Head Tremble - For Our Own Good?

How much will do? When does a logical person look at what's available in motorcycle showrooms and say, “Okay, that’s enough for me.” Or even more paternalistically, that’s enough for you, too. What's too much? Will there be too much?

A couple of bikes that are too dangerous to ride. I know this to be true. We had a long-term loaner Buell once, an S2-T, it damaged one of the welds that comprised its right pseudo clip-on club. It had been one hard countersteer or braking maneuver from no more having the right clip-on. Bicycles are hard to steer without pubs. Buell experienced issued a remember but ours experienced slipped through the remember breaks somehow. That bicycle was too dangerous to trip.

Kenny Roberts, Sr. once received the Indy Mile aboard a TZ750-structured dirt-track bicycle that Kel Carruthers and a bunch of diabolical people from Yamaha’s Diabolical Section had constructed for him. It was, to listen to him inform the tale, half the weight and the horsepower of the competition twice. He famously announced post-race that they didn’t pay him enough to trip that thing. The AMA prohibited that bike from competition subsequently. That bike was too dangerous to trip.

Okay, fair enough, bikes subject to NHTSA recalls to correct a defect that could put you on your mind are too dangerous to ride. So is any motorbike that Yamaha cannot pay Kenny Roberts, Sr. enough to trip. But how about the rest?

A two-part interview of KTM’s president and CEO, Stefan Pierer, by Alan Cathcart in Cycle News, inadvertently broached this issue; the response from Mr. Pierer got my attention.

“But let’s be honest,” said Pierer, “if your Superbike is reaching 200 horsepower or even more, it’s impossible to argue it belongs on the street. It really doesn’t, anymore … As soon as the RC16 is available for customers we will stop with the RC8. The design (of the RC8) is outstanding. I'd say it’s still condition of the artwork, and there is nothing else like it. It’s a vintage Superbike. But with the upsurge in safety concerns, I’m scared bikes such as this don’t belong on the street, only on a closed course.”

 

Convinced that I have to have misunderstood what I acquired just read, I went back and read it again. Cathcart was asking Pierer about KTM’s future plans, Pierer indicated KTM’s desire to compete in MotoGP, and he has concerns about the bureaucrats in Brussels in his role as a chief executive in the ACEM - think Euro-version of our Motorbike Industry Council here stateside. Pierer cites the probability of an EU-wide bike ban. The RC8 will be phased out to be changed by what they are phoning an RC16. The RC16 will never be homologated for the street. Why?

“No, because we at KTM believe a sport bike with such performance doesn’t have any place on the general public roads,” Pierer explained.

I used to be taken by that declaration aback; I've heard and read similar sentiments before, albeit from much different sources. The message didn't shock me, the messenger did. The chief executive and CEO of a major motorcycle manufacturer just conceded the wrongheaded rationale of not only the pointyheads in Brussels that could prefer to ban bicycles from Western european tarmac, but also of all the “safety” zealots here stateside that have tried to restrict or eliminate “race-design motorcycles” from public roadways. That’s a remarkable concession for a placed industry insider to make highly, and an initial to my knowledge.

It is interesting on several fronts, not minimal of which is that Pierer’s claims echo a few of the same language used by Senator John Danforth in explaining why he introduced his legislation, “The Motorbike Safety Action of 1987.” In his intro of the costs, Danforth explained his concerns to the U.S Senate and the American people in an extended printed statement;

‘“Mr. President, in 1984, the Japanese began offering what can only just be described as “killer motorcycles” in this country. These are race bikes which were developed for use on the monitor but they are being driven on our roads … Top rates of speed for some of these bikes can range up to 162 mph … the marketing of these killer cycles is a lesson in corporate irresponsibility.”’

Just a little over 30 years Pierer’s words echo the Senator’s sentiments later.

Senator Danforth didn’t emerge from some sort of mystical eyesight that compelled him to opportunity forth and propose eliminating performance bikes. The driving drive behind the bill’s intro came in the form of the Insurance Institute for Highway Basic safety (IIHS), a business that represents and advances the interests of its people, the insurance industry namely.

The IIHS has perennially campaigned to have performance bicycles eliminated from the marketplace, and it produced a guide because of its account, the insurance companies, to use in establishing blacklists of certain bicycles that, in their view, the insurance companies should no more offer to insure. Having failed to eliminate the bicycles, I suppose, the next best thing from the IIHS’ viewpoint was to remove the insurance coverage for them. The rationale was not difficult; no insurance plan leads to no bicycle loans being secured against reduction, and fewer loans means fewer powerful bikes on the highway, roughly their thinking went.

The IIHS was hoist alone petard when its own “study”, which was not peer reviewed, was debunked. non-e other than USC’s Dr. Hugh “Harry” Harm, the lead researcher in the landmark, “Harm Report,” was one of the principle critics of the IIHS study’s technique at that time.

Senator Danforth’s legislation was stillborn, and regardless of the best initiatives of the IIHS, its campaign to remove performance bikes has not been successful to time. That is an issue that appears to surface perennially and is likely to continue to achieve this. Particularly now, as the global world gets smaller in a global market that ties our fates closer together, we have not only U.S concerns to take account of, but the EU as well also.

Which brings us back to Mr. Pierer. He's certainly a thoughtful man and a good businessman, and KTM is doing very well and processing some world-class bikes. He has legitimate concerns about the near future with an vision on Brussels and any forthcoming European union regulations that could affect KTM and their customers. All this begs the relevant question, how much will do? And who, if anybody is going to place the brakes on? And should they?

 

 

“…we at KTM think that a sport bike with such performance doesn’t have anyplace on the public roads.”

If Senator Danforth was concerned with sport bicycles in the 1980s that could top out at 162 mph, I can only imagine what his modern day counterpart would be like today - apoplectic maybe. While performance criteria have continued to rise, performance numbers only are not the sole way of measuring the “protection” of any motorcycle. We have observed other advancements as well, everything from the rise of track times producing more experienced riders, more advanced riding gear to safeguard the overzealous, and most critically maybe, the introduction of a whole host of digital rider aids to keep errant pilots upright. The increasing prevalence of everything from start control to bank-sensitive Ab muscles and an option in engine maps to take into account weather and riding conditions results in what, I believe, are arguably the safest bikes this world has ever seen.

Inform me what in your estimation is more threatening: a 1972 Kawasaki H2 Mach IV shod with an individual front side disc, a hinged body, and wheels chiseled from granite? Or the latest iteration, a 2015 Kawasaki Ninja H2 with well over twice the hp and enough new age technology to account for each ham-fisted move under power or brakes, or heeled over upright, wet or dry, that mankind can conceive?

A moped is a potentially lethal object in the hands of the irreconcilably idiotic - that’s confirmed - but a smart rider understands the throttle moves both ways. For each and every performance progress evident in today’s bicycles, rider protection has rapidly advanced as well, and it is manufactured into a lot of today’s machines.

Underneath line from my knothole is this: Full-tilt big-bore sportbikes are just as safe, or unsafe, as the individual piloting them. I’m willing to concede that exercising top-shelf sportbikes to anything within their potential on public roads is practically impossible for most mere mortals in virtually all conditions. Not merely would it not be unwise to take action, it could also be damn near impossible. Track days are best for that type of WFO exercise.

However, I think we, as riders, need to be careful in lending credence to any claim that such-and-such bikes do not belong on public roads predicated on only public perception or concerns of future regulations decreasing the pike. The arguments that propped up Danforth’s “killer motorcycle” bill back in the ’80s, and the same old exhausted tune trotted out by the IIHS that promulgated insurance blacklists, were specious back then, and remain without merit today.

Ride hard, be safe, look where you want to go…