The longer I ride, the more need I see for advocacy. I am not talking about the AMA, they do a fine job of what they do. The AMA is advocating our rights as motorcycle riders, as is their mandate. This is not the advocacy I am talking about. I mean a different campaign altogether. What is needed is not a campaign for rider rights, but a campaign for riders.
This is something that should be an industry group, but at this point, the industry of motorcycles and scooters in the U.S. market seems to be perfectly happy with the cyclic status quo of low volume, mediocre margins and service departments that feel no urgency.
For the last 50 years, motorcycle advocacy has been the image of the Harley Davidson bad boy, the street racing rice rocket, or the 50cc liquor cycle. None of these images are representations of the the broad range of motorcycles, nor are the effective tools for advocating the use of motorcycles ann scooters are transportation. Even the fun and entertaining looks at the other sides of two wheeled culture in movies like Larry Crowne, Yes Man, and even Wild Hogs, the stereotypes are persisted.
Since the industry giants are not making any effort to advocate the use of two wheeled vehicles as anything but recreation, it falls to the riders to do so at a grass roots level. Andy Goldfine started with a good idea in Ride to Work Day ( June 18th, mark your calendars ), but it has to go further than that. What we need is a nationwide grassroots campaign that can get people thinking. Look at what two words and a question mark has done for the dairy industry, "Got Milk?" has become nationally recognized, and has pushed the awareness of milk. It has helped flagging sales at a time when soda, juices and other drinks had realy eroded the sales of milk as the beverage of choice at breakfast.
With gas prices rising again this summer, and the politics beginning to spin up surrounding it, we look to be approaching another boom in the sales of scooters and motorcycles, that will be ridden for a while and then parked. There are alot of reasons they don't stay in use. A huge part to those reasons is culture. Bigger is better. Motorcycles are dangerous. Ultimately, we have to change that culture, and the only way we do that it is through conscious advocacy. Just leading by example is not enough because people do not remember the good examples, only the bad. There are alot of bad examples out there for us to overcome. This is not about selling motorcycles, it is about getting more people on them, and more people that own them out riding.
To me,it would seem that embracing two wheels offers a solution to a number of problems we face as a country. We need to reduce or oil consumption. We need to reduce our living costs. We need to make better use of our resources. Weneed to reduce thewear and tear on our roads. We need to improve the physical and mental health of our population. We need to embrace our American manufacturing.
Every one of the above can be impacted by a cultural shift to embrace two wheels as a means of transportation. Motorcycles use less gas and oil per mile than all but the most fuel efficient cars. Electric motorcycles are also quickly maturing to the point where they offer solid, viable commuter alternatives. The cost of owning and operating a motorcycle is about half that of a car, even factoring in additional products and service required. Even the heaviest modern motorcycles weigh in at under half the weight of the smallest of the subcompacts cars. The is half the raw resources required to even build the vehicles. Then you look at wear and tear, you are cutting the number of wheels, in half, The weight per vehicle by more than a half, and you can fit 2 to 3 motorcycles in the same spaces the smallest cars take up. considering that upwRds of 70% of the cars in a typical rush hour carry a single occupant, if just half of those drivers used a car you have reduce the volume of traffic by a significant margin.
The last two items are less clear cut, though I firmly believe in both, there is less fact to back them up. The mental health aspect is just a side benefit of embracing two wheels. There is an established study in Japan that riders to exhibit greate mental acuity. There is also a less scientific, but emprical analysis that riders who ride regularly find themselves in a better general state of mind. New riders are far more aware of it, but it seems to pervade all riders.
The last item, is something that trithfully is fairly difficult to do right now. There are not that many options for American Made. motorcycles. Not in the traditional brands at least. Ha rley Davidson is the iconic American brand, but much of their product is built outside the US. Victory is still mostly built in the US, though they sre now a Canadian company. Motus is just starting production of a modern sport tourer made in the US. Of course there a many custom builders in the States as well. But, in the electric space, there is a significant base of innovation. Brammo, Zero, Vectrix, and others are all emerg ing with really solid offerings. We have an opportunity to lead an evolution and revolution in motorcycles and personal two wheeled transportation, but to do so is going to require a massive grasss roots effort to bring about a shift in consumer awareness.
Bicycles should be included in this, with some of the most intersting projects happening in tht space as well. Projects like the UltraMotor A2B electric bicycles as viable comuter transportation.
So I am proposing a slogan and tag for motorcycle advocacy.
Less is More, Two Wheels over Four
It is time to plaster the world with the idea that riding is a better way to live. This is not an easy sell. It will take time to erode 50 years of bad boy lifestyle, and bad boy images from the cultural consciousness. In the end though, the beneifts are immeasurable. More riders means more awareness, better products, healthy industry, and if enough people embrace some of the upstart electrics, then perhaps even begin a second manufacturing revolution in the US.