MotoAmerica finally gets it.

[rotor]

I have been watching MOTO AMERICA since their start and I think that every year it is getting better.
Love to see Wayne doing great things for racing in the USA.

Absolutely. They focused so much on the technical side of things for the first few years; now it's time to focus on selling the sport to the public. Read this recently:



[url=https://www.ridersdomain.com/magazine/motorcycle-features/thinking-outside-the-pit-box-a-new-year-a-new-approach/]Thinking Outside the (Pit) Box

I will freely admit that I'm quite neutral on the issue of motorcycle racing as a spectator sport.

I am however convinced that popularity (or lack thereof) of motorcycle racing has little to do with the sliding interest in motorcycle riding and motorcycle sales. Racing is (or is, but not sufficiently) interesting to those that already ride, but I don't see how watching races would entice someone to learn to ride and buy a motorcycle.

What (and I've stated this before on this forum) is missing in US (and probably in Britain, where the article originates) is the wide use of motorcycles for transportation. Yet there is no real effort on the part of manufacturers to return this market segment to any level of health - primarily in North America (*), but to some extent in western Europe too.

So, with apology, let me (again) suggest that legalizing lane splitting continent-wide is a very sensible first step of that effort.

Next (or rather, at the same time) would be developing better and at the same time less costly ways to obtain not only the motorcycle class license but the level of skill more in tune with today's transportation infrastructure conditions. The skill level required of new licensee in most North American jurisdictions is adequate for leisurely cruising country roads, but it is completely inadequate to send a young rider in suburban commuter traffic.

(*) 2/3rds of Canada is forgiven on account of climate

Ain’t that the truth? In Australia, regulators, in their obsession with safety, are making it harder and harder to get a motorcycle licence. Some of the changes—for example, requirements for practical training and a more sophisticated on road test—are sensible. However, in Queensland a person is now required to have held at least a provisional licence for ‘another class’ of vehicle (read car) for at least 12 months before they can get any form of licence to ride a motorcycle. How does a young person with limited resources now get access to a much cheaper form of transport than a car, particularly given how onerous it is to get the car licence in the first place.

The world’s gone mad.

The thinking there is not unusual for the current generation of "western regulators": the simplest thing to improve statistics is to reduce the number of participants, which will reduce the number of accidents. That they have not done anything to reduce (in this case) the number of accidents per kilometer traveled is to them of no particular consequence.