WELCOME 2023!

by Steve Panten

I hope everyone had a safe holiday season and an opportunity to spend time with family and friends. Another year ends and another begins with new opportunities and clean slates. Let’s start with the clean slate. We finished the year with 80 motorcyclist fatalities which is 34% less than 2021. The past 2 years we saw jumps in fatalities, so this is an improvement. 80 deaths bring us back to the 5-year average that we had before 2020…. if that makes sense. Now we need to work on lowering that number. Fatalities across the state were higher in all groups except for motorcyclists, even pedestrian deaths were up to 70 for the year in the last report that I saw.

While we were able to lower our fatalities last year, for some reason we have a hard time getting below that 80 number. 2023 is a clean slate so let’s try to find another 34% drop. Take care of your brothers and sisters. Look for new marketing efforts by ABATE this year encouraging riding within your skill level and lowering impaired riding crashes.

In January, we will have a new State Legislature sworn in which means our past legislative efforts are wiped clean which makes room for new opportunities. Our Lobby Day is set for MARCH 21, 2023. This is going to be our chance to address our elected officials and express what is important to the motorcyclists in the state. New this year we will be discussing drafting legislation that aligns with something Minnesota drafted to address protecting combustion engines called the Consumer Choice Fuels Act. Although it does not seem like it is going anywhere in Minnesota, I think the motorcyclists in Wisconsin have a strong enough voice to get this drafted. This is going to be a tough fight and it is all going to begin with a strong showing in Madison on March 21st. Please make time out of your busy schedules to help show our representatives that this is important to all of the 525,000 residents in Wisconsin with a motorcycle endorsement on their driver’s license. Watch for more to come on that topic.

Autonomous and self-driving vehicles are probably not going away any time soon. Strange as it may seem, while some companies are driving forward with forcing this technology as a viable means to reduce fatalities, others are questioning whether it is realistic. Developing and testing the software is expensive and requires a company to be all-in on this being the future, but some companies are starting to realize that the technology needed is not yet available. To be successful, manufacturers joined together to share resources to ease that pain for any one company. One of those groups is Ford and Volkswagen. These 2 companies were working together but recently they announced that they are no longer investing resources on developing a driverless technology, but rather focusing on driver-assist technology. It is very interesting for such large companies to stop investing so much into this program just to say, technology is not currently available to make this happen. At Lobby Day we will address the need for the State Department of Transportation to focus on crashes involving these vehicles to determine who had control of the vehicle and what happened that caused the technology to fail. We understand that it will be difficult for them to collect the data they need to be successful, but we are hoping that if enough states pool their resources we can start learning more.

We finished the year strong with a Call to Action from the Motorcycle Riders Foundation to get our members of Congress to sign on to a letter being circulated by Congressman Walberg of Michigan to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regarding self-driving cars and motorcycles. In his letter he is asking NHTSA to respond to 5 questions pertaining to how self-driving technology is handling interaction with motorcycles on the road. We are happy to report that in 4 days our members responded, and we had 4 members of Congress join Representative Walberg. Those 4 included Rep’s Pocan, Kind, Grothman and Fitzgerald. Thank you to everyone that took the time to complete the call to action, it shows that if we are loud enough, we can make a difference. If your representative was not one that I mentioned, a question for them is why they didn’t sign on. Every Congressional Office in the state was sent a request from an ABATE State Officer, John Reblin, plus all the constituents that responded to the call to action. A great question for Rep’s Steil, Gallagher, Tiffany, and Moore next time you see them at an event.

One thing to mention, last month I spoke at a club meeting in Burlington, and they decided to raffle off a knife to raise money for ABATE. They raised $210 just at this one meeting but then the individual that won the knife, auctioned it off with another $50 going to help our mission. I would like to thank the ACOA of SE Wisconsin for recognizing how important our job is for all motorcyclists in the state. Without our hard work and dedication, motorcycling in Wisconsin would look a lot different.

So, the slate is clean, now is our chance to write our opportunities and by the end of the year it will hopefully be filled with our successes. We need to stay engaged and involved. Our legislative agenda is not going to be an easy one. We will need to accept help wherever we can, but first it starts with our members. Thank you for your support and please continue to help us be successful wherever you can. It is all going to start on March 21st. We need a very large showing so be sure to bring your friends and family members that are like minded on issues affecting motorcyclists in the state.