with advocating helmet usage. There is something wrong, however, with becoming focused so totally on helmets that you dismiss other, equally important safety factors. “Divert federal money away from motorcycle safety training and awareness programs”? I’ve made the point before that wearing a helmet is not a be-all and end-all in motorcycle safety. In the report I was discussing it said that “About 42 percent of riders killed were not wearing helmets.” And I responded that what that means then is that 58 percent were wearing helmets — and they were killed anyway.

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.

Oh, and by the way, if the law says bureaucrats can’t legally lobby for or against specific state laws, I suggest the Secretary of Transportation ought to obey the law.

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

Biker Quote for Today

Everyone crashes. Some get back on. Some don’t. Some can’t.