March/April 2011
Motorcycle Riders Foundation
Page 49
Motorcycle Safety: ABATE OF MICHIGAN STYLE Who, What, When, How, and Why did ABATE of Michigan get involved in Motorcycle Safety? It all started back in the late 70’s at a helmet law hearing. There were four of us from ABATE of Michigan to testify at this hearing: myself, the legislative coordinator, Carl Richardson, the statistician, Larry Katkowsky, our lawyer, and Jim Rhoades, the president. Our bill sponsor said not to bring a lot of people to the hearing. Of course our opposition packed the room. One of the opposition’s participants fell and hit their head. Our bill sponsor blurted out what we were thinking. He should have worn a helmet! Dr. Don Smith from Michigan State University spoke, and he commented that we did nothing for motorcycle safety. We all looked at each other and said, “What is motorcycle safety ?” Well, that was the start of it. It took a while to convince Dr. Smith to offer an Instructor Course for us. He agreed to do a course in Garden City. It was an interesting group. 9 ABATE board of directors, 3 cops, and 2 driver education teachers that didn’t know how to ride. Michigan, at that time was using federal funds to run the motorcycle safety programs. We found a public sponsor to offer the course and did the paperwork to make it happen. We trained 48 students the 1st year and 72 students the following year. Then we knew we had to get more instructors if we wanted to train more students. I was accepted into the Chief Instructor program at the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) in Maryland. The ABATE Board, not trusting the MSF, didn’t endorse my going to Maryland. We left for Maryland, taking my wife, figuring it would be a vacation. Of course we rode there and left a week early. The course started with lunch, a knowledge test, and a riding test. All the other candidates were employed and sponsored by their state. The temperature was 90-100 degrees, with 90-100% humidity every day, for 2 weeks. Only 7 of the 12 candidates made it. I demanded equal time after watching and listening to the pro-helmet rhetoric. I gave out the ABATE of Michigan position paper and the great debate has never stopped. MSF provided start up funds to myself and Balls from ABATE of Indiana, to get us started. We were different from the college and university trainers. We were motorcyclists who wanted to teach people how to ride. The Detroit Metro Regional program was started in 1981 with
MSF start up funds, along with federal funds. We trained 300 students. The majority of the Instructors were ABATE members. Legislatively we were able to pass a rider education bill in 1982. The safety fund was created to fund tougher licensing and rider education. We incorporated the Alternate Most into our safety classes. We later adapted a combination of the Alternate Most and the Most II and called it the Michigan MOST, continuing to use this test today. $3.00 of the motorcycle license plate fee would go into the fund. 4 times since then ABATE of Michigan fought to increase funds and protect the fund. We adopted a class wavier for the licensing test in 1987. We put together a 1 day class for unlicensed riders and began offering it in 1986. In this class, the “Performance Based Course ,“ students rode their own bikes and is still in use today. It got ugly at one point when the Superintendent of Public Schools named me as the “titular” state coordinator. When I got the letter I had to check the dictionary to make sure I was correct on what was going on. I was able to initiate a change in the curriculum statewide, with help from Mark Reutter. Mark was sponsored by ABATE of Michigan to become a Chief Instructor. We got updated in the spring of 2001, retraining the Instructors, now calling them coaches, and by June we had trained over 1,000 students in the Beginning Rider Course (BRC) curriculum. Mark painted 20-30 ranges in record time. The rest of the state switched over in 2002. The governor attempted to take the public program money in 2004. ABATE of Michigan was instrumental in getting the program transferred to the Secretary of State and keeping the public program going. Since 1981, over 60,000 students have been trained in the public program in the Detroit-Metro area. We continue to support training motorcyclists on their own cycles. In 2011 we will replace the Experienced Rider Course with the MSF Advanced Rider Course. Coaches and students will use their bikes in this class. ABATE of Michigan, under Jim Rhoades legislative guidance, actively stopped 2 bills last session that would have drastically changed the motorcycle safety program. ABATE of Michigan will continue to support rider education, motorcycle licensing, and car driver awareness as an alternative to the mandatory motorcycle helmet law in Michigan. Vince Consiglio