A buck…….. 1 dollar, doesn’t really sound like much today does it? How far can it go with today’s inflation? We do now more than ever need to put a focus on that lowly little buck and build up our war chests. Last month I mentioned the Motorcycle Accident Victims Organization, and that I would inquire further on it. Well after quite a few conversations with them on it, I determined they are not the answer right now. While their intention is to go National in time, they are not yet prepared. As Fallen Bikers need help immediately, this can’t be put off any longer. A bike wreck can be fairly minimal to catastrophic in costs and any contribution is needed and appreciated.

By the time most of you read this, you are choosing to wear a helmet or not. So with the helmet modification bill passed here in PA, we can all rest easy sit back and relax…….far from it!!! Our enemies will come harder and stronger than ever before. They still think they know what is best for us. I even hear bikers talking their insurance will go up. How is that possible, we can’t buy PIP in PA so where will their increased costs come from? It just sounds like another scare tactic to me.

Now where am I going with all this? We need to put more to the front of our minds these 2 important issues. And it takes money for both. A few months ago UR and I brought up at our ABATE Meeting that $1 from every run was to go towards bikers rights, (Yes Milo the Toy Run is exempt). Simple easy way to pad the coffers for bikers rights. Lets say 50 – 100 dollars 8 – 10 times a year is a nice little addition and after a little discussion most agreed it was a good idea and it passed.

After our last meeting one of the S/A’s comes up to us and throws out the idea of bike shops giving a years membership in ABATE with every bike sold. An excellent idea to get the dwindling numbers back up and some fresh blood in the mix of things. And the numbers really are dwindling down around 2000 over the last few years.

Lets take this one more step, where do we go on most runs……Bars. Well they make money off of us, and why wouldn’t they kick in a few bucks from the extra profits. You may even want to take this up with them when setting a run up. Even $20 from 5 bars on a poker run is another $100 in the fund.

Now that I’ve tried to bleed money from you, the bike shops and the bars, everyone’s pissed off. The point is it doesn’t have to be large amounts of money, just chip away and our war chests will grow.

Looking through August Events in the Source I see bikers are raising funds for many groups but not bikers. We are giving tons of money away but forgetting our most needy charity. The 2 largest runs I’ve been on in a while were one for a Fallen Brother, which probably over 500 showed up and a Bikers Rights run where I guess there was 300 riders. Nice turnouts for worthy causes.

How do we make this reality? Real simple start asking for it, the worst you can be told is no. Then you make further decisions based upon factual information and decide how important these issues are to you.

The NHTSA has just released 2002 crash stats and again fatalities are up. From 1994 to 2002 fatalities are up a whopping 40%. All these states modifying helmet laws must be the cause. What they fail to tell you in all this rhetoric is in 1994 2320 died and in 2002 3244. Which is an increase of 40% but only 924 additional deaths. Like any good twister of the facts, they use the 40% to scare the public and even some bikers into thinking things are worse than they really are. They also fail to tell you registrations climbed from 3,756,555 in 1994 to 4,903,056 in 2001 an addition of 1,146,501 registrations. That’s one hell of a lot of bikes added to the road. It boils down to a .1% increase in rider deaths per Motor Cycle registered. Now 1 rider death is 1 too many in my opinion, when the Feds could put money towards safety and awareness education and training.

They use these numbers to secure legislation to keep us under control. You know don’t give them too much freedom or we may realize how screwed up things really are. Also go try and find all this information, it’s so obscured on so many government websites it’s difficult to find. They lie and then hide the truth in order to shove nonsense down the states throats and withhold Federal Highway dollars by applying totally unconstitutional laws to the sheeple.

Like anything else we have more than enough laws on the books than needed to cover the bases. Meanwhile if they just enforced currant BAC and speed limit laws fatalities would decrease. Think about it use the blackmail they’ve already done and our fatality rate would be less than in 1994. That would make a lot of bikers families and friends real happy.

The Feds have known all this from the beginning, I filed Freedom of Information Requests through my Congressman and Senators for the entire Raeder/Negri Study and mysteriously some parts of it have disappeared. This study was done in 1973 and found helmets can be as dangerous as not wearing one. Gotta love it we pay for this and the Feds “loose” it.