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Motorcyclists’ Rights: LIVE at 2001 BEST of the WEST! Motorcycle Riders Foundation’s Annual Western Regional Meeting Will Be Broadcast Live Via Internet
MRF Washington, D.C. -- Concerned about motorcyclists’ rights and overall transportation safety on the American road?
Better fly, drive -- or, preferably, ride -- to Phoenix, AZ, on April 6 thru 8 where the leaders of the American motorcyclists’ rights movement plan
their strategy for current legislative initiatives and beyond.
This year, the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, the first voice for riders’ rights in the nation’s capitol and the only Washington voice devoted exclusively to
the street rider, will present the 2001 Best of the West at the Embassy Suites North at the southeast corner Greenway & I-17. Address as follows:
2577 W Greenway Road Phoenix, Arizona, United States, 85023 ABATE & MMA of Arizona invites you to meet the MRF Board of Directors Friday evening. The General Session Saturday morning starts at 8:30 and will finish with MRF Vice-President Tom Wyld’s presentation, “Is Your Ride For Freedom Or Is My Ride Finished.” The afternoon offers sessions on Leadership, Computer Workshop, Strategic Planning For Your SMRO, Triage and Act/Create Successes for Your Organization, Budgeting For Your SMRO, SMRO Activities, and How Can You Be Most Effective In Your SMRO. The evening will wind up with a cash bar/social hour, banquet, and both silent and live auctions. Can’t make it? ---- Logon!!!. MRF has selected INB Radio to transmit the conference live, on the Internet. A leader in Internet streaming technology, INB Radio will transmit the conference live - and make the conference available on archive for 60 days. (Click on inbRadio now for more details.) This conference will be simulcast live on the Internet via the INB radio network. INB Radio can be accessed at www.inbradio.com, or as a direct link from the MRF web site, mrf.org. Best of the West will offer a wide range of training and information. There will be state legislative reports, plenty of news on the globalization of the motorcycle industry and its affect on the American marketplace, an update on the proposed Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules covering motorcycles, and much more. If you need the most up to date information on motorcyclist’s rights and safety issues it will be delivered to your home computer on Saturday April 7 by the MRF and INB radio. It’s the next best thing to being there. The broadcast will also be on the INB archive list for the next 60 days. If you can’t hear it live you can still get the information later, or go back and listen again to get all the details.
Former CHP Commissioner Maurice Hannigan Recommended to Head NHTSA The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the National Safety Council is
advancing the name of a staunch anti-rider-rights advocate to head the
National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
This development requires a vigorous response from the American motorcyclists’
rights movement.
California riders and motorcyclists generally have gone on alert at
the prospect of former Commissioner Maurice Hannigan being considered as the
next NHTSA Administrator. Pushed by the National Safety Council who has
opposed the freedom agenda of motorcyclists, former Commissioner Hannigan
championed California’s mandatory helmet law. His opposition to motorcyclists
and their rights over the years has been staunch, vocal, and consistent.
Hannigan is best known for formulating a helmet law enforcement policy that Federal Courts
have ruled violates motorcyclists Constitutional rights. The Federal Court for the Southern
District of California issued the first ever permanent injunction against the CHP in their history.
The injunction was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Call to action:
See Ya Al!
The country's long ride toward installing a new President looks
to have come to an end. Bikers have finally won one. George W. Bush has been a long time friend
to motorcyclists, and promises to change the way we're dealt with by the Feds. I had the pleasure
of meeting and talking to him during the campaign, and he proved that everything my friend, Sputnik,
said about him was true. The first thing he said to me was that he wasn't going to let anybody turn
back the clock on Texas riders, and that their freedom was his most important consideration when he
signed the bill to remove the helmet law for adult riders.
For all of you who heeded the call and turned out to vote, great job! Don't let up, keep involved
with the system. Make it your duty to check up on all of your elected representatives, and
keep in contact with them. It'll be good for you, and good for them. Like voting, your rights need exercise, just
like with muscles, the more you flex them the stronger they get! Rob Rasor Named AMA President In a move that many around the country think was eleven months too late in coming the Board of Trustees of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) announced that Robert Rasor has been named the Association's new president, effective Nov. 1. The announcement was made at a meeting of the AMA Board at the Association's headquarters in Pickerington, Ohio. Rasor has been a member of the AMA staff for nearly 28 years, starting
in January 1973 as a legislative analyst. In the early '80s, he became
director of the AMA's Government Relations Department, a post
subsequently titled vice president for government relations.
"FREE AT LAST,
FREE AT LAST, THANK GOD FLORIDA IS FREE AT LAST," exclaimed
a jubilant James "Doc" Riechenbach III, President and Lobbyist for ABATE
of Florida, moments after receiving a personal phone call from Governor
Jeb Bush at 3:50 p.m. (EST) today, June 16, to tell him that he'd signed
their helmet law repeal bill!
Doc, who also serves as Chairman of the
Board of Directors for the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (NCOM),
said, "It's been a long time coming, 31 years, and we'd just like to thank
our ABATE members, NCOM and every state that helped us win our freedom!"
House Bill 1911 will repeal Florida's helmet
law for riders 21 and older who have a minimum of $10,000 in medical insurance,
and will become effective July 1, 2000.
"The Bush brothers have now set two states
free," exclaimed Doc, referring to Jeb Bush's brother and Presidential
hopeful, George W. Bush Jr., who as Texas Governor signed a similar bill
in 1997 to allow freedom of choice for responsible adult Texas motorcyclists.
Something tells me that Daytona Bike Week
is gonna be one Helluva helmetless celebration! NATIONAL COALITION OF MOTORCYCLISTS
(NCOM)
NAVAJO NATION
REPEALS HELMET LAW If you thought that states like Arizona
and New Mexico didn't have a helmet law for adult riders, you were wrong...at
least until now. Although state laws in those Southwest states allow riders
18 and older to ride without a helmet, a mandatory helmet requirement has
been in existence on all Navajo Nations land, even though it was seldom
enforced by Tribal Police.
But the tribal council recently voted unanimously
57-0, with no opposition, to repeal the helmet law on their Native Indian
reservation lands, which is considered to be a separate and autonomous
government, and bring their law into compliance with other Southwestern
states comprising the Navajo Nation. The helmet law repeal was signed by Navajo
Nation President Kelsay Begay on May 8, 2000.
NHTSA LIED--What
a Shock!! Those of us who've been fighting in the
trenches for bikers' rights have known all along that the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been fudging their statistics
when lobbying against us on helmet laws. But now comes word from Ms. NHTSA
herself, Saint Joan of Claybrook, who's vision and leadership brought us
such governmental boondoggles as the backwards-steering ''Safer-Cycle,''
that NHTSA mislead the public regarding the safety of air bags.
According to a WASHINGTON TIMES editorial
''Death By Safety Experts'' forwarded to us by COWBOY over the Internet,
former Carter-era NHTSA chieftain Joan Claybrook recently admitted that
NHTSA's false or inaccurate claims over the years have ''hurt'' the agency's
reputation and believability with the public, particularly with the ongoing
fiasco over air bags. Among other things, the editorial charges
that while serving as NHTSA administrator Claybrook claimed that mandating
car manufacturers to install air bags ''was necessary because of then-chronic
underuse of safety belts. She said that air bags could actually supplant
seat belts and would provide superior protection.''
It goes on that ''Miss Claybrook, like
her mentor Ralph Nader, also claimed that air bags were the safest way
to arrest the forward movement of an unbuckled child in a frontal impact.
In fact, an Associated Press photo surfaced recently depicting Mr. Nader
demonstrating an air bag simulator with an unbuckled young girl.''
We now know that it is precisely the unbuckled
occupants, especially infants and young children, who are most likely to
be killed or maimed by a deploying air bag.
''Mr. Nader and Miss Claybrook have yet
to be called to account for their dangerously misleading advocacy,'' says
the Times.
Claybrook and Nader also put forth the
utterly unsubstantiated claim that air bags would save up to 9,000 lives
annually, states the article, although ''No factual evidence was ever given
in support of this gratuitous assertion. It is looked upon with derision
by knowledgeable industry analysts.''
Claybrook's recent, belated apology for
the flood of dangerous falsehoods about air bags she turned loose some
20 years ago is not much comfort to the more than 150 people, many of them
children, who've been killed and the thousands who've been injured by these
government-mandated ''safety'' devices.
''True, air bags have certainly saved lives,''
admits the article, ''But there is no question that they have also killed.
No other safety device required by federal law has such a mixed record
of success.''
The Times editorial concludes; ''How many
people will have to die before the government concedes it made a mistake
by ignoring the engineers and listening instead to know-nothing busybodies
such as Madam Claybrook is anybody's guess.''
More California
Stuff Politically active Cal Bikers broke a moritorium
in the Senate Transportation Committee, and pushed though a veterans license
plate for motorcyclists.
Following months of frenzied lobbying by
ABATE of California and a biker veteran named ''Trash'', a motorcycle license
plate to honor veterans has received an important nod from the Senate Transportation
Committee by a unanimous vote of 9-0. This vote reflects the strength of
the motorcyclists' lobby, as bikers faced an uphill battle in getting their
bill approved due to a self-imposed moratorium on approving any additional
license plates in California.
Although AB1515 had received unanimous
support in all the committee votes in the Assembly, including a unanimous
floor vote to send the bill to the Senate for consideration, it was stonewalled
in the Senate Transportation Committee until motorcyclists and other special
interest groups wanting specialized plates were successful in convincing
committee chairwoman Senator Betty Karnette to lift the ban and allow a
vote.
In addition to creating a special plate
to honor motorcycling veterans, AB1515 was further amended to allow motorcycle
license plates to be issued for any existing car plate.
At this point, it looks like smooth sailing
for the Veterans Motorcycle License Plate bill, which has yet to have a
single vote cast against it. ABATE OF CALIFORNIA
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