Is Motorcycling As We Know It In Jeopardy?

by Steve Panten

This was not a normal Christmas and New Year season, but I hope everyone stayed safe, healthy, and still got to visit with family and old friends. Normally this time of year is all about gatherings and spending time together, and I know how difficult that was this year. Take a few minutes to reach out to family. Talk to your friends. Enjoy whatever opportunity that you have to visit with each other.

ABATE of Wisconsin is my second family. I treasure the time that I get to spend with ABATE members. Whether we are at an event or meeting, I know that I am with like-minded people who share at least one common interest. Motorcycles. We may not agree on everything, and we do not have to. I am not trying to change your opinion about what motorcycle to drive, or how to think and what to believe, but our common interest is ABATE’s mission statement. Anytime I attend a meeting, or do a presentation, I remember that we may not all agree about certain things, but we all have the passion for protecting motorcyclists’ rights.

Protecting motorcyclists’ rights starts with ABATE’s Biker Day at the Capitol. Especially after an election, it is very important for us to get to Madison and Washington DC early in the year to present our Legislative Agenda to our elected officials. Like every election year, we have new representatives in Madison that we need to introduce ourselves to, and we have old friends returning that we need to connect with.

This year is going to be all about protecting motorcycles and motorcycling. With autonomous and driverless vehicles being pushed without regulation and control, the end of motorcycling as we know it may not be far away. I know this seems impossible, but we have been paying attention to how this is moving forward for a few years now and it is troubling.

Let’s go back a few years when we attended the “Future of Transportation in Wisconsin” conference that the DOT put on. At this conference they discussed the future of autonomous vehicles, truck platooning, bicycling, pedestrians, rail transportation and ships. Never once mentioning motorcycles until an attendee asked what the future of motorcycling looks like. Their response was that we will have to get back to us on that.

Fast forward to Governor Walker’s steering committee on autonomous vehicles that Ric Mellon sat on. Ric said that it was a struggle to get them to discuss how this technology would affect motorcycling and then we discovered the truth. A car operating in autonomous mode ran over an off-duty police officer’s motorcycle on an off ramp in Arizona. Luckily, he saw it coming and was able to protect himself, but the motorcycle got run over.

Now ABATE’s IT guy, Damon Payne, is on an advisory committee for the Governor’s Office discussing how to implement autonomous vehicles on Wisconsin’s roads. In his first meeting Damon asked the Representative from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) if motorcycles are considered when they are doing their studies. His response was “motorcycles are considered but not prioritized”. What? We are a legal road user and yet we are not a priority when it comes to how autonomous or driverless cars “see” the road. Not scary enough?

The Governor of California signed an Executive Order banning the sale of all new combustion engine vehicles by 2035. What that means is that all new vehicles will need to be electric. That may not seem bad because we will still be able to keep our older gasoline powered motorcycles…. for now. The next step will be banning the sale of gasoline products or parts needed to keep our motorcycles on the road.

I know that some of you are thinking, that’s California, it will not stick, and it won’t happen here. We will have to look at what is happening around the world. Sweden is considering a ban like what California has, Quebec already has a ban on the sale of combustion engines by 2035 and other countries do not allow motorcycles on highways or are banned all together. It’s coming folks, and we need to work together to protect motorcycling in Wisconsin.

Did you happen to watch The Last Motorcycle on Earth which is available on Amazon Prime? It was a pretty good show that really makes you think. Before I watched it, I did some research and something that was said is “the last person to need a driver’s license in this country has already been born”. Interesting to think that in 16 years, technology and the transportation system will be set up so that you won’t need a driver’s license. People will be relying on some form of public transportation or will just punch in a destination and your vehicle will get you there.

The FCC recently decided to allow cable companies to use part of the spectrum previously reserved for auto manufacturers to develop a system in which vehicles would be able to communicate with each other. This decision means that manufacturers will have to rely on a cellular spectrum which is very unreliable and inconsistent. With this decision, and the push to implement autonomous vehicles into the mainstream, safety is being pushed aside.

While this is going on, auto manufacturers and software developers are still allowed to self-police what success really is. We need to address the need for transparency and push for regulations on how and which information needs to be made public. Can these vehicles interact with motorcycles in the real world? If so, show us the proof. Let us witness how this interaction works, because we have seen how it doesn’t.

All this starts with Biker Day at the Capitol on March 11th, 2021. I know this is stuff that is hard to grasp so it’s hard to get excited about, but it is our future that is in jeopardy. With our high number of fatalities this year, and the push for cleaner vehicles, we are an easy target for them to show success. It is easy for them to say fatalities are reduced if we are off the road and not killing ourselves. It is time to fight for something that we never thought we would see coming. When ABATE of Wisconsin was formed back in 1974, I am sure that our founders never thought this is something we would need to fight, but our future now depends on it.

That’s it.

Steve