Slowly Chipping Away at Your Freedoms

by John Reblin

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s, and hopefully you were able to spend it with family and friends.

I had a couple of minutes and was cruising through (trying not to raise my blood pressure) my social media account. I have various groups that I follow, but a lot of them deal with vintage trucks, muscle cars and motorcycles. How can you go wrong with this, right? It shouldn’t turn into anything political. What I found was “posts” about things coming down the freeway affecting what we ride and how safe we will be on the road.

While there, I saw a person had posted that he was having a hard time finding a dealer that would work on his 1990 era Harley Davidson and he was not sure what to do. There were many posts to take it to the independent shop and stop supporting the Dealership. I buy my parts, if repairing or replacing on my own, at the dealer but I also try to support the independent servicer for those projects where time or skill is lacking. Or what if the part is not being produced by the manufacturer? This started me to think of conversations I had with my friend about his attempts to find a new swing arm for his early 2000 era HD that had cracked. He ended up having to weld it. I did not check to see if there was anything aftermarket available, but it was a no go from the manufacturer.

From there I saw our release, along with other SMRO’s, about autonomous vehicles with a message concerning broadband. The FCC is selling part of the broadband spectrum that is to be used by the new technology available in autos as part of vehicle-to-vehicle communication. For 20 years this part of the spectrum was reserved for vehicle safety and communication. It ended up being the basis for autonomous vehicle technology. Now, it appears this portion of the spectrum is going to the cable and communication companies, with a possibility of the self-driving cars using cell phone style technology to assist. I am not sure how your cell phone works in some of these areas with hills, trees, and lack of cell towers, but I would hate to see someone use an autonomous vehicle in the area around our land and me riding my motorcycle nearby the vehicle.

Doris Weber found an interesting article that she shared with me. Over in Europe, FEMA (the MRF of the European countries) is looking at End of Life laws that were originally created for their motor vehicles where old cars are collected, good parts and materials recycled, and the remains destroyed as thy come to the end of their useful life. Motorcycles are exempt from this, allowing the owners to tear down the bike and reuse or sell the good parts to others, keeping other motorcycles working in a responsible manner. But now the EU is looking at changing the law to include motorcycles. So that shovelhead that I have, or the guy with the broken swing arm, could be looking at turning their motorcycle in for dismantle and disposal.

As we have seen in the past, things that start overseas have a good chance of making their way to this country. Conversations about those countries starting to ban gasoline motors in vehicles in the future, has California passing a law banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, only allowing those that are already on the road to remain. For how long? Well, depends on the parts available right? I heard on the news last week that the incoming presidential administration is considering something similar as a regulation.

We discussed at the last BOD meeting that ABATE of Michigan posted on their website that motorcyclists in Michigan are having an issue under our no-fault law. If a motorcyclist is involved in an accident with a motor vehicle, the motorcyclist is entitled to get his/her medical expenses, wage loss, attendant care, household chores and mileage paid by the insurer of the owner or operator of the motor vehicle involved in the accident. As our law currently stands, medical expenses and attendant care are unlimited and wage loss and household chores are payable for 3 years. In a proposed bill, insurance companies will be allowed to offer their insureds a choice of capping benefits at $250,000.00, $500,000.00 or opting to keep unlimited medical and attendant care and wage loss and household chores for 3 years, as the law currently allows. Herein lies the great danger to motorcyclists. Under the proposed bill, if a motorcyclist is hit by a motor vehicle, the motorcyclist will be subject to the cap that the owner/operator of the motor vehicle has chosen for themselves. IE, if the owner/operator of the motor vehicle chose to cap benefits at $250,000.00 on their policy then that the injured motorcyclist is bound by that cap too, even though the motorcyclist did not choose this cap and even though the motorcyclist may have more than $250,000.00 in medical bills! This is a hammer to motorcyclists, and unfairly allows an insurance company to cap motorcyclist’s benefits even though the motorcyclist had no say whatsoever in choosing the cap!

Towards the end of this all information, I received notification that “The Last Motorcycle” was released on Amazon Prime. So, I thought why not take a look and see what this movie was about. It took issues that we are talking about here and showed what the results of some of these actions would be like down the road for motorcycling. It could be reality, or it could be fiction, but it is an interesting take of what the future could hold. If it is available on any of your platforms, take a look, think about it, and decide if this is the future we want.

See you at Biker Day at the Capitol, March 11th. Call or write your legislators if you feel the same way I do. Let them know that they need to slow down on some of this new technology and see if this is the direction Wisconsin wants to go. I think most of us that ride feel that it isn’t. If we all work together, we can prevent any and all of this coming our way.

John