Payback Is A Bitch

I’d been on the road (as a cage passenger, sadly) sans-electronics for a few days and when I came home my email inboxes were filled with the usual crap. I don’t know how people survive with cell phones and the inability to automatically screen callers, texters, and email. I flag practically everything as “spam” and I still ended up with more than 150 pieces of crap in my email accounts after 4 days and, at most, there were a half-dozen things to which I actually want or need to pay attention. And all that is after my spam filter has automatically trashed about 50% of everything sent to me. One of the things that caught my eye was from a local motorcycling (not biker) group. One of the members linked a few pages of the jury decision in the case of a truck driver who crossed into the oncoming lane and killed 7 bikers. WebBikeWorld has some additional information on the case here. where it is noted that “One of the motorcyclists had a BAC nearly double the state's 'too drunk to drive' limit.” The poster speculated that the jury found Volodymyr Zhukovskyy to be innocent because “the jury was filled with idiots. Or the prosecuting attorney was an idiot and didn't present any of this [drug use] information to the jury. Or maybe Westfield Transport is run by the mob and they threatened to harm the family members of the jury?”

Possible. But I have a different theory.

Since the trucking company has bankrupted due to civil payments to families and survivers, I think this case is pretty much done in civil court. It could be the state will bear some liability due to the driver's past history and the fact that he shouldn't have had any sort of commercial license. Somebody else’s problem.

However, I wonder if the real takeaway from this decision is that the jury, like most Americans, are fed up with motorcycles. The general impression of motorcycles and motorcyclists are taken from the unnecessary and arrogant noise, regular well-publicized bad behavior, and the general impression that most motorcyclists are dangerous, sub-human, psychopathic gangbangers. A more successful tactic for the prosecution might have been to spend a lot of time bringing in experts to establish that motorcyclists are sorta (at least closely related to) humans. Hardly has worked pretty hard to create the sub-human image. You'd think/hope there would be some downsides to promoting anarchy, violence, and chaos.

About 20 years ago, I was on the MN Governor's Motorcycle Safety Council. A friend and co-worker, who was also on the Governor's council and was an ABATE officer (most of the council was made up of ABATE gangbanger wannabes) were walking to lunch in downtown St. Paul and talking about motorcyclists' public image. Most of the kids I knew at the school thought motorcycling was for "old people and assholes," but my friend disagreed with that general image.

His disagreement held up until a couple of noisemakers went past us and pretty much everyone on the street said something along the lines of "crash and die assholes." Once exposed to the real world, his take on many of ABATE’s positions changed enough that he quit his club office and took a back row seat in most of ABATE’s key political positions.

So, back to my take on the jury decision: Since police are clearly terrified of bikers and their gangs, maybe the jury just decided legalizing motorcycle highway carnage is the only way to get the bangers off of the street?

For calibration purposes, we got back last night about 9PM after a long vacation return trip (long for us). Went to bed about 11pm and spent the night being noise bombed by nitwits on Hardlys (and other garbage fish) on our un-policed county road well past 2AM. Personally, I keep hoping Amazon will sell a hand-held holographic projector sometime soon. People living in those noise traffic zones could project deer, moose, bears, cops, baby carriages, etc on to the streets in front of the local idiots on blubber-mobiles and entertain themselves watching the goobers try to remember where their brake levers are. My street is decorated all summer long with morons and their unmuffled, 2 hp bikes, and 4 hp sound systems. "If wishes were fishes" there'd be a whole lot of Hardlys buried in half-rotted carp.

A couple of years ago, a friend and I were talking about the herd of anti-vaxing, science-denying goobers who were (and still are) decorating hospitals with their dying breath and crazy conspiracy theories. I’m not a big fan of humans and so my take was “That just seems like the usual price for stupidity.”

His response was, “Being stupid shouldn’t be a death sentence.”

“Dude, that is always the result of being stupid,” I said. In fact, that is exactly how evolution works, it’s the whole point of the Darwin Awards.

Likewise, after 75 years of Hardly’s convincing every white male that looking like an unreconstructed off-on-bail convict on a last binge before a couple of decades behind bars is “manly,” we have a problem. Minnesota has a “road guard” law that allows a moron with a reflective vest and a paddle to stop traffic indiscriminately for any unreasonable amount of time to allow totally useless, law-breaking, and decadent bikers to parade through any street or road in the state. You don’t think that tactic creates animosity? I’d bet it generates enough hate for motorcyclists from at least 50% of the inconvenienced population that you wouldn’t want them on a jury if you wanted that jury to convict anyone of killing a motorcyclist with any kind of weapon. Sit through two of those clown parades and you’ll be running them down yourself.

eBikes, Mopeds, and Motorcycles: Is There A Difference?

eBikes (“e-bikes”?) are becoming the most dangerous vehicle on the road, despite eBikers claim that bicycles and eBikes are not “vehicles.” Hint: if you are not walking and you are moving you are in or on a “vehicle.” "noun: vehicle; plural noun: vehicles 1. a thing used for transporting people or goods, especially on land, such as a car, truck, or cart." A bicycle/eBike is definitely “a thing” and even if you are just moving about recreationally you are being transported. This is, perhaps, the dumbest aspect of eBike promoters argument against regulating and licensing eBikes. If you like dumb arguments, you’ll love this doofus: Bolton Bikes.

If you’ve stuck with me for a while, you’ll know I think motorcycle licensing in the US is idiotic. And by that I mean any idiot with $13 and bare-minimal skills can get a motorcycle endorsement and, based on local traffic, I’d say every idiot in Minnesota has a motorcycle endorsement.

eBikes: Federal law in HB 727, a 2002 law enacted by Congress, defines an electric bicycle as “A two- or three-wheeled vehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts (1 h.p.), whose maximum speed on a paved level surface, when powered solely by such a motor while ridden by an operator who weighs 170 pounds, is less than 20 mph.” Most states adopted that definition of eBikes and most also adopted the federal park regulation that allowed eBikes fitting that description access to bicycle trails and bike lanes. In some states, eBikes are excluded from the legal definition of “motor vehicles.” That, mostly, is for the purpose of minimizing licensing requirements.

State bicycle/eBike helmet laws are inconsistent, irrational, and unequally enforced. If there are bike helmet requirements, most likely they will only be applied to whatever the state decides are “children.”

Mopeds: Mopeds are probably the most misleading named vehicle on the planet today. A moped is legally defined as "[a] vehicle that has two or three wheels, no external shifting device, and a motor that does not exceed 50 cubic centimeters piston displacement and cannot propel the vehicle at a speed greater than 30 miles per hour on a level surface." You’ll notice, I hope, that nothing is mentioned about pedals in the moped description. A zillion years ago, mopeds were mostly bicycles people had stuck un-muffled 2-stroke motors to, leaving the pedals to fool lazy cops (as if there is another kind?) and piss off as many pedestrians, neighbors, and property owners as possible. State laws about mopeds are all over the place. Some states require a license plate and motorcycle endorsement for any vehicle that meets the definition of moped and above (anything not legally a bicycle or eBike) and some states only require a license for under-16 or under-18-year-old riders. Most “mopeds” are just small (50cc/under-30mph) scooters. Moped horsepower definitions vary by state from anything over 1 h.p. to 5 h.p. Some states (Colorado, for example) have a weird undefined area between 750W and “4,476 watts for electric motors” (6 h.p.) where the vehicle is neither an eBike or a moped. I can’t imagine what kind of nutjobs wrote those laws, but I’ve pretty much given up on at least half of the fools in this country so I’m not inconvenienced.

Likewise, helmet requirements are all over the place for mopeds. Like motorcycles, there is no rationale behind moped helmet laws. Most states require helmets for 18-and-under, but states like Minnesota rarely bother to enforce those laws (or any other laws that don’t get cops into non-white people business).

Motorcycles: Motorcycles are pretty much everything else, including some 3-wheeled vehicles, like the Polaris Slingshot and Can-Am Spyder, that are “motorcycles” because that is how the manufacturers slithered past car safety regulations. The lesson there is “If you don’t care how many of your customers you kill, call your vehicle a 'motorcycle.’” The Bolton goober claims there “are no horsepower limits on motorcycles.” Of course, he’s about as useful a source as I am on particle physics. In 2010, the EU limited production motorcycles to 100 h.p. for a while, then changed its little mind in 2015 and reversed that ruling. France didn’t follow the EU in going back to unlimited horsepower and maximum road hazard until late 2016. US DOT restrictions indirectly limit production bike horsepower with emissions, noise, and safety restrictions. Of course our lazy local policing allows bikers to circumvent federal and state regulations because so many of the so-called “law enforcement” gangsters are also biker gangbangers. The one thing cops really hate are laws that apply to themselves.

It is fair to say that anything that isn’t either a bicycle (or legal eBike) or a moped is a motorcycle; regardless of if it is a scooter, an electric two-or-three-wheel vehicle, has or doesn’t have pedals, or is a custom one-off or production vehicle. The definitions of these three vehicles are solely determined by powered speed limits and horsepower/watts. Any attempt to cloud those definitions are nothing more that blown smoke and any policing fooled by that smoke isn’t worth the price of a badge or public support.

Motorcycle helmet laws have been under siege by the very people they are designed to protect, in practically every country. As I speculated a while back, the only real argument for not wearing a helmet is a childish desire to be recognized as a biker. In 1966, the federal government offered highway funding incentives for states to enact helmet laws. (Eeek! Social engineering!) Regardless of the look-at-me! crowd delusions, the evidence for reduced serious motorcycle injury and death with helmet use is overwhelming. However, helmet laws have been under attack by the AMA and ABATE and other biker disorganizations from the start and, somehow, the AMA convinced our congresscritters to repeal the federal incentives in 1975. At that time, California (believe it or not) was the only state not to have a mandatory helmet law. Today, only 19 states have mandatory universal helmet laws. Oddly, California is one of ‘em.

Some stats about motorcycle riders, helmet use, and motorcycle crash data are . . . interesting. The average age of motorcyclists is somewhere between 51 and 56, depending on who’s data you’re believing this week. In 1980, the average age was 27. 19% of riders are women, compared to 6% in 1980. 3% of motorcycle deaths “are attributed to women” and 93% of motorcycle passenger deaths are women. (No surprises there.) “Mothers don’t let your baby girls grow up to be biker chicks?”

The point of this essay was to try and clarify the very clear lines between eBikes and the rest of motorized two-wheeled transportation. A surprise, to me, was that the line between mopeds and motorcycles is so sloppy.

Social Engineering & Motorcycling

One of my favorite things about Mount Rushmore is the statements the Park Service selected from each of those Presidents. George Washington’s words are, probably, my favorite, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” Life and democracy are just a series of experiments, some successful and some not so much. Anyone who has ever worked in a lab of any sort knows that you just move on when an experiment fails.

So, with that background in mind, I think the MIC has been clueless in its sudden approach to find new customers. I’ve been saying, for almost 20 years, that new riders will not be the same people as the old riders. The Hardly/biker/gangbanger crowd are old, white, poor, and stupid. They are, literally, on the way out; and good riddance. Their redneck replacements will be even more poor, dumber, and will satisfy themselves with the old stock easily found on practically every block in the country. Harley stock-piled bikes in warehouses, dealers’ lots, and in the garages of wanna-be yuppies who are so underwater on their chrome toys that they’ll never see dry land again. In the meantime, those “nicest people” Honda once convinced to buy motorcycles have moved on to other things. In Sound Familiar?, my last post, I ridiculed the traditional approach the MIC is taking to try to cling to the biker business in spite of the fact that bikers are about as trendy and hip as Disco Dan. A local Red Wing motorcyclists’ Google group I sometimes follow was on a similar subject, based on that Bloomberg article and the fact that internal combustion powered vehicles are losing ground faster than expected.

One member seemed to think electric motorcycles are a joke and that my suggestion that motorcycling advocates try to seperate motorcycle licensing from cage licenses was ridiculous. “I'm envisioning an electric moped running the ironbutt rally. Pulling a trailer full of batteries. Picking up fresh batteries every 100 miles.

“Not to mention that a driver's license is much more than a license to drive, but also establishes residency, personal identification and even implied nationality. 

“In my opinion, it makes sense to learn to drive in a car. Protected by a cage, one can learn traffic patterns etc without the undue risk associated with a bad/inexperienced decision on an MC.”

Since the Iron Butt is probably the ultimate motorcycling conspicuous consumption event, 1000 miles a day for no reason other than to burn fuel and attempt suicide-by-deer, I don't think many motorcyclists or motorcycle manufacturers take it into account in their product planning. I suspect there are more motorcyclists who don't know about the IBR than who do. I'd never heard of it until I moved to MN in 1996 and I'd been on two wheels for 40 years at that point. People who might commute by motorcycle are, or should be, a far bigger concern of the industry than the 12 guys who spend as small fortune on their once-a-year IBR extravaganza and the rest of the year recovering from that crippling event.

However, you might envision the ass-kicking suck-pow-blow bikes are getting at Pike’s Peak. Like horse-and-buggy owners at the turn of the last century, electric vehicles are coming on a lot faster than the old guard thinks and the speed of that change is only going to get quicker.

In fact, a drivers’ licenses is exactly nothing “more than a license to drive.” There are identification cards that serve the identity purpose of a drivers' license and you get them at the same DMV office or, in civilized states, at the post office or your local library. Red state voter suppression politicos try to make ID cards as difficult and expensive to obtain as cage licenses, but those folks are fighting a losing battle. Demographics and economics are going to be driving this bus and no matter how much voter repression goes on in the red states, those two things will be driven by forces outside of political control.

That last argument is what I think of as the ultimate helicopter parent whine, “I’m gonna put my half-witted offspring in the largest SUV possible, in case little Douchebag gets distracted by his cell phone, video game, and in-dash movies and loses control of his vehicle and kills your kid; who was responsibly walking, bicycling, or motorcycling.” If you think young drivers are learning traffic patterns, you haven’t been on the road in any sort of state of consciousness. You don’t learn patterns or good habits from being inside a well-protected, smarter-than-you vehicle. You learn by immersing yourself in the environment where you will sink or swim. That’s why walking, bicycling, and motorcycling are better educators than cages, but it’s also why we’ve become a nation of pampered, lazy, uneducated spoiled brats who are non-competitive, trailing-edge, and have traded democracy for idiocracy.

I’m not convinced motorcycles have a future in the industrialized world. When the only people who can afford the average motorcycle are the 1%, the market has shrivelled to unsustainable. There was a reason Henry Ford paid his workers enough that they could buy the products they built. There was an even better reason Honda tried to market their 1960’s motorcycles to “the nicest people.” Today, a reasonably practical new motorcycle costs at least $5,000 and that same money will buy a decent used car that will get the same or better fuel mileage, last longer with less maintenance, and be useable year-around.

I really believe it’s time to experiment with the whole motorcycle paradigm. I know of more than a few young people who could be tempted to obtain a motorcycle license before they mess with a car license. They might not ever bother with the car license, given mass transportation access and automous cars. While some people imagine that “drivers’ education courses” in high school or privately provides some level of competence, that would just be more of that silly idealizing-high-school crap. Drivers’ Ed courses are notoriously taught by the guy who couldn’t clear the lowest bar in teachers’ education, worse than phys-ed, and the classes are barely a joke, academically or practically. Currently, all licensing testing is designed to put butts in seats as efficiently as possible. Safety and competence isn’t any significant part of either drivers or motorcyclists training. That could and should be changed. Completely decoupling the cage license from motorcycle licensing could provide an opportunity to enhance all aspects of motorcycle training, which would make both motorcycle and car licensing more productive. Obviously, tiered licensing only makes sense. I can’t think of a single good reason to put a new motorcyclist on a liter bike; or a new driver in a 2,400 kilo SUV.

Electric motorcycles might make even more sense than electric cars, given the fact that most motorcycles don’t travel more than 1,500 miles a year and the advantage motorcycles could have in parking, lane-sharing, and storage. An electric motorcycle with a 150 mile range would more than do the transportation job for most people and a $0.06 fillup would just be icing on the cake.

Now This Is Funny

The headline, "Commuters' wasted time in traffic costs $121B" flashed across my Comcast "news feed" today.The opening paragraphs of the article read, "The nation's commuters are adapting to increasing traffic congestion by building delays into their schedules, but at a cost of $121 billion in wasted time and fuel, according to an annual study of national driving patterns released Tuesday.

"The new report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute found that Americans wasted an average of $818 each sitting in traffic in 2011. That also meant more carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

"The worst commute in the country? Washington. Commuters in the nation's capital needed almost three hours for a trip that should take 30 minutes without traffic, according to the report. That compares to the least congested city — Pensacola, Fla. — where commuters needed only nine extra minutes.

"On average, Americans allowed for an hour of driving time for a trip that would take 20 minutes without traffic. The total nationwide added up to 5.5 billion additional hours that Americans spent in their cars during 2011. . . "

 That's a big surprise? Seriously? Where do these birdbrains live where they suddenly realize that Americans spend a good bit of their lives sitting in stalled traffic? This was old news in 1975.

We, of course, have a solution: motorcycles and lane-splitting. Move 10% of the daily commuters on to motorcycles and let them split lanes and keep moving and the bulk of the congestion problem goes away.

Of course, the problem is sort of fixed by the crashed economy. The worst year, so far, for congestion was 2005. Maybe the economy will just stay tanked and we'll all go back to walking from overpass to sewer tunnel. The brilliant researchers who pointed out this barely-known information said this all means the nation should think about "implementing transportation improvements to reduce congestion."

Dudes, we're here to help. Just let us.

Last year, traffic paralyzed Americans fired off 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline stuck in traffic. That's an improvement from 2005's 3.2 billion wasted gallons. More efficient, more mobile motorcycles could solve a lot of this problem, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

MN Helmet Law

Big surprise, ABATE is opposing the new attempt to pass a helmet law in Minnesota. I can't remember the last time I agreed with ABATE, but this is sort of one of those times. I disagree on the need for a helmet law. Motorcyclists lost their "freedom" argument when seat belt "violations" became a primary offense in Minnesota. (Babble on about cagers wearing helmets, but we all know that's a non sequitur.) Our out-of-proportional miles ridden to highway deaths statistics are more than enough to move any sensible legislator to either do everything possible to improve motorcycle safety statistics or get the damn things off of the public roads. I'd rather they do the first.

ABATE chitters about having government "focus on public awareness, rider education, and crash prevention" as if that has a chance in hell of accomplishing anything. "Public awareness" of what? The 0.0001% of traffic that motorcycles amount to on a typical roadway? How about increasing the public's awareness that most motorcycle crashes are the fault of the motorcyclist (look at Colorado's data, for example)?

"Rider education" is such a empty promise that the MSF cautions its state providers not to try to connect training with lower mortality, morbidity, or crash statistics because "in societies where rider training was both widely available and in generally mandatory, they were unable to find conclusive evidence that riders without training were more likely to be involved in accidents." Wikipedia has a fairly extensive page on Motorcycle Training and their entry is consistent with everything I've read.

And, finally, "crash prevention." Gotta love that brilliant idea. "Hey, I just thought of something, let's all quit crashing." That'll work. We just put our heads together and make a wish, "I wanna stay rubber-side-down for ever, so help me Kenny Roberts."

Nope, the place where I agree with ABATE is the idiotic kiss up to rich guys on garage candy that allows folks who can put up a half-million dollar "reparation security" on their motorcycle "that provides medical expense benefits of at least $250,000 and at least that amount for the total of income loss, replacement services loss, funeral expense loss, survivor's economic loss, and survivor's replacement services loss." As Bruce Mike said in his From the Hip column this month, if this makes sense why can't the same 1%'ers "demand the same option regarding seat belts?"

Just pass the helmet law, fools. Quit trying to find revenue venues that you can pretend are not "taxes" (like every other charge, fine, levy, fee, or resource enhancement you fruitcakes who signed the No New Taxes Pledge have tacked on to the 99% to protect the assets of the 1% who own your useless asses) and do something useful. Either man-up and pass a helmet law or stick your heads back in the mud and pretend you're giving taxpayers some value for their money.

Remind Me Why?

It's March, unseasonably warm (record-breakingly warm), and we're having lunch in the backyard. Once again, the primary noise source from the freeway across from our house has been idiots on motorcycles. After an hour outside, if it were true that loud pipes save lives, I'd be particularly in favor of total silence motorcycle exhaust laws if there were a chance that would get these idiots out of the gene pool. As my dad used to say, "Fire a couple warning shots to the head to get their attention." I have to wonder if these fools have an attention to get?

This video makes me miss the good old days from California. One of the reasons motorcyclists kept the lane-splitting privilege in CA was that motorcycle cops were so hard on loud pipes, unridable vehicles (like the ape-hanger comedian in this video), hooligans, and the usual gangbanger biker crowd. Today in Minnesota, the gangbangers are the cops, so noise laws and the rest of the rational restrictions on motorcycles are ignored and will continue to be ignored until bikes get banned altogether.

There is no reason why a motorcycle should be louder than a modern car. No safety advantage comes from the noise, no engineering limitations require the noise, and common sense should motivate a minority not to piss off the majority. I'm not kidding. Motorcycles are a solid 10-25dBSPL louder than the average traffic noise. Idiots.

Why I Pulled You Over

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"My best guess is that I didn't put a foot down at the stop sign." (And, of course, you're trying to meet your quota without expending a lot of effort.)

"That's right. You didn't come to a complete stop back there."

"Yeah, I did. I even rolled backwards a little bit waiting for traffic to settle down."

"There is no way you can come to a complete stop without putting a foot down."

"I can." (If you were paying attention, you'd have noticed that I was stopped and balanced for a few seconds before we started this inane conversation.)

"I don't care about those motorcycle stunts. Tell it to the judge. I'm a police officer and I know you can't come to a complete stop without a foot on the ground. I need to see your license, proof of insurance, and registration."

So went my first minutes in Linton, North Dakota. A minute was all I'd planned on spending in Linton, but that turned out to be a pipedream. While the cop went through his routine of checking me out for warrants and past evil behavior, I thought about all the conversations I've had with cops and judges over the years regarding the things "you can't do on a motorcycle." Considering all of the false information the law has to work with regarding something as well-documented as motorcycling, it's not hard to understand why the legal system is so incompetent when it comes to dealing with complicated things like treason, corporate and bank fraud, identity theft, environmental catastrophes, and insider trading.

Anyone who's ridden or watched observed trials knows that really good riders (not me) can spend a good bit of time not moving without putting a foot to the ground. At a 1980's US national enduro, I caught up with a trio of US pro riders at a check stop. They were sitting with a leg swung over the tank, having a conversation, with no feet on the ground, and no kickstands down; just showing off their balance while waiting to get their timesheets punched. I have never been able to do that or anything close to that. But, if I'm not concentrating too hard, I can stop and stay balanced for a few seconds while I inspect intersection traffic. I feel safer and more in control of the bike when my feet are on the pegs than when they are on the ground, so I try to stay in that position whenever possible.

I did not end up receiving a ticket in Linton, so I shouldn't look that gift horse in the mouth. I'm old, well documented, wearing Minnesota Safety Center patches on my gear, and a likely candidate to be sent off with a warning. Your North Dakota small town cop mileage may vary, especially if you don't when to shut up or you are young or if you don't look familiar and harmless.

The point is, the law doesn't often reflect what the MSF trainer website calls "best practices." The law is intended to provide "guidance" for cops and beginning riders. Riders (and drivers) looking out for John Law and worrying about what might be called illegal behavior probably causes as many crashes as it prevents; if it prevents any at all. I know that every time I see a cop I wonder what half-assed, unwritten or badly written, non-existent micro-law I might be breaking and it makes me nervous enough that I make foolish mistakes in attempting to avoid whatever weird thing I've heard cops are pulling bikes over for this week. Because of their unpredictability factor, I put cops pretty high on my list of life-threatening highway hazards.

Of the instances I can remember, in my 45 year motorcycling career I've been stopped and ticketed (or threatened with tickets) by cops for:

• "Reckless driving"; standing on the pegs while crossing obstacles (this has happened more than once),
• "Failure to keep in proper lane"; moving in the lane to increase visibility or to avoid slick spots or pooled water,
• "Careless or negligent driving"; not using hand signals along with the bike's turn signals or turning right on red when traffic is oncoming, about a 1/2 mile in the distance (right on red was legal, the cop just thought I was being too "aggressive"),
• "Signals; method required"; not signaling while merging into freeway traffic (in a state where motorcycle turn signals are not required and . . . is there any other option other than turning left into the traffic lane while merging?)
• "Driving too fast for conditions"; 3mph over the posted 65mph and at least 10mph under the velocity of the rest of traffic,
• "Parking improperly"; not parked parallel to the curb, but with the back tire against the curb and the bike pointing out toward the street,
• "Windshields to be unobstructed; wipers required"; seriously, I was wearing a 1970's Bell Motostar full-face which the cop deemed "too restrictive" for proper vision.

Motorcycling and bureaucracies combine as poorly as oil and British engineering. Back in the 70's, I argued with a Nebraska DMV employee that the state's license test advice for crossing railroad tracks or for hitting a pothole was blatantly wrong and downright dangerous. For that matter, the Minnesota motorcycle test's "best" lane position advice is questionable. In the 90's, Colorado's motorcycling pamphlet offered some pretty funny advice regarding the use of the front brake. California's motorcycle handbook might still have some really dumb advice about merging into fast-moving freeway traffic. In fact, the 1980's California DMV advice would regularly get you a ticket for "merging below the speed of traffic." This list could go on for hundreds of pages. [Feel free to contribute your experience with idiot motorcycle traffic laws or equally goofy enforcement.]

I consider all of this to be examples of bureaucratic incompetence, ignorance, and/or abuse of authority. Fortunately for me, so did the traffic court in every instance. Because I've had such erratic "luck" with law enforcement, it's hard not to keep two eyes out for official traffic traps and no eyes on other traffic and road hazards.

So, when I see one of those "public service" announcements that claims the HP or local cops are working to reduce crashes, I suspect the intent. If officialdom really wanted to save lives on the highway, they would do these three things immediately:

1. Make the driving exam about 5000% more difficult and quit handing out cage licenses in Cracker Jack boxes.
2. Drop the hammer on tailgaters; one rear end crash and you're a bus rider for life.
3. Detach cell phone use from driving. If the phone is moving more than 3mph, disconnect the call.

All that "get tough" marketing is nothing more than justification for activity that doesn't contribute much to public safety. Once you put the fools into the flow of traffic, pretending to be protecting them with nutty traffic laws is cynical and opportunistic.

On the other hand, at the Isle of Man: