In this post, I attempt to clarify my personal views/positions expressed in one of my previous posts, "Are MSF and This Forum Good For You?"

First, let me say I'm not an "anti-helmet bigot." I wear a full-face helmet. It does an excellent job of keeping insects, debris, and wind out of my face and probably will do a good job of keeping my face and head scratch and hole free when I hit the ground in minor crashes. However, I don't think it will make much difference in preventing fatality when my head hits a hard object in severe crashes. We may never agree on how effective helmets are in reducing head trauma or how detrimental they are in aggravating neck breakage, but I wear one anyway; so let's leave the helmet issue behind.

I also wear leather gloves, leather pants, a leather jacket, and boots when I ride. I believe all of these help prevent road rash when I go down at low to moderate speed. Debating whether or not, when I go down at the speeds I enjoy on the San Francisco Bay Area Freeways, they will provide adequate protection is pointless to me because I am pretty sure that someone will run over me as soon as I fall. I still maintain that leather gloves, leather pants, leather jackets, and boots are probably more effective than helmets in reducing the number and severity of superficial injuries. If every rider wore them, the total medical cost incurred by all minor motorcycle accident victims would probably be lower. What's wrong with mandating their use? Why are only helmets mandated?

Now that we've talked about my position on protective gear, we can talk about my views/positions on MSF and Mr. Davis.

I think what MSF and Mr. Davis teach us is mostly good, especially if techniques suggested are easily executable by most of us. They present their views, and it's up to each individual to evaluate and decide whether to accept them or not.

We've been told motorcycle riding is dangerous, but have we really known how dangerous the activity is? When I figured out and saw that the odds of getting into a motorcycle accident is 1 out of 47 riders in a year (based on the data I found on pages 25 and 39 of Kentucky Traffic Collision Facts for 2000), I was shocked. Until I saw this figure, I had had only a vague feeling that motorcycle riding is dangerous. Now that I've seen the odds, I feel motorcycle riding is a lot more dangerous than most of us have thought. Maybe the odds are low enough for you to accept in exchange for the joy of riding. Only you can decide, but if you think you can lower the odds by learning about riding safety and honing your riding skills, you are kidding yourself. Sure, as your skills improve, the level of dangerous situations you can avoid will get higher. However, there's always something which will be beyond your capability to handle within the limit of your current skill level. This process of improving skills will go on ad infinitum until you get into...you know what I mean.

One major point I want to make is that we got enticed into this dangerous sport because we were somehow led to believe riding motorcycles doesn't have to be as dangerous as we had feared. We started believing that learning about riding safety will lessen the danger of riding to an acceptable level, without being told explicitly how high the risk level has been to start with. We got hooked and we are now addicted because we have been introduced to the joy of riding.

We have fallen victims to the enticing public sentiment conjured up by MSF, gradually but steadily being permeated through society over the years. What they have launched is a subtle but powerful form of brainwashing, and the message coming from them is what we want to hear, so, naturally we tend to accept what they say, something like, "Learn more about riding safety and you will be safer." But some of us will inevitably get into accidents. Learning is fine, but the concern I have in this area is our tendency to develop ill-founded confidence, a false-sense of security, and a false-sense of superiority rather easily. (If you don't understand what kind of mentality I'm talking about, look at the comments left by visitors to Mr. Davis' site. You can view them from the home page. They are frightening.)

Unfortunately all of these things are open for subjective judgment; therefore, I will move onto the biggest concern I have with MSF. I believe MSF is making getting a motorcycle license easier to new riders by providing waivers for the actual skill test. I think the tests given in the Basic Rider Course are easier than the regular skill test given by the Department of Motor Vehicles in California. Let's not get into the details of the Basic Rider Course. I don't need to hear how difficult it is. The shortness of the course alone is enough to convince me that the course is not adequate. Do you really believe that just one day or so of riding a light bike in a closed circuit makes a student competent enough to hop on a powerful sportbike? Theoretically, anybody who passes the course can start riding a Hayabusa right away as his or her first bike. It's insane! Why do they make getting a license easy for young people? (The only way people under the age of 21 in California can get a motorcycle license is by passing the Basic Rider Course. Put differently, if they pass Basic Rider Course test, which I feel is easier than the actual skill test given by the DMV, they get a motorcycle license.) How about issuing just learner's permits to those who pass the course. What is wrong with that?

Let me tell you how difficult it is to get a motorcycle license in Japan. They have 3 levels of license. One allows the holder to ride bikes under 125cc, another one raises the ceiling to 400cc, and the third one allows one to ride bikes of any size. In theory, if one passes a skill test given by a Japanese government agency corresponding to the DMV in the U.S., he or she can get a motorcycle license. However, there's no learner's permit in Japan. Unless one owns or has access to a big private property to practice riding in, he or she has to go to one of the rider schools which offer courses conforming to the government standards. The courses are costly and time consuming. If a Japanese person does not have either of two lesser motorcycle licenses and takes a course to get an unrestricted license, he or she ends up paying about $800-2000, depending on location, and spending a minimum of 31 hours of actual riding at the school. Since the standards restrict the number of hours one can practice riding in 1 day to 2 hours (under normal circumstances), even if you are fortunate enough to be able to go to school everyday, you need at least about 16 days. These schools issue waivers for the skill test if you pass their tests, but most of them charge about $40/hour for any additional training a student may need to get one. Expensive and lengthy, but isn't this more like real training?

You think this is too much? Well, about 4 years ago the Japanese government actually lowered the training standards, and now the Japanese are thankful that they have a reasonably good shot at getting an unrestricted motorcycle license. (I've heard that before the change, there was a guy who couldn't get an unrestricted motorcycle license after 80 attempts.)

But...they have a problem. The Japanese motorcycle manufacturers voluntarily put a ceiling on the maximum power and the attainable top speed for every bike they sell in Japan. The maximum horse power allowed is 100 ps, and even more shocking is the maximum top speed allowed. It's 180 kilometers per hour; that's 111.8 MPH! How exciting!

In the early 1980's 250cc class sportbikes started gaining popularity in Japan. The popularity kept rising as the manufacturers' race to offer more powerful, bigger bikes continued until it peaked in the mid 1980's and then declined rather dramatically. The category was virtually dead by 1989. The fans deserted the category and haven't come back. Today, the sportbike category is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent in Japan. Honda sells a few sportbike models we see here in the U.S. in Japan too, like the CBR954RR. But they are all castrated! The top speed of the CBR954RR as it is sold in the U.S. is about 165 MPH, right? The top speed of the CBR954RR Honda sells in Japan? You guessed it, 111.8 MPH. (Its maximum horse power is not even 100 ps; it's 91 ps at 10,500 rpm.)

Do they even sell bikes such as ZX-12R, Hayabusa, and GSX-R1000 with restricted horse power and top speed in Japan? No way! The manufacturers know there's no fool in Japan who would buy a 111.8 MPH Hayabusa.

Don't you find it curious that the peak of Japan's sportbike boom coincides with the period in which MSF came into existence in the U.S.? This is how the thinking of the Japanese may have gone around that time:

"The total sales of new motorcycles in Japan peaked in 1982 with 3,280,000 units sales and have been declining steadily ever since. The sales of sportbikes may have already peaked in Japan, and if we keep going with this power/speed race, the government will intervene sooner or later. We don't want that. Let's slow down domestically. We can afford the lower sales from the sportbike category here because we have the U.S. market where the situation is still 'anything goes.'

"But we have to lower the fear many non-riders and mothers in the U.S. seem to have towards riding. So, let's create an organization to promote a 'come and try riding...it's not so scary' sentiment in the society to entice more people into riding. We have to do this in a subtle way, but Honda succeeded with their famous 1962 'You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda' ad campaign. We will succeed."

There you have it. This is how you got hooked. But don't blame MSF. They never lied about the danger of riding or the uncertainty of the effectiveness of the motorcycle safety programs they supervise. Page 1 of the California Motorcycle Handbook, 2001 says, "The Motorcycle Safety Foundation, California Highway Patrol (CHP),...all agree that improved licensing, along with quality motorcycle ride education and increased public awareness, has the potential to reduce the number and severity of motorcycle accidents." "...has the potential to reduce..." After over 10 years of operation, this is all they dare to say.

If you have a copy of the Basic Rider Course textbook (actually they call it Student Workbook), browse through its pages. Do you see a section with drawings of various kinds of motorcycles? Read the descriptions for SPORT and STANDARD. Which do you think gets more attention from young people, who are "hormonally driven beyond rational thought"?

This booklet looks more like a sales brochure to me. About half of it is devoted to products available for riders, and the rest to the actual riding techniques/strategies. But isn't most of it common sense?

You still think MSF has helped you lower your odds of getting into accidents. Well, I think they may have increased your chance of being able to avoid dangerous situations. Read their definition of the word, accident, in the glossary section.

A little gray, but at least they don't say it's usually avoidable. You still say MSF can't be a "front" for the Japanese motorcycle industry to get you hooked on riding? Read the last sentence on the back of the front cover.

"MSF is sponsored by the U.S. distributors of BMW, Ducati, Harley-Davidson, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha motorcycles."

Well, the Japanese bike makers have not been the only ones behind MSF. Yeah, other bike makers appreciate your business too. Do you see my point now? No? You still think I'm just deranged? Fine, I've tried my best to present my views. You keep believing in whatever you want to believe in. But do just one more thing for me. Read the message they put on the back cover of the booklet:

(Yeah, keep learning more and more about riding safety, baby, because it gets better and better and better and better...until....)


Thanks for reading...I care about you.



Julian