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Danny Eslick Suspended from Daytona 200 After Arrest

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Danny Eslick will not be racing in the 2016 Daytona 200, as he has been charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, a felony of the third degree in Volusia County.

The events leading to Eslick’s arrest transpired around 11:46pm on Monday, March 7th, in Daytona Beach, Florida and during the Daytona Bike Week festivities.

In response to Eslick’s arrest, the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) and the American Sportbike Racing Association (ASRA) have suspended Eslick from this weekend’s race, after consulting with the Daytona International Speedway.

The AMA has levied an additional penalty against Eslick, saying that he will continue to be suspended from all AMA-sanctioned events until the case with the Volusia County Clerk of Circuit Court is resolved. Once resolved, the AMA may release the suspension, or take further punitive actions against Eslick.

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News

AMA Supports RPM Act – Fighting EPA Regulation

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We are finally seeing some movement from the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in regards to the EPA’s proposed regulations against converting street vehicles for racing purposes and the sale of aftermarket “race use only” parts.

Today, the AMA published a press release detailing much of the same information we brought you yesterday about the Recognizing the Protection of Motorsports Act of 2016 – better known as the RPM Act.

In its press release, the AMA says that it supports the efforts being made in Congress, and that the motorcycle lobbying group is also working with SEMA to keep EPA regulations for vehicles used in competition as they currently stand.

The AMA also says that its focus is to have language in the RPM Act that would specifically exempt competition motorcycles from EPA regulation, a move that would ensure that MotoAmerica and other race series in the US would continue to operate unrestricted.

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Racing

AMA Sanctions the 2016 Daytona 200

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For a long time, the Daytona 200 was the USA’s premier road racing event, garnering attention around the world. Over time though, the prestige of the race has waned away, and with DMG handing over AMA Pro Road Racing to MotoAmerica, the race’s stature has come under question.

For 2016 though, the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) has given the Daytona 200 its blessing, sanctioning this year’s running of the race.

Officially put on by the American Sportbike Racing Association, the Daytona 200 was little more than a club race when it ran last year. This is due to a variety of factors, one of which was the lack of FIM sanctioning, which only the AMA can grant.

Getting the AMA sanction now means that racers from all over the world, who carry an FIM license, can now compete in the Daytona 200. This means that star racers from Europe and Asia can come to America during bike week and compete on Daytona’s banked walls.

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News

Injuries Soar After Michigan Helmet Law Repeal

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The link between helmet laws and motorcyclists fatalities may seem intuitive and obvious, but now because of a study published in the American Journal of Surgery we have scientific proof that helmets save lives.

The study focuses around Michigan, which repealed its mandatory helmet law (thanks to help from the AMA) in April 2012, and has since had three riding seasons with a greatly reduce helmet-wearing requirement.

After the repeal, motorcyclists in Michigan can now ride without a helmet if they are over 21-years-old, have had their license for at least two years, and have at least $20,000 in additional medical insurance coverage.

Postulating that legislatures made a mistake in that repeal, the basic conclusions from the study are that the state has seen an increase in injury severity for motorcycles, a higher in-patient mortality for motorcyclists, and worse neurological damage for motorcyclists.

While those are all painful logical results, the numbers paint an even more grim picture.

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News

US Congress Passes Favorable Laws for Motorcyclists

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Don’t say that the 114th US Congress hasn’t done anything for you, as the American Motorcyclists Association (AMA) is happy to report that our legislature has passed a $305 billion highway bill – The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act – which has a number of favorable provisions for motorcyclists.

The big wins come in the form of funding for recreational off-road trails, and the prohibition against motorcycle-only checkpoints, two growing concerns that the AMA has been involved in fighting.

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Podcast

Two Enthusiasts Podcast – Episode 12 – Possibly Political

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Episode 12 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast finds us going down the dark road of talking about politics at the dinner table. Accordingly, Quentin and I have a wandering conversation in the show, which touches on lane-splitting, helmet laws, ABATE, the AMA, and even guns.

The conversation makes some interesting comparisons to other enthusiast niches and markets, and touches deeply on the political landscape within the motorcycle industry. We think the show is pretty interesting, and it is sure to fuel some conversations with you and your moto-buddies.

As always, you can listen to the show via the embedded SoundCloud player, after the jump, or you can find the show on iTunes (please leave a review) or this RSS feed. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. Enjoy the show!

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News

UC Berkeley Study Shows Lane-Splitting to Be Safe

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The University of California Berkeley has finished its study of lane-splitting in California, and the results are encouraging for lane-splitting proponents.

Researchers, led by Dr. Thomas Rice of the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC), reviewed nearly 6,000 motorcycle-involved traffic collisions between June 2012 and August 2013, including 997 in which the riders were splitting lanes at the time of the crash.

The big takeaway from this research is that when done reasonably, lane-splitting is just as safe as riding a motorcycle. As such, one of the more important insights found by Rice and his team was that motorcyclists can travel up to 15 mph faster than the flow of traffic with no statistical increase in crashing.

This study will be important for shaping the conversation about lane-splitting, not only in California, but throughout the entire United States. It’s no coincidence then that California’s current attempt to codify lane-splitting mirrors these findings from UC Berkeley.

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News

April Fools: IRS Makes Helmets Tax Deductible on 2014 Return

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If you’ve already filed your 2014 tax return, you might want to make an addendum before April 15th, as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made several last-minute exemption to the US Tax Code, one of which allows motorcyclists to claim up to $500 on a new helmet purchase as tax deductible.

The move comes about after a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study that suggested billions of dollars could be saved if all motorcyclists wore helmets.

Citing the efforts of groups like the  American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) whose anti-helmet political agenda has resonated the most with the same anti-tax libertarians who routinely fail to pay federal income taxes, the IRS has finally decided to fight fire with fire, and believes it has effectively found a way to bring a non-compliant tax group in line with the law.

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News

Motorcycle Fatalities Dropped 7% for 2013

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According to a preliminary report by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), motorcycle fatalities dropped 7% for 2013. The drop is the second time in five years that fatalities on a motorcycle have decreased (the last drop was in 2009), with 4,610 motorcyclists dying last year, compared to the 4,957 in 2012.

The report by the GHSA is based off the first nine months of 2013, and shows that fatalities dropped in 35 states (along with the District of Columbia), increased in 13 states, and remained the same in 2 states.

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News

EPA Admits Ethanol Damages Engines

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Since Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a means to “combat our growing energy problems” and “reduce our independence on oil”, the debate over how safe ethanol additives really are has raged on.

As you may know, the Act lead the introduction of E10 (gasoline with 10% ethanol), which vehicle owners have been claiming causes serious damage to engines, such as damaged catalytic converters, improper combustion, and component deterioration.

While proponents of ethanol claim that it is a cleaner burning, higher octane fuel source that is renewable, opponents feel that the mixture of gasoline and ethanol is causing more problems than it is solving. This week marks a victory for the latter camp, as the EPA has now publicly confirmed that ethanol does cause serious damage the engines.

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News

New Law Would Make Motorcycle Data-Logger Info Private

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On January 14, 2014 Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) proposed a still pending substitute amendment to the Driver Privacy Act, which formerly applied only to vehicles that were required to be equipped with an event data recorder which included passenger cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks, and buses.

Now thankfully, the language of the bill has been changed to a broader reaching scope to include motorcycles, but also to ensure that all of the information collected by “black boxes” for any vehicle is now protected.

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