Cycle World Roundup

CYCLE WORLD ROUNDUP

ONE ISSUE, ONE VOTE

Professional politicians are currently disappointed in us, the electorate. They say in former times we knew our places. We took account of individual circumstances, like what sort of jobs we had, where we were born, what our parents taught us and then we went down to the courthouse and signed up as members of a political party. We became Democrats, Republicans, Vegetarians, Socialists, etc., and for the rest of our voting lives we cast our ballots on the basis of the party of our choice.

But now, the politicos moan, we don’t act right. Many voters have become more concerned with an issue than with the issues listed on the official party platform. A man whose job and background should make him a loyal Democrat gets thinking about, say, the moral problems of abortion and votes for candidates on that basis, even if those candidates are Republicans. A woman whose social and economic position makes her an automatic Republican gets angry when her party removes its pro-ERA plank from the platform, so mad that she quits the GOP.

These people are known as one-issue voters and if you read the political journals you’ll learn that such behavior confuses and dumbfounds the leaders of all parties. If voters don’t dance when we pull the strings, these leaders say, democracy is in trouble.

We don’t believe it. Whether or not voting on one issue is

better or worse than voting for (or with) one label is good or bad for the country, we’ll leave to history’s verdict.

What we do get from this one issue issue is a chance to consider the approaching national elections from a motorcyclist’s viewpoint.

We get this through

the good offices of the American Motorcyclist Association.

When the Presidential primaries began, the AMA’s magazine, American Motorcyclist, sent a questionnaire to each major hopeful; Carter, Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, Anderson et al. The questions involved issues like allocation of public land for motorized recreation, use of fossil fuels for recreation, mandatory helmets and seatbelts, the federal 55-mph speed limit and the effectiveness of federal safety programs and agencies. As a closer, the magazine asked about the candidate’s experience, if any, with motorcycles: had he or members of his family owned or ridden one?

The replies—or in one case the lack of a reply—make interesting reading. In general there was a high degree of waffling, as you’d expect from a group of men who hope to convince at least some of the people for part of the time. All were in favor of recreation, of fair allocation of public resources, all were opposed to waste and loss of life, all the challengers felt the federal bureaucracy needs whipping into shape, a task they promised to perform instantly they took office. And no candidate with a hope for the President’s job has any firsthand experience with a motorcycle.

At this writing the conventions have been held. There are two major candidates, President Carter for the Democrats, former Gov. Ronald Reagan for the Republicans. Rep. John Anderson

is running as an independent and Ed Clark is the candidate for the Libertarian party, although neither of these last two is likely to win.

The election will be held a

few weeks after this appears in print. For this occasion we’re thinking like one-issue voters, looking at ¿ these men from the saddle, so to speak.

Assuming the incumbent has an advantage, we’ll begin with President Carter. He did not reply to the AMA’s questions. His staff said the first questionnaire didn’t arrive, then that the second didn’t arrive, then silence. Does this mean the post office can’t find 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.? Surely not. Instead we’d guess the Carter campaign people don’t want to answer. If they ignore the bikers, we’ll go away.

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Carter doesn’t lie. We know from his record so far that he was strongly backed in 1976 by the Ralph Nader forces and by the elite preservationists, witness his appointment of Nader graduate Joan Claybrook to NHTSA.

All we can predict from here is more of the same. The people who brought us the Department of Energy, land use policies reviewed by the Sierra Club, motorcycles grudgingly accepted as transportation in times of rationing, show no sign of change.

Gov. Reagan is something of a contradiction. He told AMA that “I support the 55 mile per hour limit. On balance, I’m told it has saved both lives and fuel.”

He got that from the Democratic administration. Our companion publication Road & Track published a logical and factual demolition of the benefits of the federal 55 rule after Reagan made his comment. Copies of the R&T report were sent to Reagan’s staff. No response yet.

However, the Republican platform contains a significant plank for us. The GOP recommends that speed limit laws be returned to the states. They don’t advocate repeal. Instead, they say people who live in open areas should be free to decide for themselves what the speed limit should be. We cannot endorse this view too strongly.

Reagan supports state control of public lands. Further, quoting from the AMA’s article, “I won’t support compulsory helmet wearing for motorcycle riders even though I think they’re crazy for not wearing one. But that’s their own business.”

Libertarian Ed Clark opposes nearly every restriction on the use of public land. He replied that not only should motorcycles be exempt from the odd-even gas buying systems, all motorists should be exempt.

“I would submit legislation to abolish the NHTSA.”

“The 55 mph speed limit is not justified . . . It is just one more propaganda campaign foisted on the American people . . . the federal 55 mph speed limit should be abolished.”

Clark probably goes further than the voters are willing to go, and if by some chance he won, he’d have one heck of a time getting the federal apparatus under control. But he speaks straight.

John Anderson is more predictable. Commenting on land use, he thinks a balance must be achieved. He would give states the power to control helmet usage, endorses voluntary use campaigns, worries that the 55 limit is being ignored and adds that we’d save more lives and fuel if we enforced it better. Anderson supports exclusion of motorcycles from rationing and he wants to overhaul the federal agency structure. Give the man six out of ten.

As mentioned earlier, we are not in politics fulltime. We take no stand on jobs, taxation, national defense, foreign affairs, medical plans, women’s rights and so forth. Nor do we urge anyone to vote on the basis of just the motorcycle question.

But from the rider standpoint, the choice is pretty clear.

RETURN OF THE SUPERBIKERS

Television and motorcycles can mix, as proved by last year’s Superbikers competition designed for and shown on television. The idea of the Superbikers, regular readers will recall, was to show who’s best. Various forms of competition have been tried before for that purpose, but none lent themselves to successful spectating and without spectators there is no money and without money there are no stars.

Television needs stars and that’s what the Superbikers is all about. Get the best roadracers, the best flat trackers, the best motocrossers, throw in a speedway rider or two and you’ve got a good cast. Put the riders on modified motocrossers and TT machines and set them riding on a combination road course, motocross track and flat track and you create a Superbikers race.

Last year was the first year for the Superbikers. The racing was good and the motocrossers who had lowered their bikes and added disc front brakes were most successful. Kent Howerton, in fact, won the race on his RM Suzuki.

This year there will be another Superbikers, run again at Carlsbad, California the first weekend of November. ABC will broadcast the event, probably sometime in February. Last February something like 35 to 40 million people watched the program, proving the racers put on a good show.

No word is out yet on who will be racing, but the $10,000 minimum first place prize should get their attention.

EXPERIENCED RIDER PROGRAM

One of the not-too-surprising things coming to light from safety research is that survival doesn’t teach us everything.

New riders are involved in accidents out of proportion to their numbers, but even so, 75 percent of the crashes studied in< California recently involved riders who’d been on bikes for at least six months. And 92 percent of the involved riders had no formal training.

The Motorcycle Safety Foundation plans to do something about that.

MSF is already involved with training, for new riders, is in fact the best-known source for this. Various motor vehicle departments, schools, dealer organizations, etc., are using MSF-supplied material for people who’ve just begun riding.

The new course is for riders who already have the basics, whether through MSF^ training or just because they’ve passed their state tests, and who would like to become better.

The MSF program, known as Better Biking, teaches rider skills like braking, turning and emergency maneuvers. It’s a 6.5-hour program, part classroom and part riding, with the students using their own* machines.

This is a new program, just announced, so we don’t know how good it is, or where and when and by whom the course is offered. MSF is open to requests from clubs and school systems that would like to offer the course, and for enquiries from riders^ who’d like to be better riders. For information, write to Jorja Kappes, c/o Motorcycle Safety Foundation, 780 Elkridge Landing Road, Linthicum, Md. 21090.

HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED

Just how politics shuffles the public around and how special interest groups win or lose favors is apparent by looking at what happened to the California RARE II bill.

RARE II was set up to inventory public lands and determine what land should be designated as wilderness. The process included lots of reports and public comment. The results of several years of studying various areas around the country was a report from the Administration recommending that Congress make certain land wilderness. In California the Administration plan called for adding 1 million acres of wilderness to the wilderness system. That figure was something of a compromise, more wilderness than recreationists wanted, yet less wilderness than advocated by the wilderness advocates.

Only that compromise wilderness bill isn’t what ended up going through Congress. As soon as the California wilderness proposal was sent to committee, Congressman Philip Burton, perhaps California’s most liberal lawmaker, introduced a bill to add 5 million acres into wilderness. There being no readily available anti-wilderness bills prepared, the 1 million acre administration proposal became the recreationbacked bill and then serious negotiations began, with no one considering less than 1 million acres of additional wilderness.

Burton and the environmentalist lobby were prepared for the negotiating that followed introduction of the two bills. For instance, Burton’s bill identified proposed wilderness areas according to map numbers. Only the maps weren’t available to the public. And when Burton would show a map to another congressman, he would only show a map of that legislator’s district so the impact of the state-wide wilderness bill couldn’t be seen.

The result of all this politicking was a compromise bill that put 2 million acres of California land into wilderness, with more still under study. Years of research, public hearings and public comments had nothing to do with the final result. A wellarmed band of environmentalists with political contacts is more important than what the public wants.

THE WILD ONE

Paul Dunstall has'made a practice, over the years, of making fast bikes faster. Originally he concentrated on Nortons and more recently he has worked with Suzuki in Great Britain, producing the Dunstall GS 1000 and now the Dunstall Suzuki GS1100.

This is not, for American readers, the kind of Suzuki available in stores. But that doesn’t mean a motorcyclist in Omaha, Nebraska couldn’t have a bike like this. The Paul Dunstall Organization would be happy to sell all the bits and pieces that make a GS1100 a Dunstall GS1100.

When sold in England, the Dunstall GS1100 includes mild porting, a Dunstall 4-into-l exhaust and carb rejetting to take advantage of the exhaust, all of which increases horsepower somewhere around 10 bhp. Mostly what the Dunstall GS 1100 offers is some outrageous body work on a standard GS1100 chassis. The fairing,

shaped much like a GP fairing, gives the bike its obviously performance-oriented appearance. Add the flashy red, yellow and black paint job and the Dunstall Suzuki should get you as much attention as a raincoat with quick-release buttons.

The seat has been restyled to look like a solo cafe-racer seat, even though the rear portion that blends in with the Suzuki’s protruding tailpiece is useful, if not comfortable, for passengers. A restyled front fender, looking like it was pinched by Godzilla, doesn’t quite fit, but then the rectangular headlight looks unusual too.

In England the Dunstall GS1100 sells for around $8000, about 50 percent more than a standard GS1100. For information about the Dunstall fairing or other pieces, contact the Paul Dunstall Organization, 27402 Camino Capistrano, Suite 206, Laguna Niguel, Calif. 92677.

FIGHTING CITY HALL

For 13 years Erie County in western New York has prohibited motorcycles from being ridden in county parks. Now the bike ban has been repealed as a result of a law suit and intense lobbying.

Lobbying against the ban began in 1976, according to the AMA, but it wasn’t until Dick and Mary Jane Geilski filed suit against the county that county legislators decided to rescind the discriminatory law.

Initially the bike ban is being dropped on a probationary basis for six weeks at one of the county’s eight parks. Until the ban is fully repealed attorney Richard Rosche isn’t dropping the $60 million lawsuit in federal court.