The Beaver State is set to consider a law on lane sharing in 2021, as Oregon Senate Bill 574 aims to legalize the practice, with a number of caveats coming from the proposed law.
On December 17th, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided with armed tactical agents the offices of Ducati North America in Mountain View, California.
Though only a handful of employees were in the Mountain View office because of COVID restrictions during the time of the raid, it is being reported that roughly 30 agents stormed the building with a search warrant in hand.
An account of this happening was posted by a Ducati North America employee to the Bay Area Riders Forum, with RoadRacing World subsequently publishing the news.
Andrea Iannone has lost his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against his suspension for failing a drug test.
The CAS ruled that Iannone had failed to prove that he had ingested drostanolone, the banned substance that had appeared in the urine sample taken from him after the Sepang race, as a result of eating contaminated meat.
Both Iannone and the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) had appealed against the 18-month suspension imposed by the FIM’s International Disciplinary Court (CDI).
You may have already seen the news from yesterday, where California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that will require all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the Golden State to be zero-emission vehicles by the year 2035.
The order also goes on to say that the state will phase out all new medium and heavy-duty trucks that are not zero-emissions by the year 2045, thus setting up the state to push electric vehicles onto its roadways in a big way.
There is a third provision in this executive order though, and it is getting far less attention than the other two, but it will greatly impact the motorcycle industry.
This is because Gov. Newsom’s executive order also says that by 2035 California will ban the sale of all new off-road vehicles that are not zero-emissions, where feasible.
Effectively, California has just set an expiration date on the sale of new dirt bikes, side-by-sides, and ATVs within its borders.
COMOTO the parent company to RevZilla, Cycle Gear, J&P Cycles has just settled a dispute with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for the alleged selling of non-exempted add-on or modified motorcycle parts in California.
In total, COMOTO will pay $1,937,500 to resolve the alleged violations, in a mixture of fines to CARB and payments for environmental projects that benefit the community.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has finally announced that they will be hearing the appeal of Andrea Iannone against his doping ban of 18 months, imposed by the FIM International Disciplinary Court at the end of March.
However, in a surprise move, the CAS also announced they will be hearing an appeal against the leniency of the ban from WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, who want the full four-year ban reinstated.
At the heart of the case is the doping test Andrea Iannone failed after the race in Sepang, in November 2019. Traces of drostanolone, a banned anabolic-androgenic steroid, used mainly for weight loss, was found in that urine sample.
As a non-specified substance, drostanolone use carries an automatic four-year ban under the WADA code, which the FIM signs up to and incorporates.
For our friends across the pond, this year and next were to be critical years for the motorcycle industry, as the first stage of the Euro 5 homologation requirements was to come online – first in 2020 for brand new motorcycle models, and then in 2021 for existing motorcycle models.
This first stage of the Euro 5 requirement for motorcycles affects primarily the noise emissions from the vehicle, and it will be several years before motorcycles sold in Europe will have to adhere to the full Euro 5 package, which is quite stringent.
The delay on the full Euro 5 implementation comes over concerns about the costs and R&D associated with meeting emission targets, but even this first stage is proving to be difficult for OEMs to implement, and the reason for that is because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The Trump administration is about to take on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in a battle for the rights to set emission standards.
The first blows in this showdown have already begun, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) sending a letter to the CARB saying that the organization had violated federal law by making an agreement with several automobile manufacturers on higher emission standards
The Trump administration doesn’t seem to end things there though, with the expectation the President will announce plans as early as today to do away with California’s emissions waiver from the Clean Air Act.
While it seems like politics as usual and centered around the auto industry, such a move will have huge implications for motorcycle manufacturers.
Two months ago we wrote to you about efforts underway to legalize basic lane-splitting in Oregon. While the bill has considerable support in the Oregon State Legislature, HB2314 is stuck in the joint transportation committee.
In order to get HB2314 the vote that it deserves, the motorcycling public of the Pacific Northwest needs to reach out to the members of the committee leadership as well as Speaker of the House Tina Kotek.
Thankfully, the folks behind the Oregonian lane-splitting bill have made it very easy for us to reach our representatives, so that they can see the support the motorcycle community has for this bill.
Call it a win for motorists, as the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that in certain circumstances the marking of tires on parked vehicles with chalk amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure.
As our American readers should all know, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is protected by the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution, and here the 6th Circuit ruled in favor of an interesting argument to find that chalk marks on parked vehicles rising to this level of thinking.
The crux of the story centers around the town of Saginaw, Michigan, which has been using tire chalk to measure the time a vehicle is parked in designated parking zones.
Mark this as a win for those in favor of seeing lane-splitting becoming legal in the United States as the State of Utah has just passed a law that makes it legal to filter lanes in the Beehive State.
Signed into law on March 21st, the law (HB 149) doesn’t provide for full-out lane-splitting in Utah, but it does make it legal for a motorcyclist to filter through traffic when the automobile traffic is stopped and where the speed limit is 45 mph or slower.
This effectively means that lane-splitting won’t be legal for Utah riders on the freeway, and the pragmatic result of the bill is that it will allow motorcyclists to move through stopped urban traffic during rush hour commutes.