Re: USA Today reports: 'Supersport' cycles step up risk

On Sep 11, 10:42?am, Bob Nixon <bigrex2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There's nothing wrong with this article.

The problem that I have with the article is that it's based on
statistics coming from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
which represents the interest of the insurance companies, but their
press release makes it sound like they are actually concerned with
rider fatalities.

Popularity of high-performance motorcycles helps push rider deaths to
near-record high http://www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr091107.html

Parents that are stupid
enough to allow their kid's 1st motor vehicle to be a 186MPH bullet
that will beat a 500HP ZO6 Vette on any racetrack by a huge margin and
do a 1/4 mile and be stop before the Vette has even gone through the
timing lights at the end of the 1/4 mile, is lunacy.

If the kid is 18, the parents don't have much to say about the kid's
choice in his method of suicide, if he has his own money to spend.

My parents could never tell me anything, but I wasn't killed on a
GSXR1000 because there just weren't any around when I started riding.

But, if the real problem that the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety is concerned with is loss of insurance company profits, the
solution is to raise the insurance premiums sky high for the riders in
the age brackets that are causing the losses.

I think the premiums are already there for riders most at risk, and
that tends to slow down sales of new sportbikes to young kids.

1) There should be a tiered licencing system like in Europe in the USA/
Canada.

Tiered licensing has probably reduced the number of riders in England
and Japan and reduced the number of small models available to the
potential rider.

2) They don't allow Motocross bikes on the street so why asphalt race
replica of 600 or 1000cc?

The only legal place to ride a motorcross bike around here is an
offroad park that's about as big as two football fields. The law
enforcement agencies don't allow me to shoot my guns without
government control either.

But people still find places to ride their dirt bikes and shoot their
guns without being arrested.

3) The Mfg and dealers should be held more accountable for their
advertising and sales of Race Reps.

I went into the local Honda dealership to buy a can of chain lube.
They were playing a video about stunt riding on public roads. That's
grass roots lunacy of the worst kind.

The American Motorcyclist Association has based its professional
roadracing rules on mass produced street models that have been getting
ever closer to full-on MotoGP machinery since the mid-1970's. The
manufacturers have to win on Sunday so they can sell on Monday.

So the 18-year old kid sees a video tape of a MotoGP or AMA national
road race and he sees that stunting is acceptable at the race venues
and he comes away with the idea that stunting and wild behavior is
what sport riding is all about and he runs down to the dealership and
gets his first sportbike.

5) Finally, think of these toys AND sports cars as guns. It's not the
vehicle that kills, rather the driver.

I have no desire to kill anybody or anything with my guns. All I want
to do is punch holes in paper targets. And, when I ride my sportbikes,
I have no desire to project my body through the side of an automobile,
I just want to ride through the scenery and I have nothing to prove.

OTOH, Suzuki has been running an ad campaign where a racing champion
says, "I'm a winner. I choose Suzuki."

Kids see that, and imagine that they can be a winner too, that all
they need is a GSXR to kick off their professional racing career.


.

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