Rising Gas Prices – Will It Affect Your Freedom To Ride?

Now that gas prices are racing toward the $100/barrel mark, the AAA has announced that if this continues, we can have prices at four dollars a gallon by next summer!

That means more people looking to find a way to conserve gas…making motorcycles an obvious alternative.

My concern is that I see a potential bleak future in this that can potentially put our rights as motorcyclists in jeopardy.

So…join me as I put on my tin foil hat and explain these concerns.

Let’s say that there is an increase in motorcycle sales due to the high cost of fuel. Let’s make it a 25% increase for argument’s sake. How many of these people will be taking safety courses? How much will be the increase in injuries/fatalities?

In my experience, the various groups pushing for national helmet laws, etc. talk of the increasing number of injuries & fatalities amongst motorcyclists but they don’t factor (or maybe admit) that the numbers of riders is also increasing! So…what is the real change (if any) on fatalities?

So imagine in the next two to five years that there is an increase in motorcycle related fatalities…so much so that a national motorcycle safety law is implemented to save people from themselves. Even if there is evidence that shows there is a corroborating increase in motorcycle sales and that the “increase in injuries” is actually a diminished percentage to the amount of new riders on the road!

There are some of you out there going “That Two Tone is whacked!” that’s not going to happen. To you let me tell you another story…..

Seatbelts. You may not remember, but there was a time when seatbelt use was supposed to be covered under “secondary enforcement” (that is that this could not be the main reason for stopping the violator), but now what you see on TV and so forth is “Click it…or ticket.”

You’ve most likely heard the arguments for seatbelt laws, each a longer stretch than the last. If you don’t accept the argument that it’s good for you to be punished for not looking out for your own health, there’s always the argument that people who don’t wear seatbelts end up splattered on the asphalt and the government has to spend everyone else’s money scraping them up (basically the costs of one government job justifying the costs of another – TRY THAT ARGUMENT ANYWHERE ELSE). Using that line of reasoning, we can extended the argument to every action that even occasionally carries a health risk as long as the government cleans up any kind of mess.

Stop and consider the implications of that…is any of this still appealing?

Lastly, we must also remember that this vigilant enforcement comes with a cost. The attention of law enforcement can only be divided so many ways, and time spent searching for and punishing violation of seatbelt laws is time not spent protecting roads from people who are actually endangering other drivers.

Oh…when did we vote to increase the level of offense?

As our legislators increase the level of offense for existing safety laws, we continue to allow them the ability to slowly diminish our rights as citizens. While I am for safety, education (and the resources to train people) is a much smarter method than having law enforcement fine.

Trying to legislate my habits should never be the goal of government….now or EVER!

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November 14, 2007 · Filed Under General

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