Putting Putting Last Things First

In it’s usual half-assed, half-cocked way, the Minnesota legislature is considering motorcycle lane-sharing/splitting in an amendment tacked on to Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 169.974, subdivision 5. The new sections are 1) “Only if the operation of the motorcycle does not exceed 40 miles per hour and is operated at no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic, a person may operate a motorcycle (1) abreast of, overtake, or pass
another vehicle within the same traffic lane, or (2) between two parallel lanes of moving or stationary traffic headed in the same direction . . . and 2) An operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.”

I have no significant objection to the first article as it appears to be a reasonably competent copy of the California lane-splitting/sharing statutes that have been in place since the 80s. The second half is an extension of the entitled, cowardly Minnesota motorcycle attitude that it’s everyone else’s job to watch out for incompetent, reckless and careless motorcyclists. We’ve been here before in my column, many times in fact. Not only do motorcyclists imagine themselves to be free from having to bother with noise and emissions regulations, because of their incredible self-importance, they imagine that “right of way” traffic laws should always assume the motorcycle has the right of way. Lawyers are going to have a field day with this nonsense, but motorcyclists are risking everything putting this horse before the cart.

I love splitting lanes, even though I have rarely done it since I left California in 1991. I feel confident that I would be able to continue that practice, even in less-skilled and passive-aggressive Minnesota traffic. However, I have experienced the aftermath of following one of our many grossly illegal biker gangs in both Cities’ traffic and on rural roads. After those clowns have passed a few motorists (or the motorists have suffered the risk of passing them) most everyone on the road is in a mood to swat a motorcycle. Recently, a friend tried to justify this nonsense by claiming a weird relationship, “loud pipes, which many riders find naturally enjoyable, same as playing a musical instrument loudly, which many musicians naturally enjoy.” I suspect I might find it enjoyable to take potshots at noisy vehicles, but I suspect my enjoyment ends when the bullet hits the target? Who cares what 1% of 1% of the population “enjoys” if that impinges on the peace and quiet of the majority of the people in hearing distance? Not to mention the fact that it is illegal in Minnesota and most states to modify either the exhaust of intake of a modern vehicle. The fact that cops are too lazy and/or cowardly to mess with that crowd does not justify the noise or make that behavior legal. The idiotic “road captain” nonsense is making enemies for motorcyclists every time that privilege is exercised on top of the noise that always comes with that crowd.

But mixing pointless hearing-damaging noises and anti-social behavior with a driving tactic, that is as risky and depending on tolerant behavior as lane splitting, is gambling with lives (on both sides of the obvious crashes that are going to happen soon after this law goes into effect). I admit some of those lives are dirtbags, but too often the dirtbags bring down useful and decent people, which is where the “operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor” portion of this law is going to do damage in the best of cases. Since many traffic cops are going to default to assuming the cager caused the crash, even though statistics makes that pretty unlikely, ordinary drivers are going to punished for motorcyclists’ bad and/or incompetent behavior. After that happens a few hundred times, the majority of road users are going to object to being responsible for the irresponsible crowd.

Attracting the attention of the majority of road users and taxpayers is likely to backfire on those to imagine this law is going to be a good thing for Minnesota motorcycling. When taxpayers realize that absolutely nothing about allowing motorcycles on public highways can be economically justified, they will likely start considering the obvious and logical solution: relegating motorcycles to the “recreational vehicle” category and removing the damn things from public roads. And I am here to say “I told you so.” If we made the slightest effort to reduce the public nuisance aspects of motorcycles before introducing lane splitting, I think it might be possible to introduce the practice to Minnesota highway users. If whoever is driving this dumb idea ignores that fact, there will be blood.

Beware of Bowling

Warning: This story is only as accurate as the author's memory.

I have done a lot of moderately risky things in my life, but I will aways put bowling at the top of the list of scary, risky, painful, dangerous things that I will never do again. This is an old story and I’m sort of amazed that I haven’t told it before, but I did a thorough search of this and the Wordpress blog and didn’t find a single word about it. So, in the late stages of my life and whatever is left of my two-wheel “career,” I am going to explain my terror of all things related to bowling.

It all started when I was just a kid. My father was a pretty decent adult athlete, although I guess he wasn’t much as a kid. Into his late 60s, he played competitive tennis at the Kansas state championship level, bowled consistently in the 230-250 pins territory, had a decent golf handicap, and when he was in his 40s he played basketball well enough to be recruited for the Washington Generals when the Harlem Globetrotters were in town. He was also a high school basketball, football, and tennis coach until he was well into his 60s. From about 5-years-old on a good bit of my life revolved around sports. Usually, thanks to asthma and other physical limitations, sports that I didn’t play particularly well. I never managed to play any of my father’s favorite games well enough to impress him and a couple of them—golf and bowling—were sources of irritation for both of us. Still are. Much later in life, I had a spurt of playing beach basketball in California, but that was a world and a game totally outside of his experience.

Moving forward about a decade and I’m a twenty-something working-class husband and a father of two beautiful daughters, I worked a lot of 80-hour weeks, drove a worn-out 1969 Ford E100 panel van 100,000 miles a year across six Midwestern states without A/C or heat. I was employed by a con artist of a boss who generated a lot of angry and disappointed customers. My only escape from pressure, stress, and confusion was the occasional few hours I was able to spend on my dirt bike.

After a couple of years in small town Nebraska, Mrs. Day, on the other hand, was getting desperate for a social life outside of caring for our two little girls and visiting with other mothers of small children. So, she signed us up for a bowling league, partnering with the only young couple she knew who didn’t have kids. I managed to slither out of the first two league games, claiming (honestly) that I had to work at the other end of the state those evenings. The third match was unavoidable. I couldn’t get out of it because my slimeball boss caved in to my wife’s complaints about her missing-in-action husband and “gave” me the weekend off.

Other than rolling a couple of games with my father and brother during the occasional holiday break visiting my family in Kansas, I had managed to stay away from bowling alleys for a long time. By that point in my life, I had learned that “games of patience” do not play to my strengths. Anything that requires me to do the “zen focus” bullshit when I’m losing is only going to be frustrating. I played and loved basketball well into my 50s because catching up (or staying ahead) requires working harder. Same for racing motorcycles, to catch up or stay ahead you work harder and go faster. Golf and bowling require the player to concentrate on form and geometry and I suck at both. So, that evening at the bowling alley started poorly, with me tossing a couple of gutter balls and barely grazing the end pins in my first couple of frames. Mrs. Day wasn’t much better, but she wasn’t expected to be and our new friends were getting cranky only a few minutes into the evening, which promised to be long, boring, and pointless.

I am an alcohol-lightweight. I have been drunk twice in my life and neither of those episodes had yet occurred. I can easily nurse a portion of a beer or a mixed drink for several boring hours at a party and one drink is usually my limit. About two beers into the bowling evening and I was losing interest in the game and I decided to redefine the fundamentals of bowling. Just rolling the ball down the lane was an insufficient challenge and I started trying to see how far I could heave the ball before it struck wood. I wasn’t going for altitude, just distance, but the ball began to make a fair amount of noise when it landed after I’d suffered through the first game of the three we’d committed to playing. About the time I started to think I was getting the hang of this version of bowling, probably at about the 3-4 beer mark, the bowling alley proprietor asked me to leave. Mrs. Day and her friends were embarrassed. Our new social life came to a screeching end and I don’t think I ever saw the other couple again. In fact. I don’t remember being at all upset at being done with my moment in small town social life.

After the bowling debacle, I still had a weekend off. I had planned the next day, Saturday, for some recreational practice time on the limited-access roads I loved about 20 miles north of our home. I’d loaded up the Rickman the previous evening, strapped a couple of five-gallon cans of premix to the trailer, loaded my privative 1975-style gear into the family station wagon, and headed north for some trail therapy. Sunday was race day and I’d signed up for my usual spot at the back end of the Nebraska State Intermediate class races. And I’d be wrenching for a friend who was actually competitive in the Expert class.

As you might suspect, I was slightly hungover that morning. Having never been even a little hungover, I was clueless as to what that might mean.  The place where I chose to make my stand was in the sandhills about five miles east of Palmer, Nebraska and about the same distance south of the Loup River. Back then, this area had well over 100 miles of limited-access roads tied together in a way that allowed me to ride for hours without ever crossing pavement. And that was my plan for the morning. My excuse for running out on my family on a beautiful Saturday summer morning was that I would be “practicing for Sunday” at the races in Genoa. That was sorta true, but mostly I was getting as much alone-time as possible anyway possible. But I was unwittingly impaired.

I unloaded the bike from the trailer, strapped on my gear, gassed up the bike, and took off heading north toward the Loup River. The first section of the route I’d planned was over some mild hills thoroughly coated with deep, fine dust bowl blow-out sand. I don’t know if I have ever ridden a motorcycle more suited to that kind of riding. The Rickman didn’t have much low-end torque, but once you spun it up over about 4,000 rpm it would sail across the sandhills like a prairie racing catamaran.  

I had barely got the bike warmed up, less than a few miles from where I’d parked, when I let the bike slide down the side of a sandhill into a tractor rut. Normally, no big deal. Just haul back on the bars, give it some throttle, and sail back up the side of the hill. Hungover, I considered a brand new option: step off of the bike and bail out. I was doing about 50mph at the time and abandoning ship was a freakin’ stupid option. I discovered that immediately. The thing about the next few seconds that has stuck with me for 40 years was a sound I can only describe as “a pound of hamburger thrown hard against a refrigerator door.” Splat!

Some undetermined, but calculatable, period of time later, I awoke imbedded about a foot into soft, hot sand. While I was unconscious, I’d hallucinated that I’d been tossed out of an airplane without a parachute. When I woke up, the dent in the sand, the pain, and the near-desert surroundings fit nicely with that hallucination.

With some effort, the time I’d been unconscious could be mathematically be determined by the flow rate of fuel from my Rickman’s tank overflow hose. When I righted the bike, I discovered I needed to change the petcock to reserve to get the engine started. My guess was that I’d been unconscious for at least 20 minutes. Getting the bike upright was a challenge, I hurt everywhere, but mostly I couldn’t catch my breath. Getting turned around in that deep sand was another challenge. Getting the bike started and moving in the right direction was tough, but easier than the first two hurdles. By the time I made it back to the parking spot, I was having serious problems breathing. I absolutely failed to lift the Rickman’s actual 250+ pounds (216 pounds claimed weight) on to the trailer. In frustration, I climbed into the station wagon, reclined the seat, and decided to see if I might feel better after some rest. After a few minutes, I was so seized up and hurting that I couldn’t get back out of the reclined seat. And breathing was harder, not easier.

Sometimes the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished,” gets proved wrong in spades. Over the past year, I’d put a lot of effort into being friendly and useful to the area’s ranchers. I had helped chase cattle back through downed fences, ridden to the nearest ranch to tell the owners about damaged fences or escape cattle, and always stopped to talk (rather than run away like other dirt bikers usually did) when I met someone working the fence lines bordering the limited-access roads.

As I lay in the car imagining what the odds anyone would find me out on this remote road before I suffocated or starved to death, three actual cowboys rode up (on actual horses) and stopped to talk. I was barely able to say “howdy” and real conversation was beyond my capacity. After a bit, they figured out my predicament, pulled me from the vehicle, loaded up the bike and strapped it down, helped me pull off my boots and gear, turned the car around, and even offered to drive me back home if I couldn’t manage it. [That wasn’t the first or last time I’d be rescued by cowboys or horses.]

Because I was, and probably still am, an arrogant, macho/dumb male, I declined the designated driver offer, gritted my teeth, engaged the clutch, shifted into 2nd (to minimize having to repeat that painful movement), and took off for home. I had to pass through two small towns and about half of our hometown on my way home and braking or shifting quickly identified themselves as painful and impossible tasks. For the first and only time in my life, I desperately hoped a cop would stop me and arrest me, even shoot me and put me out of my misery. But I sailed through both towns and the north end of our hometown at 60mph without a glitch. I think I even blew through two stop signs on the way. The station wagon was a 1973 Mazda RX3 and it would easily do 60 in 2nd gear and start with a little clutch slippage, so I didn’t shift all the way home.

I pulled into our driveway, turned off the key and shuttered to a stop, but I couldn’t get myself out of the car. I blasted the horn until Mrs. Day and our little girls came out to see who and what was causing the racket. They helped me out of the vehicle, into the house, and on to the family room couch. After a bit, I thought a hot bath might help, so I went into our bathroom and ran a tub-full of near-boiling water. And I almost drowned when I discovered I couldn’t keep from sliding into the big old clawfoot tub and going down helplessly. I slept on the couch for the next few weeks because our bedroom was on the impossibly-distant second floor.

When I finally made it to the local doc’s office, an x-ray determined that all 12 of my left-side ribs were broken or cracked. The closest thing to sympathy or assistance I got from my doc was, “That’s what you get for riding a motorcycle.” The injuries put me out of work for more than a month and, thanks to the usual 1970’s small business total lack of any sort of disability or healthcare benefits, about destroyed our family’s economy, . However, I had more than enough vacation time, so at least I got paid for a 40-hour week while I was out of work. A few weeks after I was back to work, I ran into the doc limping around our grocery store, on crutches with his leg in a cast. I sympathized with him by saying, “That’s what you get for playing with those damn skis.”

The long-term effect of the crash, the pain, and the extended recovery time was that for years afterwards when I got into any kind of extreme situation on a motorcycle (a little air, going a bit sideways, skittering along a sandy section of road or track) I PTSD’d myself into going through the worst part of that desert crash and usually found myself parked on the edge of the trail or track sweating and panicking over another crash that had only happened in my mind. It was several years before I could really enjoy offroad riding at any sort of respectable speed and look what that got me.

“Anybody Can Ride One”

My wife is a morning television addict. We live in a rural area with no over-the-air television available and I’m too cheap for cable, so she watches the late night talk shows in the morning. The irritating noises coming from our living room inspired a hunt for the best noise-cancelling, Bluetooth, in-ear monitors so that I could avoid the morning squawking noise of Seth Myers and Jimmy Kimmel’s dry sarcasm that makes the awful seem even worse. Sometimes she is so inspired by what she sees that she is compelled to “share” it with me. This morning that interruption was inspired by a Kimmel interview with David Letterman. Apparently, Letterman bought Regis Philbin a Vespa scooter under the assumption that “everybody knows how to ride a motor scooter.” Like so many folks on Harleys every summer weekend around the nation, it turns out that assumption is idiotic. Of course, Philbin crashed after traveling a few feet on the scooter. "He could have been killed. He actually could have been killed. The last night before he retires he comes over, and I kill him," Letterman said with a laugh. "... Nobody checked him out on it, because the assumption was, A, anybody can ride a scooter. And B, certainly Regis will ride a scooter."

Back when I was still teaching the Minnesota Motorcycle Safety classes, in 2011, I wrote a Geezer rant I titled “#101 It's Not A #&^%#@ Wheelchair.” I summed up my irritation in that essay with, “My generation seems to have created a lot of people who think the laws of physics can be influenced by money, the legal system, and by a heartfelt ‘I wanna.’ Velocity and acceleration (up or down) are ruthless. Gravity is insensitive to your brittle bones and inflexible joints. You don't get special consideration on the highway simply because traffic is moving ‘too fast’ or you can't muster up the courage to make the bike stop or turn (or keep up with the flow of traffic). Other highway users expect you to ‘drive it or park it.’ Being handicapped on a motorcycle is often fatal.” Almost always, in fact. I don’t know where “anybody can ride a scooter” comes from. Sure, they have small flat wheels that almost balance themselves, but that doesn’t help at all with turning, stopping, or being aware of traffic and hazards and figuring out what to do about those hazards in an emergency.

While my wife was taking a break from her morning television routine, she was reminded of my father and his “scooter experience,” which actually was an electric wheelchair. He’d been house-bound for several years by the symptoms of progressive myasthenia gravis, failing eyesight, and CHF. My step-sister thought it would be good for him to get out of the house and she, Medicare, and the VA bought him an electric wheelchair. For a couple of days, he was like a kid with a brand new motorcycle. He rode that thing around his neighborhood, to the local grocery store, and had a great time. My step-sister, on the other hand, almost had heart failure watching him blindly (literally) barrel through busy intersections and head-on into traffic without a clue that people were dodging him and freaking out at the sight of an overweight old man in an electric wheelchair in the middle of the road. Eventually, some technical issue came up with the wheelchair and he went back to watching his big screen television and 14-hours-a-day of Fox News propaganda. It could have been as simple as the battery being run down, my father was that technically inept, and nobody showed him how to use the charger. When he died, a couple of years later, the wheelchair looked brand new. He proved that it isn’t true that “anybody can ride a wheelchair.”

In the late 1970s, we were living in a small Nebraska town and a friend, the drummer in a band I’d been in, decided he wanted to buy a motorcycle so he could ride with his friends. I was a dirt-only motorcyclist at the time and had been for 15 years, but I helped him find a good buy on a barely-used Honda CX500 Deluxe, gave him a little instruction about how to ride the bike, convinced him to buy a helmet, a decent leather jacket, some boots, and gloves. And off he went. The friends he wanted to ride with were an assortment of cruiser wannabe-biker types with a couple of actual hardcore bikers—prison tats and criminal records and all. None of the be’s and wannabes wore any actual motorcycle gear and they quickly convinced him to dump the helmet, boots, gloves, but he could keep the jacket for cool days. They also “helped” him install ape-hangers and disable the front brake, partly because the stock brake line wasn’t long enough. Not even a whole month into this experience, he flew off of the road in a mild turn, plowed through a barbed-wire fence, and tumbled almost 100’ before he ended up in a tangled heap in a corn field.

His head injury left him with a speech impediment for the rest of his life and other neurological damage that left him pretty much a very young stroke victim. His legs were broken so badly that there was talk about amputating one or both, but they ended up reassembling him with pins and rods so that he could hobble around on his own. Of course, he was no longer a musician. You have to be able to flex everything in your legs and feet to operate a high hat and kick drum and the rest of his coordination and strength wasn’t up to handling the sticks. So, he’s mostly just been a barfly for the last 40 years, luckily he had a significant inheritance to cover his expenses and to provide him with shelter. Like Regis and my father, my friend (and several of his friends over the next few years) proved that it isn’t true that “anybody can ride a motorcycle.”

The industry, of course, has a vested interest in convincing as many people as possible that they belong on an expensive motorcycle that will enhance their lifestyle and self-image. Unfortunately, the so-called “motorcycle safety” industry is usually directly connected to the manufacturers (MIC/MSF, for example) and their vested interests are all about “putting butts on seats” with minimal interference from actual safety concerns. Thanks to them and their efforts, goofballs like David Letterman are deluded into believing the hype and imagining "that anybody can ride a scooter."

Socially Responsible Motorcycling? When?

About one third of Minnesotans had been obeying the state’s social distancing rules by the time the rules started going away. Even fewer bother with masks, especially outside of the Twin Cities, and that two-thirds who aren’t taking any more precautions than they did back in January. Of course, they  are constantly whining that the “the rules aren’t working.” Rules, of course, only work when people obey them. Which brings us to motorcyclists.

Thanks to some slimy legislation promoted by Minnesota ABATE in 1982, the minimal contribution Minnesota motorcyclists make to the state’s highway funds comes through gas taxes. Fees collected for motorcycle endorsements pay for motorcycle safety training exclusively, which is mostly wasted money. Minnesota uses the MSF program which has steadfastly refused to subject its training program’s outcome to any sort of evaluation. In fact, MSF instructors are cautioned not to tell “students’ that there is any relationship to the MSF’s training and becoming a safer motorcyclist. Based on my own 18-year experience as an MSF instructor, I believe the training we provided was as close to the absolute minimum possible to hand-hold the least capable riders through the endorsement test. In other words, we put a lot of butts on seats, which is what the MIC/MSF are all about. So, our every-4-year endorsement money pays for a barely-used bureaucracy and the few hundred miles a year the typical Minnesota motorcyclist rides generates a few bucks in gas taxes to pay for the roads we ride’ and crash on, to great taxpayer expense. In 2018,  the estimated economic cost to Minnesota for motorcycle crashes was $1,875,540,500. The numbers aren’t in for 2019’s even higher number of crashes and fatalities, but they will be soon. As of early June, we’re on our way to setting a new state motorcycle fatality record in 2020.

Back in 2013, I compiled a database of miles traveled by collecting odometer readings from Craig’s List ads across the country. One of my readers transferred that to Google Docs format and readers/riders from across the country entered data. Eventually some asshole decided to crash the spreadsheet/database, but by then I had learned that the typical motorcycle gets ridden about 1,400 miles a year with a strong modal average at about 750 miles. Most people who call themselves “bicyclists” beat those road miles by a long ways well into their 70s.

So now that, as a society and thanks to the novel coronavirus, we’re asked to reduce our exposure to each other and to try and reduce the load and risk on our healthcare system what are motorcyclists doing? The usual, anything but something useful. I should rephrase that statement, motorcyclists are doing what they usually, being careful, going AGAT, and maintaining a small social and environmental footprint.

Bikers are the problem. Bikers are out in force, riding in their underwear, protected by magical napkins on their bald heads, making as much noise as possible, and spewing fuel and mayhem where ever they go. Bikers, on the other hand, are proudly members of the two-thirds of Minnesotans who could give a flying damn about anyone else. Their biker “rights” so grossly overwhelm any responsibility they might accept for their actions that they are beginning to attract attention from the public and, sooner or later, legislators.

As of early June, 2020, 29 people have died on motorcycles on Minnesota roads and highways; the majority are single vehicle crashes and the overwhelming majority are the pirate biker crowd. We’re on track to beat or equal the previous 1985 high for the state’s motorcycle deaths. I guess we’re “lucky” that attention has been diverted from our fatalities to Covid-19’s devastation. Bikers aren’t happy with losing that focus, though. In my small town, we have had multiple biker gatherings that are practically begging to be viral hotspots and, when they are, I’m sure we’ll hear all sorts of whining about “government tracking” when the bikers get the blame for spreading Covid-19. In our area, restaurants have been allowed to reopen with outdoor seating and decent spacing, but our local biker bar is flaunting all of that and their customers are dragging tables together and making a show of pretending to be tough boys and girls. From what I’ve seen (and experienced with asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia) I suspect that tough façade will collapse about the time they can’t breathe. Drowning in your own fluids is the ultimate waterboarding.

Imagine the attitude of overworked and stressed healthcare workers working without adequate PPE, staff, and other resources when some dill-hole in a pirate outfit is wheeled into an emergency room suffering injuries from recreating on a motorcycle. Do you really think people who label bikes “donorcycles,” “murdercycles,” and a collection of other even more graphic derogatory names are going to be happy to risk their lives on people who are too lazy and arrogant to even bother with a helmet? Do you think they should be required to care more than you do? Good luck with that. If your argument is “they knew what they were signing up for,” get ready to hear “right back at you big, bad bikerboy.” At the least, they are going to take special joy in scraping the rocks and asphalt from your road-rashed ass.

This video is of a New York biker gangster funeral procession back in early April. On their website, these characters claim they were “social distancing and being responsible.” You judge.

Assigning Blame, Taking Responsibility

A blast from my past called this weekend, wanting to talk about his summer’s misfortunes. We’ll call him “P” to protect his ego and our relationship. In early August (2019), P was sailing down a country two-lane, minding his own business, and assuming that Minnesota country roads are, somehow, safer than urban freeways and byways. (Statistics consistently demonstrate that this is a motorcyclists’ delusion. In 2018, for example,31 of 57 or 54% of the state’s motorcycle fatalities were in areas with populations under 10,000 and the majority, 22, were in rural, unpopulated areas. 913 motorcyclists were injured that year and 49% of that total were injured on those same low population roads.) 2 motorcyclists were killed and 102 were injured in the state’s over-250,000 cities; the Twin Cities, in fact. P, oblivious to the hazard of country roads, was riding somewhere between 55 and 65mph on a sparsely-populated stretch of the road, when a pickup pulled into his lane, partially shielded by a downed tree next to the driveway the pickup was exiting from. Mayhem resulted and P ended up with a multitudinous-fractured femur, a broken back, and a separated shoulder.

Fortunately for P, he was wearing actual motorcycle gear including a full-face helmet and armored jacket. As he said, “I didn’t spill a drop of blood.” Unfortunately for P, he has a long recovery ahead of him and he is not fond of physical therapy. He’s been here before. Several year ago, he was riding in fairly congested traffic and, bored with the pace of movement, he was occupied trying to read the call sign of a passing small airplane when he struck the stopped car in front of him. He flew over the car and, while he was airborne, he decided, “I don’t want to hear Tom lecturing me about not wearing a helmet while I recover from this” and he shielded his head with his arms just before tumbling into a ditch. The end result of that crash was a severely massacred pelvis from which he has yet to fully recover. To his credit, P took total responsibility for both that crash and his less-than-complete recovery. He also started wearing a full-face helmet and, at least, an armored jacket when he rode. A life-long Harley guy with a long history of spectacular crashes, the bike he crashed on the last two times was a big BMW touring bike.

I’ve ridden with P, maybe twice, but definitely once. We met at a small town a few miles from his place, for a Fourth of July fireworks show. Afterwards, for whatever reason, we decided to go back to his house before I headed back home. Both of our spouses were riding passenger on that trip. P immediately took off in the dark, on familiar country roads, putting some distance between us. I made a half-hearted effort to keep him in sight, but I do not ride fast, ever, with a passenger and since I knew where we were going I was not particularly upset to make most of the trip “unguided.” Since then, he’s often reminded me of that incident and of the fact that he was a “lot faster” than me on those mostly-gravel country roads. I do my racing, when I do it, on closed courses and I am never impressed with people who imagine racing on public roads is something to brag about. My wife would make short work of me if I ever play-raced with her on the bike.

Like many motorcyclists and bikers, P’s problem is that he imagines that he is seen, because he is a big guy riding a “big bike.”  While P’s BMW didn’t have loud pipes, P has ridden bikes with minimal muffling for most of his life and always deluded himself into thinking physics is his friend when it comes to sound and defensive riding, he suffers the false idea that people are looking for motorcycles. Even in a fairly motorcycle-friendly state like Minnesota, there aren’t enough motorcycles on the road any given day for a typical cager to have any reason to be watching for them. When we don’t amount to 0.001% of the total traffic on good days, asking drivers to “Start Looking for Motorcycles” is as silly as asking them to watch out for unicorns. Bicycles, pedestrians, old men on power wheelchairs, and kids on tricycles are far more likely things to be looking out for than motorcycles; especially motorcycles approaching a blind intersection (or driveway) at 60-65mph.

This is exactly the kind of situation where motorcyclists have to be watching out for everyone else. Even if, as in P’s case, the cager gets the blame for the crash, P might still be crippled-for-life or dead . . . but in the right. The price for being right is higher than I want to pay. To be clear, I am not afraid of being dead, but I practically terrified of being maimed and crippled. During the brief period when the MSF’s Basic Rider Course actually talked about risk management, I used to tell my motorcycle students that any crash short of a tree falling on you or a tornado blowing you to Kansas was the motorcyclist’s fault for not anticipating and avoiding the situation. If you think everyone else is looking out for, or responsible for, your safety, you will be disappointed and, probably, hurt or killed.

Fast Lane Biker Geezer Column (October)

Face-Planting Across the Ages

It was spring 1971 and I was well on my way into parenthood at 23 years old, a trade school dropout, living in Hereford, Texas and working 80-90 hours a week at $3.25 an hour servicing the electronic scales on cattle feed trucks. What a life! One of my new friends at my new job turned me on to a deal on a 1970 Kawasaki F5 Bighorn 350. It didn’t take long and, if I wasn’t stuck behind the wheel of the company Chevy C10 pickup blasting my way from one feedlot to the next, I was on that motorcycle. It was my first 2-stroke and the first bike I seriously tried to prep for off-road racing. 28 raging horses with a rotary valve fueled motor, a 5-speed transmission, electronic ignition, aluminum wheels, Hatta forks (at least 3” of travel), lime green paint job, and . . . lights. I don’t think Kawasaki advertised the weight. Maybe metric weights and measures numbers don’t get that big. If it was less than 400 pounds, wet, I’d be astounded.

My last gasps of freedom before becoming a father and really needing to rack up overtime at work would be two races: the Canadian River Cross-Country Race and a state series motocross in Dalhart, Texas. The Canadian River race was first and I was “preparing” for that race by blasting across the Texas plains on some friend’s property every spare evening could get away from work. Helmets were optional at most Midwestern 60’s motorcycle events and I had one, a gold metal flake open face unit just like the one in the picture at left. But I often took it off when I got where I was going because riding off road was “so much safer than being on the highway.” Everybody knows that, right? It, honestly, wasn’t much of a helmet and the only reason I owned it was because the rancher who sold me the motorcycle included the helmet. When I arrived at the field where I often practiced riding fast, I would sometimes take off the helmet and stick it on a fence post to be picked up when I got back from playing racer. 

One weekend afternoon, I snuck out of work and rode my Kawasaki to the practice field and for whatever reason I popped the gate loop, rode through the gate, reattached the loop, and headed into the field with my helmet still on my head. I rode around the field for a long while and after I tired of going fast, spinning around in dirt-bomb circles, and racing down the dry creek bed on the property, I decided to practice jumping big rocks. The Canadian River race was notorious for having rock piles that had to be either ridden over or you had to drag your bike across the rocks or take the long way up the river bank and back down, hoping you didn’t miss a check point in the process. Some of those river banks were a long trip up, around, and back down. If you could do it, hopping over the rocks trials-style was the way to go and I needed a lot of practice if I would be able to use that tactic in the race. 

The Bighorn’s 350 motor was an unpredictable bitch. You never really knew what would happen when you opened up the throttle. Plus or minus a hundred rpm at 3,000 rpm would be the difference between flipping over backwards or charging full speed ahead without enough torque to clear a dime under the front wheel. Hopping logs and rocks on that bike required a lot of clutch and throttle work. I was having a pretty good day working on the technique when I suddenly wasn’t. I’d been working a fairly large pointy rock from several angles when I got the full speed ahead torque-less response and slammed my front tire solidly into the rock, launching me over the bars head-first into the rock, flipping over that and landing on my back in a pile of goatheads. I remember hearing something that sounded like gunshot just before the lights went out. 

The day I wake up and can’t remember where I am or who I am will be sponsored by the many times I’ve been concussed in my life. This was one of those times. 

I don’t know how long I lay on my back in the goatheads, but it was long enough that when I decided to rejoin the west Texas population of humanoids my shirt was covered in blood. I managed to get to my feet, pull the Bighorn upright and swing a leg over it, and sit there semi-balanced for a bit longer until I remembered where I was and how to get out of there. By that time, my lime green gas tank was blood red. I was really losing a lot of blood and I didn’t know where it was coming from. I rode back to the gate, did the unloop and relooping thing, and rode to my friends’ house. I think I was hoping for a hose to clean myself and the bike off and a bandage for my lip. By then, I had figured out that I’d punched a hose clamp bolt (from the toolbag on my crossbar) through my upper lip. I could feel the wind on my teeth while I rode, even though my mouth was closed. It didn’t hurt much, yet, but I suspect it would soon. 

I got to their house and, luckily for me, they were home. I freaked them out a good bit; looking like someone had taken an axe to my face. One of the couple was a nurse and she quickly realized that my face needed stiches and she did them right there in their kitchen. Six stiches, I think. While she was stiching up my face, he took a hose to the bike and my gear. About the time the nurse was applying iodine to her handiwork, he came into the kitchen with my helmet in his hands. “Was this from today?”: He pointed to a triangular-shaped hole in the center of the very top of my helmet. 

“Nope. That’s something new.” 

We loaded my bike into his pickup and drove out to where I was fooling around when I crashed into the rock and there was a lot of gold metal flake paint on the point of that rock. I must have been launched headfirst into the largest spearhead in Texas. It was a crappy helmet, but it wasn’t crappy enough to let that rock get through to my skull. That was the first time a helmet saved my life. 

Page forward to December 2018. I’m 70 and the only big moment in life I’m anticipating is my next bowel movement. No kids on the way and no demanding, unrewarding, dangerous as hell job to worry about. My grandson gave me his fairly worn-out eBike earlier this winter and I just got it back on the road. 

I bought a new winter helmet, since my usual bicycle helmet is colder than wearing nothing and isn’t really much protection. When the mailman delivered the new helmet, I had a bunch of normal errands to do and a bike ride on a 38^oF December day seemed like the perfect excuse to go for a ride. I put on about 12 miles bombing around town and enjoying both the ride and my new much warmer gear (including some Bar Mitts I picked up at Red Wing Bicycle while I was downtown). Just to put some more miles on the battery and see what kind of range the bike had hauling my lard ass around town, I headed out the Cannon River Trail toward the Anderson Center at the west edge of town. I came to the gate that blocks all traffic except fat tire bikes (like mine), cross-country skiers, and hikers and scooted between the bars on to the trail. 

I made it about 30’ on the partially melted slush and the front tire zipped out from under me and dumped me face-first into the road. The slush was soft and slippery, but didn’t provide any buffer between me and the asphalt path. If you look at the middle of the front of the helmet, you’ll see the nice new dent I put in my nice new helmet on its first day on my head. Once again, I was knocked punchy for a few moments, but not unconscious this time. 

Once again, I punched a hole through my lip, but this time it was with a tooth. Once again, I coated my coat, pants, and bike with blood, but the hole was normal and self-healed after a couple of hours. Weirdly, it leaked saliva all over my lip for a couple of days, but it didn’t swell up all that much and while it pretty much squashed any whistling I might have wanted to do it wasn’t that limiting otherwise. No serious kissing, please. I might have been able to whistle through the hole before it closed up, but I didn’t think to try. Too late now. 

I wouldn’t have been out there on the snow if I hadn’t had the helmet, but I’d have been out there sometime this winter. You just have to ride snow sometime if you are going to live in Minnesota and be a biker. Once again, a helmet kept me from bashing my tiny brain out.

Helmet Testing in the Bicycle World

I just started riding a fat tire eBike this past week, after spending a month or so rejuvenating my grandson’s first eBike. The bike had suffered a couple of winters commuting regardless of the weather and needed a lot of going-over to be a dependable ride. Quickly, I discovered my regular bike helmet was worthless in cold weather. On the recommendation of a friend, I ordered a Lazer helmet a couple of days ago and just before I took off for a ride today it arrived. So, I took the time to adjust it and headed off to the bike trail.

I tend toward overconfidence (ask my wife) and on the way back from my safe and sane ride into town, I decided to take on a couple of miles of the unmaintained fat tire, cross country ski, and winter hiking trail. The trail was covered with about 2” of slushy snow and an ice base. I made it about 30 feet before the front tire slid out from under me and I slammed face-first into the slushy snow and pavement at, maybe, 10mph. Look at the dent in the front of the helmet, without the helmet that would have been my skull and I'd probably be dead. As it was, I really got my bell rung and punched a tooth most of the way through my lip.

The dealer, Wheel and Sprocket, didn't have to get the helmet to me before the 29th, but it arrived on the 19th and most likely saved my life. If I hadn't have tested the snow today, I'd have probably done it before the 29th. That's the kind of genius risk-taker I am.

What can you say about a product that absolutely saved your life? The last thing I ever want to do is to write a product test review of a helmet. It would be nice to get to talk about the features (excellent), the comfort and warmth (terrific), and the visibility (again, terrific). However, I decided to do an impact test. At the least, I tested the Lazer Snow Helmet and it passed. However, I might need a full face helmet if I keep doing stupid stuff like this. The picture, at left, is a selfie taken a few minutes after I got back home. Now, my lip is about 4X that thick and I have developed a cute little lisp, if you can get me to talk at all.

Biker Reality verses Reality Reality

Some of the words used in this PSA might indicate where the real cause of the crash highligted here came from. In the case of this crash, the car didn't even contact the bike before she went down. Proving that "every panic reaction you will ever have will be wrong." Both the bike and the car were moving to the same lane, parallel to each other, and the car was in no way, as Ms.Katte stated, coming from "out of nowhere." Neither vehicle owned the lane beside the truck and both were equally responsible for anticipating the move of the other.

In the PSA, Katte stated that she was “checking her mirrors, putting my head on a swivel, looking for the vehicles around me” and she missed the vehicle right beside her. Riders need a bigger "swivel" on their heads in that situation. In freeway situations, mirrors are worthless on 99% of the motorcycles we ride. Mine, for example, barely show me what is directly behind me and tell me nothing about a vehicle right beside me. I’ve ridden a CTX1300 and beside the fact that it is far more motorcycle (power, weight, and maneuverablity) than someone with beginner skills can manage, the damn things vibrate so much that the mirrors might as well be blacked out. They are worse than useless.

One point of the PSA was to encourage motorcycle gear use; especially helmets. She was lucky, smart or both to have been wearing a real helmet; even if it was a cheap Chinese brand. A typical Harley rider’s toilet bowl would have been useless in that crash. Her “$35 leather jacket” probably didn’t do much other than save her some skin. Actual armor isn’t cheap, but it works. I know, being the idiot I am I’ve “tested” my Aerostich armor way too many times; fortunately, always off-pavement. 

Sellin’ It Myself

It has been a slow season for motorcycle sales, not just mine but everything I’m watching on Craig’s List and my local dealer’s sales. I’ve only had three bites on my V-Strom and I’m the cheapest V-Strom 650 on the Minnesota Craig’s List by more than a few dollars and with a whole lot more touring accessories and parts added than the competition. So far, all of the prospective buyers are clearly just looky-loos, but they’ve made it pretty clear that is the case. Two have show up to look it over and one of the two is “thinking about it.” Today, though, I got an email that read “I was wondering if I'd be able to come take a look at the bike and maybe take it for a test ride?”

It’s been a while since I’ve sold a motorcycle and a really long time since anyone asked to take a test ride. The last time I experienced that adventure was when I sold my 1992 Yamaha TDM 850. The buyer showed up in a nice new pickup, with his girlfriend, a nice set of gear, and he looked to be fairly competent and knowledgeable about the Yamaha TDM. LIke today, it had been a fair number of years between my last motorcycle sale and my chops were rusty. He wanted to take the bike for a test ride and like the Minnesota passive-aggressive dweeb I’ve become, I handed him the key.

The TDM is no beginner’s bike, as Victor Wanchena discovered when he test rode one for Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly. My prospective buyer saddled up competently, found first gear without any problem, released the clutch and eased into the street, before he had the bike straightened out and lined up for the big curve in our street, he decided to nail the throttle; I’d guess he was showing off for me, his girlfriend, or both. What he did, instead, was drop the bike on its side so quickly that he didn’t even have a chance to get his leg out from under it. The girlfriend and I held our breath and I ran across the street to help him get out from under the bike. We stood him and the TDM back up, rolled the bike back to my driveway and surveyed the damage: two broken turn signals, one mangled mirror, one bend handlebar, and some scratches on the tank and side panels. To his credit and my great fortune, he paid my asking price without much comment. We loaded the bike up on his pickup, plus the spares and busted bits, and he drove off. I transferred the title immediately, on-line, and I never heard anything from him again. I was lucky.

Today, I’m less inclined to count on luck. Now, I offer the option of my delivering the bike to a mechanic for evaluation and appraisal or this form along with cash in advance:

BILL OF SALE – MOTORCYCLE
6/15/2018
For the consideration of $____________________ I, Thomas Day of my address(“Seller”), hereby sell, assign and transfer to _______________________________________________, of _______________________________________. ____________________ (“Buyer”), the following described motorcycle (“Vehicle”).

Make: Suzuki
Model: DL650 V-Strom
Year: 2004
VIN: ??????????????
Seller states that the mileage reading on the Odometer at time of sale is xxxxxxxx miles. Seller certifies that to the best of Seller’s knowledge, this reading reflects the actual mileage of the Vehicle. Further, the Vehicle’s odometer has not been altered, set back or disconnected while in Seller’s possession, nor does seller have knowledge of anyone else doing so.
Buyer acknowledges the above odometer statement:
___________________________________________________________________________________ (Buyer’s Acknowledgement)
Buyer Name
Seller warrants that the Vehicle is free and clear of any liens or encumbrances.
The Vehicle is being transferred on as “AS IS” basis, with not warranties, express or implied, as to the condition of the Vehicle.
Seller certifies the statements made in the Bill of Sale are true, to the best knowledge of the Seller.
TEST RIDE INFORMATION: If Buyer returns vehicle to Seller within 1 hour of purchase, in its original condition (save for additional mileage), Seller will fully refund the sale price and Seller will retain title to the vehicle.
________________________________________________________________________________________Start time of test ride:
_______________________________________________________________Buyer’s acknowledgement of test ride conditions
Buyer Name
_______________________________________________________________Seller’s acknowledgement of test ride conditions
Transfer of the Vehicle is effective 6/15/2018.
Thomas W. Day (Seller)
Seller Name

I’ve read that some buyers are highly offended by the suggestion that they may not be competent riders, decent human beings, or have the money to actually purchase the motorcycle in question. I apologize, in advance, to those people. You might as well assume you won’t be buying anything substantial from me. I am from Kansas, I am a hick, but I didn’t just get off of the turnip truck yesterday; it was at least a month ago.

Weirdest Myth Yet

I had a furnace maintenance this week and the young man who did the work turned out to be “bikecurious.” After talking about what he was thinking of buying, we took a look at my motorcycles. He was particularly interested in the WR250X, but said he’d been planning on saving up for a down payment on a Harley of some sort. I asked why someone under 60 would be looking at a Harley and his answer was, “I heard it was safer.” His uncle, apparently a pirate of some sort, had told him “90% of all crashes happen when you are riding alone” and the easiest way to find a group of people to ride with is to own a Harley.

I had to admit, that solo crashing thing has mostly been true for me; because I almost always ride alone. However, I also told him that I’d seen one group of Harley pirates crash in mass when they plowed into a bunch of bees. Every group ride I’ve ever been on has had at least one pretty serious crash, but that’s a poor sample because I’ve only been on a half-dozen or so group rides in my last million motorcycle miles. I wonder if racing is “group riding,” because I’ve sure seen a pile of motorcycles go down together in the first turn.

The whole idea that group riding is in some way safe, amazes me. On every level, the concept seems insane to me. When I taught the MSF classes, I got a constant taste of how true David Roth’s “Law of Crowd IQ” is more true than not (It’s math: the smartest guy in the crowd’s IQ divided by the number of people in the crowd.). People get stupid in crowds, just look at a Trump rally: the bigger his crowds got, the dumber they became. Hillary never had to worry about that because her crowds were always tiny. Motorcyclists are not only no different, we are naturally inclined to be hooligans and not that bright on our good days. So, put us in groups and it’s hard for the group IQ to beat 1.0. Probably the best illustration of this was when a Minnesota motorcycle instructor was on a group ride and dropped her bike trying to exit a light at an intersection and was killed when the nitwits following her ran over her repeatedly. If that event wasn’t a highlighted moment illuminating exactly how stupid groups of motorcyclists  are, we’re just too stupid as a nation to get irony.

Where do myths like this come from? How does shit like this get said out loud without being laughed into hiding from embarrassment?

Mixed Emotions

Enoch Langford was riding his recently purchased motorcycle at high speed in fairly congested neighborhood traffic. Apparently, his “plan” was to blast through an intersection hoping the rest of the world was watching out for him. He was clearly moving multiples faster than the traffic around him when a pair of vehicles turned in front of him at the intersection. One made it through without incident, the second vehicle turned just in time to cause Langford to panic and “lay ‘er down.” KARE II’s reporter said, “It left Langford no choice but to lay the bike down and skid right into the car. . .”

For years, I’ve argued that it is irrational to believe (as ABATE apparently does) that the majority of multiple vehicle crashes involving motorcycles are the fault of everyone but motorcyclists. What left Langford with “no choice” was his approach to the intersection. It’s obvious that his speed was totally inappropriate for the situation and his skills were far below what he needed for the result. He didn’t “lay ‘er down,” he fell over due to poor braking skills and a total lack of escape route planning.

The part of the story that flips the blame is where the driver of the car clearly slowed after the impact, then sped away from the scene. “One witness told KARE 11 News the driver got out of his car for a second, but then got back in and drove several more blocks before ditching his car and running.” That statement makes me wonder, if that happened, why has it been so hard to identify the driver? If they have the car, doesn’t that give them a lead on the driver? Or is that statement just something silly the media latched on to? So far, all of the media reports have been totally devoid of anything resembling rational analysis of the crash itself.

Hit and run is a crime, but it’s one that police seem to prosecute randomly. There have been a couple of hit and run incidents in my family, where my daughters were the victims, and the police didn’t even bother to include the evasion information in their reports. In both incidents, the police didn’t bother to assign blame or include the hit and run information until they were forced to finish their job. A friend is currently waiting for the Minneapolis police to file a crash report where his wife’s car was sideswiped while stopped in traffic. She recorded and reported the license number, but the police haven’t even bothered to finish their initial report, let alone hunt down the driver. I agree that the driver of this car needs to be found, but I doubt the end result will be as dramatic and conclusive as the news report imagines.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear about the details of the police report. I’d like to know if Mr. Langford was a licensed motorcyclist. I’d like to know if the police crash scene analysis estimated his speed before he fell over. It would be nice to see some consistency in how crashes and hit and run situations are handled, but I’ve given up on hoping for that in our decaying society.

Grom Idiocy

In case you EVER feel bad about yourself or your riding skills, bookmark this video and no matter who you are you’ll probably be reassured. These Honda Grom nitwits are a whole new level of incompetent.

#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)

Gangbanger Holiday

This past weekend, Friday through Sunday, was River City Days in Red Wing. More than usual, we had packs of loud, incompetent, badged and tatted pirates parading through town creating smog, noise, irritation, and entertainment. We made it to the downtown affair a couple of times and had an opportunity to view how motorcycles are seen by the general public in a fairly diverse crowd. It’s pretty much all negative.

 

If you think South Park was exaggerating, you’re delusional, clueless, and or an asshole. There are no other alternatives.

The experience got me to thinking about where years of negative stereotypes are taking the future of motorcycling. Combined with a 3,000 mile trip to the Rockies and back earlier this summer where I saw so few motorcycles doing anything other than being asshole gangbangers or asshole squids, this summer really put a point on the spear I’ve been anticipating for years. Other than a few Midwestern manufacturing jobs, who would it inconvenience if motorcycles were banned from public roads? Since motorcyclists are already classified as “terrorists” and gangsters by the FBI (and I mean all of us with a class “M” license, not just the actual gangbangers), the majority of the public considers motorcycles to be a menace (and not just in the US), and insurance companies and most motorcyclists consider their motorcycle to be purely a “recreational vehicle,” it’s pretty obvious that we’re treading on unsound territory here.

In the past (the mid-80’s), the motorcycle manufacturers have at least considered ending motorcycle imports to the US and other 1st world countries due to liability costs. If insurance companies (especially health insurance) were able to properly price their products regarding insurer risk, most of us wouldn’t be able to ride because we couldn’t afford health or life insurance. If the public could do simple math, the estimated $2/mile cost of motorcycle crashes (mostly paid by the general public, since only half of motorcyclists involved in crashes have health insurance) would drive more than a little legislative action. Economically, the only rational move any society has is to start moving toward getting motorcycles off of the public’s roads.

Again, I ask “Who would that inconvenience?” Well under 1% of the public are being supported and tolerated by the 99%. If that sounds familiar, consider how much rage there is toward that other 1% group. Lucky for us and the other 1%, at least half of the country is so stupid that they will vote for a 1%’er to save themselves from sanity and they will pretend that motorcycles are some sort of “freedom” worth protecting. But they may not be stupid forever.

Measuring Facts

“One of motorcycling’s few saving graces is the disconnect between how dangerous the activity is and how safe the practicioners feel. I’m not well-travelled, so I tend to believe this is an American (USA, not Canada or Mexico.) trait. It could be just a human thing, though. Generally, it’s safe to say that don’t get humans. One of the ways that people make those disconnects is by putting “belief” over facts. When confronted with the data that demonstrates riding (per mile travelled) in rural and small town areas is more dangerous than urban travel, especially freeway travel, riders will simply argue(?), “I don’t believe that.” While they are pretending to be skeptical, they are simply being foolish when the data doesn’t support their delusions.

I ran head-on into that argument a few days ago with my neighbor, a generally reasonably intelligent and creative guy who mostly hangs out with idiots because he works for an agricultural construction company. In a spectacular demonstration of the old saying, “lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas,” my neighbor was off on a rant about how nervous Donny Trump made him, but that he couldn’t vote for Clinton because “She’s gonna take away my guns.”

I suggested that I’d heard that bullshit argument for the last 40 years of national elections and Presidents JFK, Johnson, Carter, and Obama have not only not taken away anywhere near “all his guns” but Bush I was the one President to actually make a shot at anything resembling gun control, which Reagan supported. His response was, “I don’t believe that. Look at what Obama did to the price of ammo, right after his election.”

As much as I respect my neighbor’s intelligence, he isn’t a reader and doesn’t do much research on anything but construction projects. Like most people, he isn’t likely to be killed by curiousity. I suggested a couple of websites, The Truth about Guns "Why Is Ammunition So Expensive?" and an article I’d read in the Motley Fool’s investment blog, “The NRA Reveals Who's to Blame for Ammo Shortage: You.” The main reason ammo is in short supply and expensive is that gun nuts are buying and hoarding the supply. It’s actually one of the rare times that supply-and-demand is applicable. I ended with, “Even the NRA’s website conforms that.”

His response was a laugh and, “I still don’t believe that.” He followed with an argument that satistics “don’t prove anything” and that anyone can lie with numbers.

And so it goes.

We went back to talking about safe topics, but I went away wondering how many people quickly justify their prejudice, irrational economic decisions, and generally nutty behavior with “I don’t believe that.” I bet a lot.

MMM recently published one of my less-temperate rants, Safe Motorcycling? One of my points in that essay was, “Our mortality-and-morbidity-per-mile statistics are the grossest evidence possible that motorcycling is as risky an activity as rock climbing, hang gliding, scuba diving or deep free-diving, X-games-everything, or being in a combat zone (‘Top safety chiefs across the military have identified motorcycles as the No. 1 safety concern off the battlefield.’ NPR Report, U.S. Military Combats Rising Motorcycle Fatalities, 2009).” In case you’ve convinced youself that I’m the only one who thinks motorcycles are dangerous, a few years back AOL News published ”The 7 Deadly Hobbies: Pastimes Your Insurer Hates.” Motorcycling, for no rational reason, was #6 with overwhelmingly the most deaths over hang gliding, civilian pilot, mountain climbing, sky diving, recreational boating, and scuba diving. The military still ranks motorcycles and the #1 non-war-related cause of death for US service people. The only thing that seems to affect motorcycle mortality and morbidity numbers in a positive way is the decline in motorcycle popularity. Now that the Boomer mid-life-crisis rush is over, motorcycle sales in the US continue to be stagnant. Suzuki got rid of or lost about 20% of its dealers post-Great Recession and Hardly is still struggling to find non-bluehair customers. I would imagine the same goes for Polaris and the rest of the Japanese manufacturers.

Of course, there are motorcycle dealers and riders who will say, “I don’t believe that.” They’ll argue that anyone can make up sales and miles-ridden statistics and that the motorcycle world and future is rich and rosy. Denying the risk, the economics, and the other factors that are making motorcycles and motorcycling a vanishing activity probably won’t be a great defense for the industry.

What Kind of Crash Is This?

There is a fair amount of discussion on-line attributing the "cause" of this incident to "target fixation." I completely disagree. Everything about this crash stinks of rider incompetence. Even worse, like the cagers we often whine about, this asshole decided to sacrifice unprotected bicyclists rather than accept the consequences of riding too fast and not being in control of his motorcycle and move his crash off of the road and away from innocent victims. For that, I would suggest throwing the entire rule book at biker bozo and extracting the maximum cash and liberty. Running into the back of any vehicle or person is a symptom of incompetence on multiple levels. In this case, it's also damn near attempted manslaughter.

The fact that jackass-boy is also playing racer on public roads, has a loud pipe (perfectly delineating who he really is), and reacted exactly wrong in every way pretty much puts the nails in his riding coffin. The perfect outcome would be a shit-load of tickets from the cop and learning that one of the bicyclists is a lawyer. I have no more sympathy for him than I would for a cager (especially a cop) who rear-ends a motorcycle.

This is not a poor-biker story, but a dumbass-on-a-motorcycle classic tale. This guy and the thousands like him are exactly the reason "real people" hate motorcyclists and making him into anything else puts us in his boots (or, probably, flipflops). 

Your opinion?

Postscript: This video and opinions about who did what to who and why are "going viral" on the web. A bicyclist's view of the crash is about the same as mine, "What Really Happened." Huffington Post wrote it up in "Motorcycle Crashes Into Cyclists On California Highway." One of the Huffington readers optimistically called the douchebag "Worst motorbike rider ever." We wish that were true.

Motorcycle Miles Traveled

One of my least favorite aspects of motorcycle safety statistics is the wildly optimistic "miles traveled" numbers that seem to be spouted by everyone from the dreaded AMA to the MSF to NTSA. I do not believe the average mileage traveled by motorcyclists is anywhere near 10,000 miles per year. But how do we get real numbers?

It struck me this morning that we have a ready source of data, CraigsList and eBay. So, I started paging through CraigsList ads this afternoon, copying down the bike year and miles advertised, tossed them into a spreadsheet, and did some calculations.

Observation and experiences are powerful tools. I realize that what appears to be isn't always what is, but I also realize that people making political claims are often motivated to tell less than the truth about . . . anything. One of my least favorite statistics is the "miles traveled" numbers that are used for motorcycle safety data. I simply do not believe that there are nearly as many motorcycles on the road as the industry, safety organizations, and, even, the government claims.

The Kelly Blue Book, for example, posts the following statement, "Obviously mileage will vary from year to year and model to model. A simple guide could be to consider the type of bike you are looking at: If the bike is a sportbike 600 c.c. to 999 c.c., and since these bikes are traditionally weekend only bikes, you can expect to see lower miles, about 3,000 miles per year. Tourers or Sport Tourers usually see a lot of miles, but these are generally freeway miles, between 5,000 to 6,000 miles per year." Those are silly numbers, based on fantasy. NHTA is considerably more conservative with an estimate of 1,943 miles per year for the average motorcycle. I'm not sure I buy that, either.

When people sell their motorcycles, they are pretty much forced to provide credible mileage numbers, so places like CraigsList, eBay, and local newspapers are pretty useful resources. In about a half-hour on two different days, I collected data on 60 motorcycles. So far, my data indicates the average mileage is about 1,425/year with a standard deviation of 863 miles. So far, there are some radically low-mileage outliers. The most annual mileage I've seen is 4,700/year over a 12 year lifetime. My own mileage tops that, but I'm trying to ignore anecdotal data and only collect "for sale" data to keep the information consistent and believable.

I created my own data gathering tool, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, that allowed me to enter data that I found in various locations and make some statistical assumptions from that information. Because I'm lazy, old, half-blind, and don't feel some kind of compulsion to do all of this on my own, I' originally posted the spreadsheet on my website for others to play with. A much smarter guy, William Wahby, transferred my Excel sheet to a Google Docs format:(Geezer with a Grudge: Average Mileage) where any of us can add data. If you want to add some bikes from your region, you'll see we've included the following data entry fields for you to work with:

State

Date Sampled

Make/Model or Description

Year

Miles

These are all data entry fields. The rest of the data fields -- Miles/Year, Miles Driven, and the statistical analysis fields -- calculate mileage automatically when you enter data into the Year and Miles fields. Please just enter the traditional two-letter State designation into that field. The date format is automatic: DD/MM/YYYY. I'll take pretty much anything for Make/Model. 

This is the kind of data collection that you'd think/hope NHTSA and the states would be collecting and using for analysis proposes. From what I've been told, they don't bother.  To the right is a charty of what our data looks like, so far. Pretty disgusting, don't you think? One thing this absolutely points out is that the overwhelming majority of riders don't need a bike bigger than 150-250cc. Any damn bike will hold up for less than 2,000 miles a year and how fast do you need to go if you're only going to be on the bike for less than twenty hours a year?