MRF Rep Report

As I’m writing this, we are less than a week away from the Heartland STEAM conference in Bismarck, ND. Watch the upcoming newsletters for articles from our attendees on what they learned. This is a great regional conference to get you educated and motivated to stay in the fight for our freedom to ride.

On the heels of that is Bikers in the Beltway, where we will be sending a contingent of constituents to Washington DC to discuss motorcycle related concerns with our federal legislators. Our main topics of discussion this year will be autonomous vehicles and their inability to recognize motorcycles, ethanol mandates, and the right-to-repair act. We will also be thanking all the legislators that stepped up in 2022 and helped foster our success then and moving forward.

Hopefully, you are all signed up for the Legislative Alerts from both ABATE of WI and the MRF. These emails are invaluable when we have an immediate concern when we need ALL members to contact their legislators and make our voices heard. The Calls to Action are extremely simple to complete and are very effective in getting the attention of our legislators.

If you get the email updates from the MRF, you would recently have seen this article, “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) response to the request from Congress, and initiated by the MRF, to provide the agency’s direction regarding protecting all highways users and especially motorcyclists from the perils of autonomous vehicles being driven without the driver’s full attention to traffic was less than stellar. The words of former U.S. Representative David Price from North Carolina may well apply to the recent efforts of the Motorcycle Riders Foundation “… Understand that not every battle can be won on the first try and that politics is a matter of striking a balance between … compromising and finding common ground where you can, and fighting where you must.”

Hopefully, you already read Steve’s article on the front page of this newsletter detailing bills AB141, AB142, SB212, and SB213. The fight to keep combustion engines alive is REAL! According to the New York Times, “The proposed (EPA) rule would…require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032.”

Sign up for the Alerts on the MRF website by going to www.mrf.org and clicking on the Alerts tab. Then Subscribe to MRF Alerts! It’s that simple and the best and easiest way to stay informed.

More, now than ever, stay vigilant, my friends!

Jen Abraham

ABATE of WI

Board of Directors

MRF State Rep