The View from Two Wheels

About this time last year, I posted an article on a Red Wing Facebook page about “How to Build a City around Bicycles Fast,” with the intention of beginning a conversation about making this fading village attractive to 21st Century people. I introduced the video with the statement “If you want to attract skilled, innovative young adults to a small town, making it a bicycle transportation haven would be high on a lot of lists.” The generally hostile response to that surprised me, a little:

• “We don’t want it here they don’t follow rules now so that would make it even worse.”
• “If bikes followed the rules of the road, sure. But in my experience they don't. They don't stop at stop signs, don't ride on the proper side of the road, and even ride on sidewalks. They're vehicles, and are supposed to follow vehicle traffic rules.”

And so on. There were slightly over 30 negative comments about creating any sort of accommodation for bicycles in the city and exactly 3 bicyclists responding.

I have to admit, I love the cluelessness of cagers imagining that they “follow the rules.” As a lifelong bicyclist and a motorcyclist for the past 50 years, what I see from my unobstructed view of cagers is almost non-stop ignorance and arrogance when it comes to “the rules of the road.” Here are some examples of that behavior.

1. At least half of the traffic on a two-lane road will be unaware of where their vehicle belongs. For the most part, rural drivers know we drive on the right side in the United States, but they don’t seem to know what the lines in the road indicate. Trucks, especially, wander from the middle of the road to the edge of pavement, well into the scrawny “bicycle lanes” and skirting the gravel and, eventually, the ditch. As a bicyclist, you have to keep a close eye on what’s in front and behind you with a readiness to hit the ditch or jump a curb when you see a vehicle barreling from behind taking up the bicycle lane.
2. Pretty much no one in a cage or truck knows the rules for stop signs. {“If there is a stop sign with no pavement markings, stop near the intersection where you have a good view of approaching traffic. If there is a crosswalk without a stop line, stop at the nearest crosswalk line. If there is only a stop sign, stop at the stop line. If the crosswalk has a stop line, stop at the stop line.”] What actually happens is most drivers roll through the crosswalk, stopping with the nose of their vehicle well into on-coming traffic, if they slow down at all. If you are a bicyclist, you have to assume the majority of drivers will expect you to give up your right of way so that they don’t have to control their vehicle competently.
3. Stopping at stop signs and lights is, apparently, optional. This isn't just a rural thing because there is an intersection at 10th and Minnesota in St Paul where it is never safe to assume the vehicles heading northwest on Minnesota (a one-way street) will pay the slightest attention to the stop light. The police station used to be at that location and even that didn't slow down the goofballs who commuted through the area. In rural areas, lights and signs are regularly ignored and there are known areas of high crash incident. As a bicyclist or motorcyclist, it is never safe to assume cagers are competent, sane and rational, or not homicidal. 
4. Stop signs and lights pose another fatal attraction for two-wheeled folks: getting run over or rear-ended while stopped. Lane-splitting advocates argue that lane-splitting/sharing reduces motorcycles from being rear-ended at stops. My experience confirms that but any rational person should be nervous about anecdotal and hearsay evidence. I don't buy those arguments for loud exhaust systems and you shouldn't buy them for lane-splitting. However, it is a fact that drivers often run over bicycles and motorcycles at this interaction points and I will always opt for getting some serious mass between me and any on-coming vehicles when I'm forced to stop in traffic. On a bicycle, you are screwed no matter what you do: 1) stop in a vehicle lane and you're likely to be run over, 2) stop in the bike lane and you are at risk both from cars that roll over you thinking the bike lane is a turn lane and you'll also be at risk when a cager decides to turn in front or over you thinking a cage has the right-of-way when turning over a bicycle going straight.
   
5. Residential streets are a free-for-all zone, no rules apply to locals. Seriously, “random motion” describes what you can expect from drivers in these areas.
6. In the United States, noise pollution appears to be one of those “my rights override any other considerations” situations, like gun ownership. As a bicyclist, you should be wearing ear plugs for when you are passed by motorcycles, pickup trucks, and any other motorized vehicle driven by a noisy spoiled child. The country and most states have vehicle noise laws, but cops are too lazy to enforce them. You can, literally, suffer permanent hearing damage from being near some of these vehicles.
7. Speed limits are less than a suggestion if there isn’t a cop in the immediate traffic mix. Worse, most rural drivers are not competent to walk on a crowded sidewalk, but in a motor vehicle these idiots are rolling assassins but they all imagine themselves to be NASCAR drivers (including the inability to turn right).
8. “Bicycle lanes” are mostly considered to be fair game for parking, passing, and trash dumping. Not only that, but city workers often place obstacles in bike lanes that force bicyclists into clueless traffic.
9. Unplanned, sudden right turns across traffic lanes and, especially, bicycle lanes are snafu. This is true in urban and rural areas, but more true where drivers are unsophisticated, unskilled, and unfamiliar with sharing the road with anyone else. When a rube visits the “big city,” which can be a pretty small place if the rube is a total goober, everything is a surprise and their reactions are often totally idiotic and unpredictable.
10. Nothing about the “distracted driver” whining is in the least bit sincere. Occasional and random traffic citations for cell phone abuse is just a revenue generator. If society cared about the people, cell phones would be cut off when they are in a moving vehicle (easily done from either the phone or the cell provider). Drivers know nobody really cares if they are paying attention, so they don’t. From a bicycle viewpoint, I can tell you at least half of the drivers waiting at a stop light are staring at their phones or yakking way as if they were in their living room. When the light changes, that “100’ rope” that appears to tie each of the vehicles in the traffic-train of together is just the lag time between when the light changes or vehicle in front moves and the idiot behind looks up from his/her phone and resumes being a distracted driver. Autonomous cars can not come soon enough.
11. Drivers are not aware or skilled enough to be “out to get you.” Honestly, if drivers were intentionally homicidal they’d be easier to predict. Random motion is exactly that: random. So, guessing what kind of idiot move a driver is going to make is an infinitely complicated calculation. When I taught motorcycle safety classes, I would politically incorrectly tell students, “If cagers had any skill, they wouldn’t need four wheels to balance themselves.” That is still my position and I’m stickin’ with it.

I’m still riding, so the odds are good that I’ll be making additions to this list. If you have any favorites, add them on the “Comments” below.

Spam Magnet?

I admit, I don't know what the purpose of spam attached to blog comments could be. Call me "stupid," I'm used to it, but one rant I've written rises above all others as a spam magnet, "Start Seeing Corners and Road Signs." China, Russia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines spammers (in that order) are attracted to that one essay to the point that I once turned off "anonymous" comment access and, now, I automatically route anonymous comments to my spam holding pen. Typically, I will delete 50-75 anonymous comments due to their spammy nature every week. Often, every one of those comments will have been attached to that one rant. 

Maybe I should be flattered? I have a mirror, so that never works. I am entertained to the point that I have left a bunch of those comments in the blog as some sort of reminder that I'm shipping out my thoughts to a autonomous world of non-readers . . . or something. If I were more trusting (could I be less trusting?) I'd have let them all go and I could brag about having written something that received 1,000s of comments. I keep suspecting one of those "anonymous" comments will have an attachment that could do harm to actual readers, but most don't and I can't figure out what their purpose is. 

On another level, I am sort of proud of "Start Seeing Corners and Road Signs." It drew a little attention when it was published in Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly (even though the magazine didn't like it enough to post it on their website afterwards). "Attention," to my column always meant pissed off bikers posing as real motorcyclists. In that column, I wrote this, "A newbie rider, Harley-shopping guy, Roger Holmes, 59, said it all with his Trib article quote, 'It makes you feel good. It makes you feel younger.' Holy crap. One more sucker buying into the marketing bullshit. Dude, you need to have someone take a picture of you and your wife on your hippobike. Put it on your mirror and stare at it every day until you wise up and realize that you not only don't look younger, you look downright silly wallowing around the road on that porker. Exercise will make you feel younger. Eating smart, giving up smoking, drinking less (way less, for you cruiser characters), and reducing the stress in your lives by avoiding stupid impulse buying and idiotic debt will all make you feel younger (and look younger than your dumber Boomer friends)."It probably says a lot about me, but I am damn proud of that writing and I'll stick with the content until my bones are incinerated.

What Will You Do Then?

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Thomas W. Day

The ultimate consumer electronics trade show, coincidentally called the Consumer Electronics Show, held early this past January is the place where all of the folks making cool toys show what they're up to with this year's products and products they hope to be bringing to market in the not-so-distant future. Ford, VW, GM, and Toyota all had a lot to talk about and what they talked about was how much smarter cars are going to be in coming years. Our favorite "unprecedented connectivity" will be coupled with driver-assist safety measures with an end goal of fully autonomous vehicles. They all talked about the "death of the internal combustion engine" with recent significant improvements in solar cells, fuel cells and electric vehicle charge loads, drive time, and improved charging cycles. Considering the fact that these speakers were corporate industry leaders, the number of times they used the words ""disruption" and "revolution" was a little unsettling. There is a lot of money available for investment in this technology, since 2015 was the most profitable year in American car manufacturing history. On top of that, new competitor brands in transportation like Tesla, Google, and Apple are driving changes outside of the usual culprits and their vested interests. Along with working towards the end of urban traffic problems, these new technologies could are expected to dramatically reduce private vehicle ownership. Motorcycle manufacturers have to be worried about one of the less marketed effects of smarter vehicles: an anticipated 90% reduction in automotive accidents and casualties.  
 
Let's face it, given motorcycling's conservative tendencies there isn't much chance that any of this good stuff will find its way into motorcycles. We can't even agree to wear minimal protective gear and fight every effort to improve motorcycling's dismal safety record as if we were a bunch of 2-year-olds being asked to drain a big spoonful of nasty tasting medicine. Simple mathematics should illustrate what's going to happen if the car guys pull off their revolution. Motorcyclists are around 15% of traffic fatalities in a typical year. About half of those deaths are the result of single-vehicle crashes. If that's true, it's pretty obvious that a significant number of the multiple vehicle crashes are the fault of motorcyclists to a large enough extent that nothing the car manufacturers can do will save us from ourselves. Let's say, for the sake of being hopeful, that really smart cars drops motorcycle deaths by 25% (Personally, I suspect this is ridiculously optimistic.). That means that the percentage of motorcycle contributions to traffic deaths will be more along the 50-60% territory. 
 
You would have to be seriously delusional to imagine that it is reasonable for a vehicle (and riders and passengers) that contributes less than 0.01% to the total miles travelled (and most of those miles are purely recreational and unnecessary) but causes 50% of total highway deaths. Somewhere between our currently insanely high injury and fatality rates and that future 50% mark, society is going to take a serious look at motorcycles. When that happens all of the big bad biker stares, gangbanger threats, and whimpering about "freedom" and "tradition" are going to have no effect whatsoever. Roads and doors are going to start closing on motorcycles and our favorite means of transportation will become just another not-legal-on-public-roads recreational vehicle.  
 
Humans, and Americans in particular, are not known for foresight or preventative action. We tend to react to events as they happen, even when they were predicted and could have been prevented with just a little work. In this case, there are actually some financially significant vested interests involved. Between Polaris and Harley Davidson and a few smaller manufacturers, there are a few billion dollars in revenue at stake. Add the Japanese Big Four and the rest of the importers and you'd think the Motorcycle Industry Council might have its let's-pretend-we're-safety-training organization, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, and the industry's official mouthpiece, the AMA, begin to move motorcyclists toward anything that will reduce our crash contributions. Modern executives are so grossly overpaid that they have no real motivation to preserve the health of the company's they mismanage or the industries they "serve," but stockholders might be a little concerned. I, for example, wouldn't put a nickel of my investment portfolio into any aspect of the motorcycle industry. Since it's TARP-assisted post-Great Recession recovery, Harley Davidson's stock has taken a clobbering, as of this writing: from a $72.68 high in May of 2014 to today's (Feb 2016) $40 price. More than a few financial authors suspect that HD's future is shaky, at best. Polaris is in much better shape, but their bottom line isn't particularly dependent on motorcycle sales. The same goes for Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki. If motorcycles disappear from the industrialized world's highways, none of those companies will be seriously inconvenienced.  
 
Commuting by motorcycle, on the other hand, will be history. I think that's a bad thing, but if I'm the only one who thinks that, I suspect that means it doesn't matter. What do you think?

More Autonomous Problems to Solve

"Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from" poses a pretty funny question for the ethics department of autonomous car companies in this Technology Review article. Of course, if you are a half-decent motorcyclist there is at least one more option in their example picture; go off road and avoid them both. And what the hell is a baby doing crawling across a road in the first place. Maybe the best solution is to target that kid’s parents. They clearly should not be reproducing.

Another scenario from the article has the driver deciding whether to kill five jaywalkers or one. I say use the logic Fat Freddy’s cat’s cockroach general adversary used: “We got millions more where they came from.” It’s not like the world has a shortage of people or jaywalkers. If you want to march across the street against the light, into traffic with a quartet of nitwits, I think you should enjoy the consequences.

Sarcasim, cynicism, and grumpy old man-ism aside, the above scenario is going to become far more common. We’re already living in a time when large numbers of nitwits walk into traffic concentrating on their cell phones, assuming the world is going to look out for them. Autonomous cars are going to bring a level of false security and confidence to that breed of non-sustainable human that will make the above scenario seem ordinary.

Likewise, when that ethics-challenged autonomous vehicle comes upon a parade of pirates or bicyclists(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmTHk3sxSUA), go for the middle. Take on the bigger issue—too many stupid people in the gene pool—and do the world a favor. Yeah, I know. It has been a long frustrating day and I need a whiskey to top it off and mellow me out.

Merge It or Park It

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

A big cruiser (a full bagger with a reasonably geared-up rider) and a semi loaded with turf approach a T-intersection from opposite directions. The cruiser is making an easy right into the T while the semi has a turn lane and will be crossing lanes after coming to a near stop. The cruiser should reach the turn at least one-hundred feet before the semi begins to make his turn. How do you think this plays out?

Other than me following the semi through the intersection, there is no other traffic in sight. The semi approaches the turn and comes to a complete stop. The cruiser slows to a walking pace before entering the exit lane and, eying the semi, comes to a complete stop at the end of his merge lane. If he got off his hippobike and walked into the road he'd have beaten the semi through the intersection. He waits for the semi driver to signal that it's safe for him to leave the merge lane. This, of course, forced the semi to come to a complete, totally unnecessary, stop partially sticking into the incoming lane while the cruiser doofus waddles away. What should have been a mindlessly simple traffic situation turned into something not only ridiculously complicated but was one more demonstration why Minnesota (and the rest of the country) needs tiered licensing and a dramatically more difficult motorcycle license test for any two-wheel vehicle over 50cc. The motorcyclist in this situation was obviously incapable of handling his oversized toy and should have been ticketed for blocking traffic. If there had been actual traffic in the scenario he would have constituted a road hazard.

From my backseat perspective, the whole incident reminded me of a constant irritant that I do not miss from years of commuting in the Cities. Minnesotans do not know how to merge. Personally, I think stopping in an intersection or, worse, on a freeway entrance/exit ramp should be grounds for loss of license. I wouldn't even object to the police firing a couple of rounds into the driver/rider's head to get their attention. As my father used to say, "There is obviously no vital organ located in that skull." The idea that drivers need to have the "zipper merge" explained to them in remedial terms amazes and depresses me. How is that not obvious?

It clearly isn't, though. There are a couple of exercises in the old, 2007 MSF program that require simple merging skills and about one out of one-hundred classes actually manage to get through these exercises without one or seven or eleven backed-up traffic jams caused by merge-inability. The so-called "seasoned rider" courses are no exception to that statistic. People who have called themselves "riders" for decades simply come to a dead stop when faced with 5mph oncoming traffic (even when that traffic is another motorcycle in a parking lot exercise) and the resulting confusion is comical in a parking lot and suicidal on public roads. As I have asked thousands of times, if you can't merge competently what makes you think you are capable of safely drafting/tailgating?

A few years ago, a rider and fellow MMSC/MSF coach remarked that he'd seen me "aggressively" getting into northbound downtown I35E traffic, as if merging at the end of the entrance lane at traffic speed was impolite. The implication was that I had somehow committed a faux pas in "jumping the line" of traffic some distance above his stuck-in-traffic position. Talk about Minnesota passive-aggressive. Guilty as charged. When I merge, I want to be moving at the prevailing speed and as near to the end of the merge lane as I can get. Commuting is not about standing in line politely waiting for some moron to hang up his damn cell phone. It's about getting to work or home as quickly as possible. If you can't figure that out, you have no hope of comprehending filtering and lane sharing. The day a semi beats me into a T-intersection from the cross-traffic side, even on my 250 dual purpose bike, will be the day I hang up my helmet and buy a convertible. If you are not going to use your motorcycle's superior acceleration, braking, and maneuverability in a simple merge, what would make you think you can use those qualities in an actual emergency? Trust me, you can't and you won't. I've seen that kind of incompetence demonstrated on a regular basis and it amazes me that anyone that impaired would want to risk their life and limbs on a motorcycle.

Back in the 1970's, I visited Chicago from my home in Omaha, for a trade show. My business partner and I were driving a rented panel van, loaded with audio equipment, and we were both small town guys blown away with the Big City. At the first stop light we encountered in the city, when the light changed I was pleasantly surprised to see all of the vehicles started moving together. A couple of lights later, a distracted driver didn't hit the gas when the light changed and the vehicle behind him simply pushed the semi-conscious vehicle into the intersection until the driver assumed marginal control and caught up with traffic. Like most of the US, Chicago is dumbed-down and distracted, today. Vehicles leave intersections connected by invisible 100' ropes, as one of my readers described driver awareness, in every city I've visited. Autonomous vehicles are going to solve this problem for cagers, but motorcyclists are forever going to be on their own. It is hard to imagine how this is going to play out in some way that provides public road access for motorcycles. At least until we are forced into recreational vehicle status, we ought to be merging competently. If nothing else, out of wanting to exit the scene gracefully.

What if We Really Cared?

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

There is a lot of talk, and little real action, about motorcycle safety improvements. Motorcycles are grossly over-represented in highway death and injury statistics and it will only get worse as cars continue to become safer and less dependent on human drivers. If we really did want to make a serious difference in those statistics and reduce the insanely high cost of all that blood and tears to the non-motorcycling public, what would we have to do?

A lot, I suspect.

After discussions about the possibilities with the Administrator of the Minnesota Motorcycle Safety Program, the owner of an independent motorcycle safety program, and a few MSF instructors, I came to a few conclusions. First, the people involved in the politics of motorcycling (ABATE, the AMA, the MSF/MIC, manufacturers and dealers, safety trainers, DOT bureaucrats at the state and federal level, and motorcyclists themselves) are not incentivized to do ANYTHING that will noticeably improve motorcycle safety. There is more easy money in the status quo than in doing the right thing and in worrying about the future of motorcycling. All of these entities are primarily concerned with putting butts on seats and taking a chunk of money from licensing. In 2010, not a big year for motorcycling, the GAO estimated motorcycle crashes cost the general public about $16B. Not exactly chicken feed. The industry produces about $4.4B in revenue, annually. So, the cost of keeping motorcycles on public roads is about 4X the industry’s economic value to the country. At some point, someone might suggest this is a waste of taxpayer money. In fact, I’m suggesting it right now.
So, my list of things that have to be done to make motorcycling safer, significantly safer, enough safer that motorcycle might be allowed to use public roads in the future, is this:

• National Helmet Law. I do not know how this isn’t obvious to everyone, but we have a national seat belt law for cars and we simple can’t excuse motorcyclists not taking the minimum safety precaution while we require cagers to belt-up, air-bag-in, and surround themselves in crush-zones and roll-cages. Helmets are a minimum nod to pretending to care about motorcycle safety.
• National Protective Gear Law. Even more than helmets, I think insurance companies should be allowed to vacate health coverage for riders who have accidents and injuries wearing no reasonable protective gear. At the least, riders should be required to wear decent foot wear, protective jackets, long pants, gloves, eye protection, or self-insure. There is no reason the public needs to assume responsibility for the surgical costs of someone who chooses to ride in flip-flops and a wife-beater.
• State Emissions and Safety Inspection. Back in the 80's, when I lived in California, every vehicle licensed to be on California's roads had to pass an annual emissions inspection. Part of the inspection was to determine that the intake and exhaust system was bone-stock or equivalent. Anyone who has been anywhere near the usual cruiser suspects knows that those blubbering farm implements drool out as much unburned fuel as they manage to heat up. All that noise and nothing useful to show for it. Loud pipes not only don't save lives, they make millions of enemies for motorcyclists and probably cost a life or two hundred in road rage encounters. Since the fact that motorcyclists are incapable of maintaining safe vehicles has been made apparent by the existence of ape-hangars, chicken strips, missing front brakes, micro-turn signals, and the usual lousy maintenance motorcyclists are often proud of, safety inspections need to be established. Also true for cars and trucks.
• Mandatory Regular Training. Yeah, I know cagers don’t have to retake the license test every time they re-up their license, but car drivers are in a vehicle that is somewhere around 3,000 –20,000 times safer-per-mile than motorcycles. Even more, cars are consistently getting safer while motorcyclists are a growing portion of highway crashes and mortality. The fact that most states allow a license holder to pay a small premium to add the “M” endorsement to their driver’s license, without any evidence that the endorsee owns or can even ride a motorcycle is flat-out stupid. At the minimum, something like the MSF’s Intermediate Rider Course with a passing score on the test (There is a test? Yes, Georgia there is and it ought to be mandatory.) should be required for that M-endorsement. Of course, I think anyone over 50 should have to retake the written and driving exam for cars and trucks every 5 years or so, too.
• Tiered Licensing. I’d go with the Eurozone’s 3-tier system, but I’d be really behind something like the Japanese tests and tiers. This is a no-brainer. After teaching beginning MSF classes for 16 years and watching the worst “students” in my classes mount up on the biggest, most cumbersome, hardest to ride cruisers or the most powerful sportbikes after barely passing our minimal “skills test” (or not), I’m convinced that new riders are the last people who should get to choose what they ride without guidance. Yeah, I know that there is a decent argument that requiring serious licensing testing curtails interest in motorcycling, but that's happening with or without. 

Those are my minimum recommendations for changing the direction of an activity and vehicle that appears to be destined to vanish from the transportation system. Otherwise, motorcyclists can look forward to a near future where motorcycles and horses have exactly the same access to public roads (closed street parade permits, only). Why should autonomous vehicles be forced to cope with vehicles and riders who can't manage their own safety? What value does motorcycling bring to a culture that is being asked to foot a $16B annual bill for mere recreational "lifestyle" bullshit? Fix it or lose it, dummies. I'm 70. It doesn't matter to me, either way. I've been on two-wheels since 1952 and with power since 1963 or so. I've had my fun. You, on the other hand, are looking at being forced off of the road in the next decade. Maybe sooner.

The Last Whining, Blubbering Motorcyclist on Earth

An email asking for support for this ridiculous "cause" made the rounds yesterday. The first time this silly panhandling link hit my email, I replied, "Funny, pretty much the whole movie appears to be about old guys riding older motorcycles. This e-panhandle is making the rounds. "Nobody thought it would happen this quickly," (other than me, but I'm used to being nobody). I've been predicting the end of motorcycles on public roads for two decades. Autonomous cars will accelerate the trend, but motorcycling's general hooliganism and the non-stop lousy safety states are the cause. It doesn't make much of a point that the lead character's motorcycle is barely a noisemaker. Bikers really resist the idea that South Park's "F-Word" is the opinion of motorcyclists by a whole lot of the public, but they're usually wrong and they're wrong again. I'm pretty sure the Constitution doesn't protect anyone's freedom to be a noisy, polluting asshole. I don't know why these old farts are worried, they'll be dead or in wheelchairs before it happens. I wonder if the horse and buggy characters whined this much when their toys were muscled off of the public roads?

"One thing is true. The next couple of generations are not going to be hoarders/collectors of anything substantial. All of the hoards are losing value like crazy; from motorcycles to muscle cars to electric and vintage acoustic guitars to art."


The third, fourth, fifth, and so on times I just hit "delete."

The dystopic future "The Last Motorcycle on Earth" wants to fix is described as, "Gasoline is $20 per gallon. Self-driving cars are everywhere. And motorcycles are outlawed. 

"This is the plot of our new dramatic TV series now in production and fundraising on IndieGogo. Starring bike builder and vintage motorcycle collector, Neil 'Morto' Olson and directed by Eric W. Ristau (of The Best Bar in America and Sit Stay Ride) the series asks the questions: 'What happens to motorcycles and vintage automobiles in a world dominated by self-driving cars?' and 'What happens to our motorcycles when petroleum is outlawed, as planned in Britain, Norway, and others?' We're currently raising funds to finish the series through an IndieGogo campaign. Take a look at the trailer and let us know what you think. Thanks for supporting independent motorcycle films!"

Your mileage will probably vary, but I'd just as soon see this project get aborted ASAP.

Another Tipping Point

“According to the Department of Energy, there are now over 500,000 EVs driven in the U.S.” Xcel Energy is even noticing the speed of EV adoption, “State of the Electric Vehicle 2017: Adoption keeps accelerating.” Used EV’s are littered all over Craig’s List, many for less than $6k with insanely low miles. If I didn’t have a small garage already double-parked with two motorcycles and a bunch of motorcycle equipment, I’d be seriously looking at a used Nissan Leaf. The new Leaf 2.0 has a 150 mile range, more than enough for any typical day trip I’m likely to take. The ads for most of the older EVs are more like 70-90 miles at highway speeds, which isn’t much of a problem as long as we still have the pickup for long hauls and pulling the camper.

I think we’ve hit the official deadend for suck-bang-blow. From here out, I expect to see EV’s capabilities increase exponentially and IC sales sag. Even dinky little Red Wing Minnesota has a downtown refueling station. EVs are particularly suited for autonomous operation, especially because it will be so easy to include electrical auto-fueling over the safety hazards of gas or diesel. The pressure is on for motorcycles to either get on the bus or get out of the way.

Grand Assumptions

When I was a kid, growing up in western Kansas, I assumed that everybody knew how to ride a horse. I did, after all, and I was a “city kid” and most of the people I knew were city kids and all of them rode a horse at some time or another, I assumed. I had an uncle who had a large eastern Kansas ranch and who kept horses, a lot of horses. I started riding horses when I was about five and kept at it until I was in my mid-twenties. When I moved to Dallas, Texas in the late-60’s, I discovered practically no one in that city had ever seen a horse outside of television. I was practically considered a “cowboy” because of my hometown and the fact that I knew how to saddle and ride a horse.

Now, I take more than a little crap from the fact that I own a manual transmission pickup, one of the last made and sold in the US: a Nissan Frontier. “Nobody” drives a manual anymore.” It’s almost true. Fewer than 3% of cars and trucks sold in the US have manual transmissions. Ten years ago, half of the vehicles sold had manual transmissions, especially trucks. It won’t be long before the only people who know anything about shifting gears will be motorcyclists and even that could change quickly. Scooters have always been “automatic” shifters and some motorcycles are going that way, too. My wife tolerates our pickup, but she has decided she wants a mini-van with an automatic transmission and all of the extras. My driving days are numbered and I’m not complaining. Part of the deal we made with the pickup was that I’d keep driving as long as we had it. When we go back to an automatic transmission vehicle, I’m moving to passenger-only status. It’s not a punishment for her, but a reward for me after driving more than a million miles in my lifetime, I’m opting out.

Some people believe that possessing a driver’s license is an important thing. A rapidly increasing number of Americans disagree. “Among young adults, the declines are smaller but still significant—16.4 percent fewer 20-to-24-year-olds had licenses in 2014 than in 1983, 11 percent fewer 25-to-29-year-olds, 10.3 percent fewer 30-to-34-year-olds, and 7.4 percent fewer 35-to-39-year-olds. For people between 40 and 54, the declines were small, less than 5 percent.” Owning a car and driving are less important in urban areas and are becoming less important in small-to-mid-sized cities. Red Wing, for example, has a terrific bus service that will pick me up at my driveway. It’s only 3 miles to downtown from my near-edge-of-the-city home, so walking or bicycling makes a lot more sense than driving about 90% of the time to go downtown. Getting to the Cities is more complicated, but not impossible. Amtrak has a daily “shuttle run” to the Cities, even though the times are weirdly inconvenient. There is talk of a “Red Rock Corridor” rail that would connect Red Wing and other Mississippi Valley cities to the Twin Cities. If that happens, even these rural areas¹ could see a drop in car ownership.

In 2017, it might seem impossible to imagine a future where most people don’t drive their own cars. In 1900 it was pretty impractical to imagine a future where most people didn’t own a horse. In 1960, it was difficult to imagine a future where most Americans didn’t own an American-made car. In 2030, it could be hard to believe that people once drove cars, rather than simply instructed their autonomous vehicle to take them to a destination while they relaxed, read, did homework or work-work, or yakked on the phone. By 2050, it is entirely possible that the only people who will “drive” their own vehicle will be the ultra-rich, since they will be the only people who can afford the liability insurance. Imagine that.


¹ An unanticipated effect of this shift would likely be even more abandonment of the rural areas, fewer resources for small towns and disconnected areas of even high population states like California, and more electoral catestrophes like the 2016 election unless the Electoral College idiocy is addressed. Not all Future Shock stresses are desireable or healthy. They just happen and we react as if “nobody knew it would be this complicated.”

Losing Money on Every Unit?

This story is awfully familiar: “The Electric Car’s Same Old Problem.” The quote that sums up the whole problem is from Fiat Chrysler’s Sergio Marchionne, “I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.” I keep hearing through unconfirmable sources that Zero has yet to sell a motorcycle for a profit. I hope it isn’t true, but I suspect it is. Things change, but often pioneers take it in the shorts in the early stages. I remember Adam Osborne’s Trump-like claim for how his company was going to make money selling computers, “I lose money on every unit, but make up for it in quantity.”

After the shake-up this week at Ford, mostly over EVs and autonomous vehicle sales, it will be interesting to see if ANYONE makes it to the goal post with an electric car.

#143 Outta My Cold, Dead Hands

The Geezer with a Grudge Columns
(Originally published in Minnesota Motorcycling Monthly Magazine.) 

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Thomas W. Day

There is a punk gangbanger group on Facebook called the Yamaha WR250X and WR250R Public Group. I joined this group about two years ago, because their intro FAQ is all about the useful (and not so useful) things that can be done to make the WR250X/R more fun and practical to ride. I left the group this week because the most outspoken members are consistently spoiled brats. Like a lot of bikers/gun nuts/spoiled children and the rest of the crowd who think their “right” to do any damn thing they please overrides public safety, an undisturbed peace, and their neighbor’s property rights, many of these kids consider themselves above the law and beyond reproach. They are classic examples of why motorcycles and motorcyclists are about as popular as used car salesmen in plaid suits or politicians from another state. Between the “I don’t need no stinkin’ endorsement” and the “why would I carry insurance, I’m just a motorcycle” and “why should I care if wheeling out of control freaks out cagers” attitudes, the group is a sad cartoon of why motorcycles are likely to be historical relics in a decade or less. There are some decent folks in the group, but their voices (like the voice of reasonable motorcyclists everywhere) are drowned out by the goons, brats, and gangbangers.

The last “conversation” I had on the group was about how gangbanging is going to be tough in an autonomous vehicle world. One of the kids claimed “they’ll have to pry my steering wheel away from my cold, dead hands” and a half-dozen or more chimed in accordingly. I asked what they were driving now and got a list of fairly new, mostly-Japanese sedans and mid-sized pickups. I suggested that since all of these vehicles had automatic transmissions and were controlled by transmission and engine computers they weren’t really driving now. Add power steering, backup cameras, parking sensors, ABS brakes, adaptive cruise control and proximity warning systems and you are about 1/2 way to the fully autonomous vehicle. The difference between being a total passenger and a terrible driver in a smarter-than-humans car is immeasurably small. I think it is safe to assume that, based on their motorcycling attitudes, that these kids are awful cagers too.

As macho as the American driver pretends to be, it ain’t gonna take much to remove most of us from the steering wheel. The first and logical step is to crank the shit out of the price of car insurance for those who insist on driving themselves. That will pretty much do the job alone. Cops will be watching the self-piloted vehicles closely, since their business will pretty much dry up on the autonomous side of transportation. They are absolutely not going to be issuing tickets to the corporations that provide the multi-user leases to autonomous vehicle passengers. Not only are corporations “people” but they are people with super-special privileges not to be fucked with. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a cop going after any sort of big business, regardless of how vicious the corporation’s crimes may have been. So, the only ticketing game in town will be the “cold, dead hands” crowd and they will be feeling pretty picked on by the time they hand over the reins to their own autonomous car. I know, you’re thinking “The Geezer is still just pissed off about his damn Volkswagen automatic transmission experience.” True, I’m pissed off at Volkswagen over that nightmare, but I have always disliked automatic transmission cars. They feel patronizing, sort of like having someone pat me on the head, when they put me in an electric wheel chair and say, “Now you’re in charge old dude. The hallway is all yours.”

I think the most insulting vehicle I’ve ever driven was a Toyota rental car with “Sport Shift Mode” thumb shifters.  I guess some kid who grew up playing video games might be able to fool himself into believing that he’s “really driving a car” when he can select the gear with a flick of the thumb, but I don’t play video games. The little Corolla had more than enough power to get out of its own way, but the Sport Shift Mode was clunky, intolerant of any high RPM operation, and it felt like an attempt by Toyota’s engineers to convince me to go back to letting the car do the driving. Which I did after a couple of unsatisfactory experiments with the thumb shifters.

Unlike the obtuse kids, I don’t care about driving and I’d just as soon lease a portion of an autonomous car as own a whole car that I have to finance, insure, and drive myself. Cars are boring and I’m a lot happier as a distracted passenger than driving. I can read, sleep, watch the scenery, or write as a passenger. As a driver, I spend most of my energy trying to stay awake. Unlike these kids, if I’m going be stuck behind the wheel I want as much control as I can have, including getting to decide my vehicle’s gear, engine RPM, and the point in the powerband for the situation at hand. I’ve yet to see an automatic transmission or all-wheel drive vehicle do a half decent job on ice or in deep sand and I’ve sure as hell seen those vehicles do a pitiful job in those conditions. So, until I can get at least 95% of an autonomous car, I’m hanging on to my 4WD, manual transmission pickup.

There is nothing cold-dead-handish about this, though. I just don't like doing things half-assed. If I can get a computer to drive for me, I'm in. If the computer is just there to make me a more distracted, less competent driver, I don't need that kind of help. But back to the original point of this rant, in an autonomous car world (Coming soon to your town!) motorcycles morbidity/mortality statistics will become unjustifiably over-represented majority in traffic crashes and the ugly face motorcycling has proudly presented to the public will be something we're going to wish we'd have done something about when it would have helped.

MMM April 2016 (and, oddly, again in the March 2017 issue, #154)

How Historic will this Make Motorcycles?

“Navigant now believes that by 2050, self-driving cars will be the norm in civilized societies. “The idea of getting behind the wheel (in 2050) and actually driving a car is likely to be more a curiosity, akin to going to a stable to climb on the back of a horse.” In this month’s Design News blog entry, “Which Will Capture the Market First -- Autonomous Cars or Electrics?” Charles Murray describes the parallel race between electrics and autonomous vehicles. While EV’s are still just 1% of world automotive production, that number is expected to move up quickly. By 2030, that number could be as high as 50%.

If people stop driving cages, how long will it be before they don’t pilot motorcycles? That “back of a horse” comment has been on my mind for about two decades.

Big Leaps vs. the Status Quo

For about 40 years, I had at least some of my fingers into some area of mid-to-high-tech every day. When I moved from engineering into academia, I was pretty much down to one finger on the edge of what was going on in technology. Retirement put an end to that connection in any practical sense. One of the few ways I have left to stay in touch with what is going on in the tech world is my subscription to “Design News.” This month, Design News had a few articles that should be interesting to a motorcyclist.

In this month’s review of the magazine’s past home gadget builder projects, “Gadget Freak Case #235: Ignition Control Unit for Harley Davidson Panhead Engine” described how one gearhead tried to resolve the problem of getting an old Harley to start reliably. There isn’t much follow-up in the article, so I don’t know (or care) how it all worked out. Reading the story of his analysis and design solution was interesting, though.

In case you are still suffering the delusion that autonomous cars are in the distant future, "Hope or Hype? Big Automakers Look to Autonomous Vehicles" should relieve you of that false hope. You might know how I think autonomous vehicles are going to affect street legal motorcycling, so read it and weep. "Ford president and CEO Mark Fields made it clear that the giant automaker is not settling for half-measures in its effort and is going straight to self-driving cars by 2021. ‘That means there’s going to be no steering wheel. There’s not going to be a gas pedal. There’s not going to be a brake pedal and, of course, a driver is not going to be required,’ he said."

As for the noise, pollution, energy inefficiency of internal combustion engines, "6 Automakers Will Lead the Way to EV Battery Growth" describes how “Six big automakers will carry the electric vehicle (EV) battery market to a five-fold sales increase by 2020, a new study says . . .Tesla, General Motors (GM), Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen, BMW, and BYD will account for 90% of the electric car battery sales during those five years, mostly on the strength of bigger battery packs.” By “bigger” the article is not talking about physicial size, later this year Chevy will be hyping a “60-kWh battery in the all-electric Chevy Bolt.” The number of electric cars on the road is going to change, too. Tesla is planning for “annual sales of 500,000 of the affordable Model 3 vehicles by 2018.” There is some debate over how much of the cage market electric vehicles will be in the next few years, but I think the end of the Age of Oil is in sight and if I were a younger motorcyclist I’d be really interested in how that will play out on two wheels.

Put all the Idiots on Motorcycles

Against my better judgment, we spent a couple of days in the Cities this weekend. No place on earth, except possibly Seattle, is more in need of autonomous cars than Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The average driver IQ has to be well below 100 and the closer you get to the UofM, the dumber the drivers get. Watching the bumper car crowd tailgate each other like lemmings on the way to the cliff, my first thought was that there should be a special class of cage for idiots with minimal protection and harmless mass so that when these morons crash their survival rate and the damage they do to others on the road approaches zero. As soon as I said that out loud my wife replied, "There is, motorcycles. "

Almost immediately we were passed by some helmetless, bald fucktard on a sportbike in his shorts and wife beater and sandals. As he locked on to the bumper of the car in front of him, he took both hands off of the bars and gave the disinterested traffic behind him an “Awe-nold” muscle-head pose. Yep, we are, more often than not, prime Darwin Award winners deserving of absolutely no sympathy at all. To be honest, if the cage in front of this display of incompetence and cluelessness put on its brakes and tossed the biker into the air, I’m hard pressed to be able to say I would stop to render anything other than being a witness to the cager’s innocence. If the about-to-be-skinned-alive biker’s body bits flew into the path of my vehicle, I can tell you for certain that I would absolutely not put myself, my wife, or my vehicle in any jeopardy making evasive maneuvers in his behalf.

For the most part, I have to say driving east to west across the city on Saturday and in the reverse direction Sunday provided overwhelming evidence that the whole “Start Seeing Motorcycles” promotion is wrong-headed, statistically clueless, and probably creates more pissed off drivers than careful ones. This weekend, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Don’t Believe Me, Read This

[Thanks Paul]

Carmakers need to fear for their lives—and it’s not just about getting electric cars right

“When you put the two together, you get urban-dwellers tooling around in shared, autonomous vehicles, and—reckons Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor—buying far fewer cars. Ford has said the company is already having to adapt because of shared driving, and predicts that autonomous functions just short of self-driving will be installed in most vehicles within five years.”

Go for the comments, too. There is a chimp named “Topper Gunns” who appears to not only be illiterate but universally clueless. Comments sections are, apparently, where the mentally naked can go to expose themselves.

Clogging Up the Damn

From about every engineering and societal viewpoint, autonomous cars are the obvious future. That is, in fact, a fact. But it is possible that the US might be completely out of the progressive loop when this giant sociological change takes place. We’ve done it before. Often.

The US has a long history of being terrified by intelligence. We elect congress-critters, governors, and presidents whose sole credential is being (or appearing to be) a whole lot dumber than the average guy. Apparently, we mostly like ‘em stupid. Smart cars, then, have to scare the shit out of the ordinary mouth-breathing, NASCAR whooping, goofball. The scary news, if they were capable of reading it, is that computers are capable of out-smarting about 50% of us and have been since the Z80 days. In more recent times, computers are getting smarter every day while Americans are . . . downbreeding into puddles of terrified, conservative backsliders.

We did the coward/conservative thing in 1980 with Reagan’s promise to save us from having to “learn stuff.” When Reagan canned the United States Metric Board and ridiculed and ignored the requirements of the Metric Conversion Act, 15 U.S.C. 205d, most 'mericans cheered not having to adapt to the international measurement standard. Today, we’re the only industrialized nation in the world still concerned with the length of the King’s foot, the width of a man’s thumb (inch), or the rest of our disorderly, overly complicated SAE system. That bit of backwards thinking has been as expensive, on an annual basis, as our last two recreational wars. “Jos. V. Collins did some work on this question in 1915. He concluded in an article called, 'A metrical tragedy', that a 'Total annual loss of $315 000 000' could be attributed per year to non-metrication in the USA at that time.” In today’s money, that would amount to about $6.5B/year. We could pay for all sorts of idiot wars and invasions with that kind of money or we could make stuff we and the rest of the world want to buy. Currently we don’t make much that anyone else wants and what we do make is being replaced by foreign (non-USA) sources.

With that history in mind, it is totally possible to imagine ‘mericans stubbornly screeching “You’ll have to take the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands” while the rest of the world efficiently converts personal vehicles to a municipally-owned autonomous transportation system. Because we’ll be a backwards market, our auto manufacturers will stick with old-world transportation and manufacturing models and products and they will slowly become as obsolete as their products; dying off one-by-one like their US competition did in the 1950’s. Eventually, only 3rd world manufacturers will service the US market’s demand for 20th Century transportation technology and we’ll join them in their misery. Most of our 1% will move to where the lifestyles are more comfortable (and modern), since none of those folks have any more loyalty to the United States than do our corporations.

I suppose some people will look forward to an America that resembles the Mad Max vision of cobbled-together junk-mobiles. Most of the Southeast and the Rust Belt won’t notice a change at all.

Un-Vesting Interests

WI is taking on the “updated” MSF while Minnesota is sticking with the old program for a while. There are nasty rumors coming out of WI about loads of instructors quitting or failing the new certification program. On top of that, many of the people who are still with the program hate the new course, both in the classroom and on the range. The MSF, of course, says things like “The new BRC skill test was also revised to better align with the licensing tests used by many states.” If you’ve ever seen the DMV’s motorcycle test, you know what they are saying. If you can’t pass the DMV’s test, you probably can’t walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. It is grossly, ineptly, irresponsibly, dangerously easy. Apparently, the MSF test has taken that same route even further. The idea that everyone belongs on a motorcycle is industry suicide, but maybe the industry doesn’t care? The real question is, do we? Do motorcycle riders actually care if motorcycles retain their rights and privileges to use the public roads?

If we do, California’s 2015 motorcycle training experiment is where we should all be looking. In most states, the wrong people are in charge of motorcycle safety training and the related income and expense. It’s not that I’m accusing the people who run state programs of being corrupt, but I am accusing them of being marginally interested in the effectiveness of their programs. California’s Motorcycle Safety Program makes the “California Highway Patrol (CHP) . . . statutorily responsible for California's official motorcycle safety training program.” I think this makes a crap-load of sense. The people who have to clean up the mess made by motorcycle crashes, sort out who was at fault in each incident, and those who have the political clout to make big decisions about who provides safety training without a lot of ass-kissing in the state capital to counteract the lobbying by a major manufacturing association (MIC, for example). Whenever possible, the people in charge of a budget should also be the people who are most effected by the effectiveness of the money spent. In most states, unvested bureaucrats of varying sorts hold the purse strings for motorcycle training. That’s almost as dumb as paying for a police department’s liability insurance from a municipal general fund. If the department resources are directly effected by how well they do their job, they do the job a lot better.

The California Highway Patrol changed the requirements for the training program they wanted and the MSF bet that no one would compete with their national franchise. They lost. This year, California replaced the MSF program with something designed to produce better motorcycle riders. The model CHP picked was based on the Idaho state program (derived from the Oregon state program), the Oregon state program, and Lee Park’s Total Control Advanced Riding clinics. Total Control is the core provider. As AsphaltandRubber.com put it, “The two programs differ in that while the MSF curriculum is based on the idea that anyone can be taught how to ride a motorcycle, Total Control Training’s sets higher failure rates for students, and weeds out new riders who would likely not excel at riding on two wheels.” In other words, the MIC/MSF is primarily interesting in putting as many butts on seats as possible. That seems like an obvious conflict of interest, but the MSF/MIC relationship has been largely unexamined for a couple of decades. Total Control’s program has no vested interest in motorcycle sales. The intent of that program is to reduce crashes and fatalities. You would think any state program seriously looking at spending taxpayer money effectively would take that conflict into account.

While Wisconsin’s program appears to be “weeding out” a lot of instructors, I know for a fact that a few of those weeds were good instructors and solid rider-coaches. In a reasonably intelligent world, every state would be reviewing their commitment to a program that repeatedly reminds us that there is no connection between MSF-style “training” and reduced crashes or fatalities. In my opinion, that is a damning statement. “Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System data indicates motorcycle fatalities in California increased 175% in ten years, from 204 in 1998 to 560 in 2008.  These increases in motorcyclist deaths occurred at a time when significant gains were achieved in other areas of traffic safety.  Although California did experience reductions in motorcycle fatalities in 2009 and 2010; the 2011 data shows an increase.  Motorcyclists are [grossly] over represented in overall numbers of traffic deaths.” A lot of eyes should be on California and Oregon, two states who have pulled away from the MSF machine. If they manage to produce something that effectively reduces motorcycle deaths and crashes, the rest of the country should be paying attention.

There is substantial evidence that the current current generation of autonomous cars is (dramatically) more competent than the average driver, which wasn’t a high bar to clear.

Like It or Not, Here It Comes

Delphi's Autonomous Car Is Remarkably...Unremarkable ...

Silicon Valley - Driverless Car

What's stopping autonomous cars?

Delphi thrilled with results from autonomous car's cross-country trip

Here It Comes, Smartass

Think auto-piloted vehicles are in the science fiction future? Think again bozo-boy. Your days of “being in control” are numbered.

Think motorcycles are going to be in the traffic mix when these vehicles are on the freeway?

The final statement in this article was, “And if it all goes wrong, Audi Pre Sense will step in to save your bacon. At the sign of potential hazards, you'll see a visual and audible warning. But responding to info from the ESP sensors, like hard braking or skidding, the windows and sun roof will close, while electric motors tighten your seatbelt ready for impact.

There's even a thermal imaging camera with a 24-degree scanning angle, giving your car night sight in the far infrared region (FIR). That's 300 meters in total darkness, and unlike our feeble eyes, it's not affected by the glare of oncoming headlights. In fact, sitting in this autonomous automobile we're beginning to feel like the weakest link.”

Humans have been the weak link in traffic since the freeway system was designed. If we’re not being fuckin’ morons, we’re just not trying.

The Crap Just Keeps Comin'

This damn argument just gets dumber. The only motorcycle magazine I read from cover-to-cover (sometimes) is Motorcycle Consumer News. The editor, Dave Searle, usually pisses me off and his pro-hooligan attitude is not much different than the rest of the motorcycle press, which defeats the best purposes of MCN. This month's issue started well and turned to crap by the letters to the editor. Bad timing on someone's part. My subscription is about to run out and I still have 2-3 back issues I haven't been able to stomach. Now, I might just read the damn thing at the library on the rare occasion I need to know what Mark Barnes or Ken Condon have to say. I was so pissed off, I sent this letter to MCN's editor:
_____________________________________________
From:     T.W. Day [mailto:twday60@comcast.net]
Sent:    Monday, February 18, 2013 9:32 PM
To:    'editor@mcnews.com'
Subject:    Misuse of Statistics

I was pleased to see Dave's "Open Road" this month. It's unusual for a motorcycle magazine to advocate any sort of safety gear and, when they do, it's usually as unscientific and "freedom" biased as crap from the NRA. It didn't take long for that pleasure to turn sour, though. In a grossly incompetent and statistically misleading response to a readers letter on the NTSB's universal helmet law recommendations, the editor wrote, "the number of motorcycle fatalities in the US has been on a sharp decline over the past few years despite the fact that the number of miles ridden has increased. The decline in fatalities is not because more states have instituted mandatory helmet laws--they haven't."

The argument that motorcycle miles ridden has increased in recent years is doubtful. Until recently, the garage candy crowd has been purged from the road as their rides were repossessed along with their eviction notices. From 2008 to 2011, the only good news about motorcycling has been that fewer of us are on the road and fewer of us are dying because of that. Last year, there was a slight upsurge in motorcycle sales and the early and mild spring put riders back on the road and deaths jumped accordingly. If you look at the states' statistics (http://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/pdf/spotlights/spotlight_motorcycles11.3.pdfhttp://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/pdf/spotlights/spotlight_motorcycles11.3.pdf), you'll see a consistent rise in motorcycle deaths from 1997 to 2008 as states repealed helmet laws and riders took "advantage" of that and splattered themselves all over the nation's roadways.

The future of motorcycling is at risk due to autonomous vehicle development and our out-of-line mortality and morbidity contribution to highway safety and our barely-noticeable contribution to useful traffic. If we insist on pretending that we're getting safer and riding more when all evidence contradicts that, we're shooting ourselves in the foot and will deserve our place along with buggy whips, go carts, and horses in the history of discarded transportation options. The AMA and the motorcycle press are absolutely useless when it comes to promoting practical motorcycling. You should do better than that.

Thomas Day
Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://http://mnmotorcycle.com/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com