All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day
We motorcyclists are an odd group, even compared to other members of our odd species. We are so full of contradictions that it's hard to take seriously anything humans say or do. Motorcyclists are even less consistent than "normal" people.
For example, I've heard motorcyclists claim that our vehicle should be a protected species because by riding motorcycles we are saving fuel, creating less pollution, and creating less traffic congestion. Some of that seems legitimate, although there are some motorcycles that get pretty miserable mileage and many motorcycles barely do better than modern compact cars. However, we aren't anything special in the emissions realm. A 2008 L.A. Times article
1 about motorcycles stated, "In California, such bikes make up 3.6% of registered vehicles and 1% of vehicle miles traveled, yet they account for 10% of passenger vehicles' smog-forming emissions in the state. In fact, the average motorbike is about 10 times more polluting per mile than a passenger car, light truck or SUV, according to a California Air Resources Board comparison of emissions-compliant vehicles."
Even that is misleading because motorcycles are "tested at lower speeds, which pollutes less" and a bike only has to maintain that level of emissions "for the first 18,600 miles of a bike's life, compared with 150,000 miles for cars." Those lax regulations only exist for bikes over 179cc. Smaller motorcycles and scooters can crank pollutants into the air without any regulation. The Times story concluded with "Motorcycles, even small ones, are more polluting than Hummers, but it's the best that can be done for now."
Leaving behind my paranoia of being a pin in a rolling bowling pins configuration, I went on a short group ride a year ago. I discovered what those critics say about motorcycle emissions is true. In the middle of a pack of mostly modern, mostly unmodified bikes, the smell of unburned gases was strong and, after a few miles, I bailed out of the crowd to clear my head and wait for my eyes to stop watering. My wife, who is sensitive to petroleum fumes, was close to nauseous before we left the pack. A bunch of motorcycles is as noxious as a convoy of military vehicles (another group of notorious EPA rule violators).
While individual motorcycles are definitely able to reduce traffic congestion, a parade of motorcycles quickly makes up for all the benefit individual riders can create. Some riders take a lot of pride in hauling out their garage jewelry once or twice a year for a "charity ride." It has always seemed to me that simply putting the gas and jewelry money used for these rides into the charity would do a lot more good, but maybe I'm missing the point. Those parades of slow-moving hippobikes jam up traffic for miles and raise the general ire toward motorcycling. They do, in fact, raise motorcycle awareness among the general public, but not in a good way.
Likewise, motorcyclists try to link the noise of our vehicle to other similarly irritating noise producers. It's true that there are all kinds of irrationally noisy vehicles on the road and it's also true that the police do a lousy job of enforcing noise standards. However, if you would spend a couple hours along a major road with an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meter, you would find that motorcycles are consistently the loudest non-emergency vehicle noise maker on the street and in most neighborhoods. It's fun to argue that if motorcycles have to be noise limited, every other noise source should be equally restricted, but the logical way to reduce any kind of unwanted activity is to go after the worst offenders first and work your way down the ladder to the least offensive offender. Motorcycles are at the top of the worst noise offenders.
Motorcyclists go ballistic on any attempt to resist attempts to legislate safety into motorcycling. Cagers, of course, wonder why they have to wear seatbelts and buy cars with airbags and safety cages when motorcyclists don't even have to wear clothing, let alone helmets. Bikers rant that if they have to wear helmets, everybody else should, too. The fact is, once again, we're the least safe on the street. Even bicyclists have fewer deaths-per-mile than motorcyclists. In most statistical measures, we're more unsafe than pedestrians. Again, it's reasonable to fix the worst things first. We're high on the list of worst things; less than 1% of highway traffic and approximately 12% (nationally and internationally) of fatalities.
Motorcyclists see themselves differently than what the social mirror reflects. A writer for Motorcyclist Magazine in an article aptly titled "The Great Pretender," imagined, "Everyone--at every stoplight, at every rest area and every gas stop--will want to talk about your [Harley] and participate in, however vicariously, the collective Harley-Davidson fantasy." I'm probably a little sensitive to words like "everyone," "everybody," "no one," and other all-inclusive terms that abuse reality. It's possible that many downtown Milwaukee residents are continually impressed with every Harley rider they see, but I doubt that every one of them feels that passionately about an object that is no more remarkable than a Big Mac. A few years back, I went on a ride with a friend who owned a vintage Harley something-or-other. It was heavily customized, well-polished, and sparkled like something mostly covered in chrome should. We rode from the Cities to Duluth and back via Minnesota and Wisconsin two-lanes and country roads. Every time we stopped (fairly often occurrences because the Harley beat up my friend's back pretty badly), a few people wanted to ask about my Suzuki SV and a few people talked up the Harley. He was a little miffed at the people who were disinterested in his badass ride. He probably knew that he wouldn't be able to tell our friends that "everyone" wanted to wanted to talk about his Harley.
Some motorcyclists like to think that the public service they perform by being the most obnoxious vehicle the on the road should be rewarded with legislative protection. The fantastic fetish with special "failure to yield" protection seems to be a contradiction to the "I have a right to take risks" anti-helmet attitude. It seems to me that someone who is disinterested in wearing minimal protective gear ought to at least be able to face the fact that when bad things happen, they're going to be a lot worse if you add the risk of being naked to the elements and asphalt.
According to these characters, you can't improve motorcycle safety by protecting the organ that is most often damaged in a crash, but you can legislate better driver awareness by making a "failure to yield" violation a felony. You have to wonder if these folks have made investments in privately owned prisons.
Another example of the same logic comes in the battle to protect risky activities from added insurance costs. Some states have representatives whose claim to fame is creating bills to prevent insurance companies from "discriminating" against consumers who engage in risky activities. If the public is supposed to be subsidizing our risky habits, what value do we provide for them? A recent unsigned letter-writer punctuated his rant with "Cagers need to TOLERATE us, not the other way around." [His capitalization] Obviously, this is a modern definition of "need" The fact is, highway traffic in the US has no need of motorcycles at all. We contribute an insignificant portion of commuter traffic; especially in places like Minnesota. If motorcycles were banned from public highways it wouldn't inconvenience the public at all. In fact, if you take into account the noise, public menace, and congestion that "group rides" create, most of the public would be glad to see motorcycles vanish from public roads.
Motorcyclists do epitomize the American individual-over-society attitude. The idea that "my rights are more important than the needs and best interests of the overall society" is well demonstrated in American history. When times get tough, that attitude gets more careful scrutiny than during ordinary conditions. Change happens and, when it does, the unnecessary and detrimental activities of the privileged few often get swept into history. We should be careful to not be so useless that we end up as a historical footnote.
1 http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-throttle11-2008jun11,0,3268856.story
