Thursdays at MotoGP races usually mean the first chance the media has to talk to riders for the week, both at their debriefs and at the pre-event press conference, but at the British Grand Prix it means something a little bit more special.
Helping raise money for Riders for Health, Silverstone played host to the Day of Champions event, which sees fans able to ride the massive British track, walk the pit lane and see bikes up-close, meet GP stars, and bid on one-of-a-kind GP memorabilia.
All of the money raised from Day of Champions will help Riders for Health ensure health workers in Africa have access to reliable, well maintained motorcycles and ambulances so that they can continue to deliver life-saving health care to 14 million people. The Day of Champions is a great event, and it supports a wonderful charity.
This year accordingly, Riders for Health is proud to announce that the 3,500+ fans in attendance helped raise £193,802 at the Day of Champions event, a figure which the UK government will match. Booyah!
No sooner has Google built its first autonomous car, and been granted its autonomous vehicle driving license in the State of California, than the Silicon Valley company has begun paving the way for autonomous two-wheeled transportation.
Writing an email to the State of California to do away with legal wording that restricts autonomous vehicle licenses just to cars, Google’s Ron Medford hopes to allow driverless/riderless trucks and motorcycles on city streets, provided they prove the same safety standards as with Google’s autonomous car program.
“It is certainly possible that future testing could include motorcycles or larger commercial vehicles,” said Medford in his email. “If some innovator can demonstrate that testing autonomous technology on such vehicles is safe, then they should be allowed to test.”
Good news for California riders who want Erik Buell Racing’s latest motorcycles, as the EBR 1190RX and EBR 1190SX have been certified by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
A necessary step to selling in the Golden State, the news means that Erik Buell Racing can begin shipping RX and SX models to its California dealers, who in turn can now begin selling the bikes to the eager Californian biking public.
The California Highway Patrol has removed its guidelines for lane-splitting in the Golden State on the CHP website, after receiving a complaint from a Sacramento citizen. Though lane-splitting has been a long-time established practice for motorcyclists in California, the act is poorly defined and regulated.
Since California has no provision directly outlawing the practice, motorcyclists are free to lane-split, lane-share, and filter so long as their actions fit under the California Vehicle Code’s catchall provision of “safe and prudent” operation of a motor vehicle. What does that mean? No one really knows.
In an effort to define what it viewed as safe and prudent, the CHP released last February a list of guidelines for motorcyclists to follow while lane-splitting in the Golden State. The guidelines were not law in the de jure sense of the word, but without any other comment from a government entity, they became the de facto rules of the road, which leads us to today.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, there is trouble a brewing in the Bar & Shield crowd this week, as Dave Zien was denied a powertrain warranty claim on his 2014 model year Harley-Davidson trike.
For those not in the know, Zien is a former Marine as well as a former Wisconsin State Senator, but he his best known in the two-wheeled community as the man who has logged the most documented miles on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle (~2.5 million), as well as putting over a million miles on his 1991 Harley-Davidson, which now sits in the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame.
All those miles aside, Zien’s issue with Harley-Davidson stems from the flags mounted on his trike, and the fact that Zien can often be found bombing around on his trike, with his flags waiving not only during rallies and parades, but also at highway speeds.
Saying that while flags at parade speeds are of course just one of the many ways Harley-Davidson owners can customize their machine, the Bar & Shield brand contends that the aerodynamic forces of two large flags (Zien has seven flags in total mounted on his trike) puts an undue stress on the machine, and thus Harley-Davidson cannot cover Zien’s warranty claim.
Good news for Italian motorcycle fans in California, as MV Agusta license to operate within California has been reinstated. The Italian motorcycle brand saw its license to do business in California revoked earlier this month, after the company failed to renew its license with the Golden State, which had expired in July of last year.
MV Agusta USA had said that the license revocation was due to a paperwork issue, and sources have told Asphalt & Rubber that the American office had confused federal filings as being sufficient for California as well.
Thankfully with help from MV Agusta’s lawyers in Italy, MV Agusta USA was able to rectify the situation in a rapid manner, with dealers in California only being unable to sell new machines for a total of 12 days.
Tough news today for MV Agusta dealers and potential buyers, as the Italian motorcycle brand is no longer allowed to sell motorcycles in the State of California.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles of vehicle makers that are no longer licensed to conduct business within the Golden State’s borders, and as you can imagine, the names are usually those of fly-by-night or foreign entities with less-than-reputable backgrounds.
In its most recent release, sent to dealers and registration services, the California DMV named MV Agsuta USA as one of the companies whose license to operate in California is no longer valid, which means 2014 model year machines can no longer be sold in California (we’re not sure how this affects 2013 and earlier machines that remain unsold at dealerships).
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.
Chalk a victory up for the two-wheelers, as Germany’s famed Autobahn road system is set to go the way of the toll road…except for motorcycles that is. The new toll system will interestingly enough apply only to vehicles with foreign license tags, with permits to circulate on the autobahn being sold at border crossings into Germany and other locations within the country.
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.