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[ST] For your consideration



        An official at NHTSA (National Highway & Transportation
Safety Administration) has been quoted as saying "If the public turns
sour on motorcycling because motorcyclists cease to respect and
accommodate that public, motorcycling will become a historical
artifact!". The fact is that the 270 million Americans who care
nothing for motorcycles are getting fed-up with the aggravation of
riders burning their eyeballs with bright lights and assaulting their
eardrums with loud pipes. It will be EASY for this majority, under
color of altruism, to have their politicians simply regulate, tax and
restrict our sport to the point where riding will be
unaffordable or undesirable. A simple helmet law reduces motorcycle
registrations by almost a third; legal requirements for stringent
training, expensive and exhaustive licensing, mandated insurance
coverage, displacement limits, protective gear and safety & emissions
inspections (each of which is ALREADY in place in some nation) would
likely reduce the riding population by some 90%. The question then
becomes - who is going to manufacture motorcycles, in the face of
bloated product liability insurance rates, for so few prospective
buyers? This is the EXACT SAME SCENARIO used by the government to
effectively end production of light, single-engine aircraft in this
country a dozen years ago!

        Whether our children and grandchildren will have motorcycles
to ride is strictly up to how the public perceives all of us over the
next
few years!  It's not going to effect me,... I'm much too old.

                                Have fun;
                                            ol t-bone   - - - o%\o

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