Help Support Insightful and Independent Reporting
I’m a big fan of anyone who tries to do something different in the motorcycle industry, especially when it comes to media and reporting. MOTO eMAG has been focusing on insightful reporting and editorials for about four years now. The publication has had over 84 issues come out during that time. The issues are packed with interesting stories you’ll rarely find elsewhere.
It’s not free, however, to provide that kind of publication to the world, and now MOTO eMAG is seeking some help from readers and enthusiasts this holiday season by running its first-ever fundraiser on Fundly. At the time of this writing, 49 days remain to donate to this good cause.
Just as Web Bike World has its important line of coverage, MOTO eMAG also is an important voice in the motorcycle industry. The sent-by-email electronic magazine doesn’t rely on traditional digital advertising to support its reporting. This allows for the publication’s pages to be free of many of the advertisements you see online. It’s an intimate and interesting experience reading the publication, and one I would like to see continue.
At this year’s AIMExpo, the Motorcycle Industry Council discussed the need for all those in the motorcycle industry to support one another as the industry progresses and changes. In the spirit of that, I’d like to encourage you to consider supporting the publication. You can donate by clicking here.
I have seen a staggering reduction in the number of bikes in the last 2 years on the nearby riding roads in the highest-population GTA/Niagara Peninsula area of Ontario Canada. Used to be it didn’t matter what sunny day of the week one rode through Port Dover (of Friday the 13th (F13) fame), there were dozens bikes both parked in town and moving along the winding, scenic lakeshore roads. Now that number is in the handfuls parked and maybe 25% on the roads than a few years ago. As an aside, warm F13 days still attract large crowds, but there won’t be any of those until August 2021 and the next warm ones after that are May 2022 and June 2025!!! Past F13s often saw rider attendance easily in the 50,000+ range… that’s about 1/4 of the plated/insured bikes in Ontario! Port Dover, even in no-F13-years was a very busy motorcycle destination, but as the boomers age-out, there are few younger riders to fill the ranks.
I disagree with Moto eMag that Vision Zero (VZ) is having negligible impact on motorcycling in developed economies. The VZ claim is to ACTUALLY reduce bicycle and pedestrian fatalities to zero. Impractical, no matter how it is couched. In pursuit of this “goal”, public transit and autonomous electric vehicles (AVs) will increasingly be given primary access to all roads. Petro-vehicles and driver-controlled vehicles will increasingly be eliminated or made onerously expensive and responsible for any vehicle collisions and bike/ped injuries/deaths. Wonder why Canadian cities are building surface Light Rail Transit, setting urban transport back 100 years? Because autonomous vehicles can more easily be designed/programmed (LOWER COST) to avoid slow-moving rail-vehicles and many LRT schemes require dedicated, LRT-only rights-of-way.
Old formula Easy Rider and “you meet the nicest people” efforts are likely to fail where the media landscape is now largely inaccessible to the motorcycle industry. Disney showed Honda ads on TV… see that happening anytime soon? NOT!
Sadly, the golden age of personal vehicle transportation is past, and “everyone knows they are dangerous” motorcycles will be the first segment to be thrown on the Vision Zero safetycrat-controlled funeral pyre.
I’ll ride until health or death stops me. But at age 66 that horizon is close enough I probably won’t be directly affected… unless I get run over by a Tesla on autopilot.
How can gasoline-powered motorcycles even fit into the VZ, autonomous vehicle scheme? Simple answer is they can’t and there will never be fully practical (range, performance the same as gas bikes) autonomous/electric motorcycles.
The corporate-controlled media will NEVER allow mainstream motorcycle-friendly movies, TV or even news stories. It seems the non-Harley motorcycle manufacturers are simply going to take advantage of the developing markets where VZ and AVs are not likely to be predominant in Asian, South American and African markets for decades or longer.
I think North America and Europe will bear the brunt of the expanding push to “make roads safe for autonomous vehicles”, the REAL Vision Zero agenda. Motorcycles are already being priced out of the Canadian market, not by purchase/maintenance costs, but by exorbitant insurance premiums, ever-stricter licensing requirements and performance bike blacklists.