Australian road authorities have gone quiet on high viz vests and compulsory protective clothing for now but they have a folio of measures designed to make it difficult and expensive to keep a bike on the road and a bike licence in your wallet.
The inquiry into motorcycle & scooter safety will release its' report at Parliament House in Melbourne on Wednesday, December 12, 2012 from 9am. The more riders that can make it in there the better.
The first FAIR GO RUN will be on Saturday, March 16, 2013. It will depart Melbourne's northern suburbs for a run up the Hume to the marginal seat of Seymour and the electoral office of Cindy McLeish MP. Then it's on to the Flowerdale Pub for lunch.
In the lead up to the next Victorian election we will target marginal seats, regardless of political party. The candidates who support or right to ride, in writing, will get our support, the candidates that don't will not.
Damien Codognotto OAM
Independent Riders' Group
Sent: Sunday, 2 December 2012 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: [New post] France: compulsory reflective clothing suspended
From:
"UK France bikers.com"
<comment+ly1rrmwfr832j0n0t9walb@comment.wordpress.com>
Sun, 2 Dec 2012 10:20:54 +0000
Subject: France: compulsory reflective clothing suspended
Good news for riders in France: the new French Interior Minister,
Manuel Valls, has decided to suspend the forthcoming obligation for
all riders (whether residents or visitors) to wear at least 125cm2 of
reflective clothing between the waist and the shoulders.
Bikers who were caught not wearing the appropriate reflective clothing
from 1st January 2013 would have been liable to a 68 euros fine payable
on the spot and two points taken off their licence.
The battle has been very long for the bikers to achieve such a good
result. Despite national demonstrations gathering over 100,000 bikers
and bringing the whole country to a complete stop, the previous Interior
Minister, Claude Guéant, refused to abandon his proposals. Guéant initially
proposed the compulsory wear of reflective jackets and, with the enormous
pressure he was put under by thousands of angry bikers who kept
blocking the roads all over the country, he decided to back off and
restrict the reflective clothing to only 125cm2 between the waist and the
shoulders. But this was not good enough - the bikers demanded full scrapping
of the proposals, which Guéant refused to accept.
Manuel Valls, Guéant's successor following the recent elections, seems to be more
reasonable and has now accepted to listen to the bikers' concerns and suspend
his predecessor's proposals.
Unfortunately, suspend does not mean scrap - the proposals will be reviewed in
detail before Valls may decide to scrap them for good. This is one of the most
laughable and absurd pieces of legislation we have ever heard of because a) reflective
clothing is precisely not reflective during day light and b) those who ride
machines of up to 125cc would have been exempt from wearing any
reflective clothing on the grounds that they don’t ride a powerful
enough bike to be considered dangerous on the roads!
Let’s not forget that a very large number of motorcyclists who ride a moped or a
125cc bike are precisely those who don’t hold a full motorcycle licence and
have only attended at the very most a one-off 7 hour training course all together.
But, as usual, bikers who ride larger machines arealways the ones who cause most
concern to the government because they have been much better trained than every other
biker! Whilst it makes perfect sense to educate bikers to be more visible on the roads to
minimise the risk of collisions resulting from car drivers not seeing (DKC - looking for them)
them, it also makes sense to educate car drivers, including taxi drivers, to share the
roads with bikers and make them realise that they don’t own the roads. Why are car
drivers not forced to apply a yellow sticker at the back (and front) of their vehicle to
make it more visible? Why are riders and drivers not treated equally on the
roads and, more importantly, why are bikers being constantly treated as irresponsible
and rogue citizens?
Statistics show that the vast majority of road accidents involving motorcyclists are caused
by car drivers not paying attention to what's around them, including the presence
of bikers. So instead of imposing radical and useless measures on the bikers and
treat them like children, governments had better address road related issues by implementing
training and safety awareness sessions for all, not always and constantly victimise the
bikers.
Whilst bikers in France are delighted to hear the good news, the battle is not yet totally over.
Manuel Valls has yet to review and consider his predecessor's proposals in detail before
he makes his final decision, which will hopefully be the full scrapping of these proposals.
In the meantime, the French Federation of Angry Bikers - FFMC (Fédération Française
des Motards en Colère) continues to put the government under pressure to achieve the
desired full scrapping of the proposals.
If you're based in France and want to take part in the fight against the Government's
proposed introduction of a compulsory annual environmental and road safety test for
motorcycles and their continued policy to ban motorcyclists from filtering through
traffic, then contact the FFMC.
Please join and support the campaign to stop Westminster Council from stealth taxing motorcyclists to park before their scheme spreads all over the UK and the rest of Europe.
For further details, visit
http://www.motobikeparkingtax.com
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