do you have days where you want…Part 2, if I may…
when you contemplate selling your Busa?
Not meaning to jump in on Smoke_Dog’s original post, although this is quite a bit different.
I’ll try to keep my question and story brief, but may be difficult.
My wife
just treated me to an incredible birthday gift of a five day stay in Carmel, California. We live in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was wonderful.
We went there back in 2005 for the return of the MotoGP at Laguna Seca; absolutely awesome!!!
So we’re heading west from Bakersfield to Paso Robles on Hwy 46 (from 99 to the Pacific Coast Hwy). We’re about two miles East (heading West) out of a brutally small town named ‘Wasco’. It is a completely agricultural area and very beautiful. You can see for miles and miles in every, and I mean every, direction.
Two California Highway Patrol cars heading East (opposite direction of us) are cruising by. It’s 12:05pm, just looking at the time that the California HPO just wrote on my ticket. Actually, he put 12:05am, but it was 12:05pm; any legalities in my benefit here? Nonetheless, one of the CHP does a U-turn and snags me in a rented car for doing 71mph in a 55mph zone (the CHP put ‘70 in a 55 mph zone). I’m sure it was an easy kill; out of state license plate, just left lunch with his CHP buddy (remember 12:05pm and two miles from the nearest town).
I have the highest regard for police authority. Honestly, I do. I ride motorcycles with two Federal Law Officers.
The Highway patrol officer was very polite and professional to me. And I was to him, also. I thought of all of my fellow Hayabusa riders when this was going down. I sincerely thought that he’d return to our rented car after doing my license check and whatever else at his Patrol Car, and hopefully he’d let me off with a warning. I had explained, with an apology, that I wasn’t used to the smoothness of this vehicle (rented) and thought, by viewing the speedo on and off, that I was going 60mph (the speed had probably fluctuated in all honesty, I mean, I do have to watch the road, right?). Seeing that it was a day before my birthday and having no prior speeding record (I sincerely don’t know if he knows this) that a simple warning may suffice. Nope
; easy out of state kill after lunch with his buddy, with all due respect.
I have a friend who got a reckless driving ticket a few years ago out in Nevada. It was for 120mph in a 75mph zone. It was from Pahrump, Nevada to Las Vegas, Nevada. Have you ever seen Pahrump to Las Vegas? You could be doing 160mph on a Hayabusa and feel like you’re not moving. You can see 100 miles in front of you, behind you, to your left and to your right (okay, slight exaggeration, and yes, slight). I don’t say this to justify his speed, but it was an 8 point count against his license; at 12 points you lose you driver’s license. 8 points is the same as a DUI. So a guy driving on the Las Vegas Strip drunk while there are hundreds and hundreds of people around, gets the same penalty as someone on motorcycle in the middle of nowhere?
Check the speed laws in Oregon. Money? Pure money?
There was a prior post about the education and driver’s license procedure in Europe. I have a friend in Switzerland. He was once talking about how in parts of Europe, if my memory serves me right, how once you get a Motorcycle license you can only drive a 125cc, or such, motorcycle for the first year or two, then up to 250ccs for the next year or two, etc., working your way up to a liter bike or more over a period of time. In the US, you can get a motorcycle permit at the age of fifteen and a half and hop on a 0-60 in 2.7 second, 200 mph motorcycle. One has to ask, is our government (by the way, God Bless America and please hang your flags this Labor Day and always, I repeat always, on Veteran‘s Day) truly trying to educate us or make money off of us.
I was driving with the wife the other day and saw a car weaving in and out of the left hand car lane in traffic. I said jokingly to the wife, ’how much you want to bet it’s a teenage girl on a cell phone?’ I’m no fortune teller with ability to see the unseen, but I was right. I’m not a chauvinist either. It just one of those things that we know may be the situation. These are the incompetents that we have to be group in with.
Whether it is a person who has ridden motorcycles for over thirty years and is very skilled or someone who is incapable of driving over 40mph while trying to look at the radio, we’re all susceptible to the same lowest common denominator. And we pay! Monetarily (tickets) and through the lack of ability of other drivers (hitting us).
I say ‘hitting us’, because when I originally went to get motorcycle insurance for my Hayabusa, I had rates quoted to me from $8400 to $2700 (a year, full coverage, $700 to$225 a month). I was told that this was due to the high incident of thief with motorcycles, not motorcyclist causing accidents. I asked for the quote on ‘just liability’ insurance. $20-30 a month. What does that say? We are not the causes of accidents to others in regards to severe accidents, we‘re the victims of severe accidents, due to others, as a general rule. Why else would a monthly rate go from $225 a month to $25 a month? Think about it.
My point: Why do why all have to pay for the lack of ability and pointless speed limits that appeal to the lowest common denominator? A several ton 18 wheeler cannot stop in the same amount of time as a 500 pound Hayabusa at 55mph.
When I set my cruise control at 58mph in the rented car after getting my ticket in California, every car was up my arshe for the next 60 miles. I was more concerned with people trying to speed past me against on-coming traffic while I was doing the 55mph speed limit.
As a motorcyclist, I never stay in the same speed arena as cars; they simply don’t focus on you as you sit in the same spot, hopefully not a blind spot.
Getting tickets for nonsense is what makes me question selling my Hayabusa. Getting ticketed for 30mph over the speed limit while there is nothing around me for miles and miles, and come on now, we’ve all done it, scares me. 8 points and $500 dollars a more a year for insurance for 20mph over the speed limit and now I’m 4 points away from losing my license?
By the way, did you know that insurance companies buy quite a bit of those speed guns that the Highway Patrol use? For our safety, or to drive our rates up?
Sorry for the length of the rant, but I could go on for another 10 pages easily.
God Bless and ride safe, but enjoyably!
when you contemplate selling your Busa?
Not meaning to jump in on Smoke_Dog’s original post, although this is quite a bit different.
I’ll try to keep my question and story brief, but may be difficult.
My wife
So we’re heading west from Bakersfield to Paso Robles on Hwy 46 (from 99 to the Pacific Coast Hwy). We’re about two miles East (heading West) out of a brutally small town named ‘Wasco’. It is a completely agricultural area and very beautiful. You can see for miles and miles in every, and I mean every, direction.
Two California Highway Patrol cars heading East (opposite direction of us) are cruising by. It’s 12:05pm, just looking at the time that the California HPO just wrote on my ticket. Actually, he put 12:05am, but it was 12:05pm; any legalities in my benefit here? Nonetheless, one of the CHP does a U-turn and snags me in a rented car for doing 71mph in a 55mph zone (the CHP put ‘70 in a 55 mph zone). I’m sure it was an easy kill; out of state license plate, just left lunch with his CHP buddy (remember 12:05pm and two miles from the nearest town).
I have the highest regard for police authority. Honestly, I do. I ride motorcycles with two Federal Law Officers.
The Highway patrol officer was very polite and professional to me. And I was to him, also. I thought of all of my fellow Hayabusa riders when this was going down. I sincerely thought that he’d return to our rented car after doing my license check and whatever else at his Patrol Car, and hopefully he’d let me off with a warning. I had explained, with an apology, that I wasn’t used to the smoothness of this vehicle (rented) and thought, by viewing the speedo on and off, that I was going 60mph (the speed had probably fluctuated in all honesty, I mean, I do have to watch the road, right?). Seeing that it was a day before my birthday and having no prior speeding record (I sincerely don’t know if he knows this) that a simple warning may suffice. Nope
I have a friend who got a reckless driving ticket a few years ago out in Nevada. It was for 120mph in a 75mph zone. It was from Pahrump, Nevada to Las Vegas, Nevada. Have you ever seen Pahrump to Las Vegas? You could be doing 160mph on a Hayabusa and feel like you’re not moving. You can see 100 miles in front of you, behind you, to your left and to your right (okay, slight exaggeration, and yes, slight). I don’t say this to justify his speed, but it was an 8 point count against his license; at 12 points you lose you driver’s license. 8 points is the same as a DUI. So a guy driving on the Las Vegas Strip drunk while there are hundreds and hundreds of people around, gets the same penalty as someone on motorcycle in the middle of nowhere?
There was a prior post about the education and driver’s license procedure in Europe. I have a friend in Switzerland. He was once talking about how in parts of Europe, if my memory serves me right, how once you get a Motorcycle license you can only drive a 125cc, or such, motorcycle for the first year or two, then up to 250ccs for the next year or two, etc., working your way up to a liter bike or more over a period of time. In the US, you can get a motorcycle permit at the age of fifteen and a half and hop on a 0-60 in 2.7 second, 200 mph motorcycle. One has to ask, is our government (by the way, God Bless America and please hang your flags this Labor Day and always, I repeat always, on Veteran‘s Day) truly trying to educate us or make money off of us.
I was driving with the wife the other day and saw a car weaving in and out of the left hand car lane in traffic. I said jokingly to the wife, ’how much you want to bet it’s a teenage girl on a cell phone?’ I’m no fortune teller with ability to see the unseen, but I was right. I’m not a chauvinist either. It just one of those things that we know may be the situation. These are the incompetents that we have to be group in with.
Whether it is a person who has ridden motorcycles for over thirty years and is very skilled or someone who is incapable of driving over 40mph while trying to look at the radio, we’re all susceptible to the same lowest common denominator. And we pay! Monetarily (tickets) and through the lack of ability of other drivers (hitting us).
I say ‘hitting us’, because when I originally went to get motorcycle insurance for my Hayabusa, I had rates quoted to me from $8400 to $2700 (a year, full coverage, $700 to$225 a month). I was told that this was due to the high incident of thief with motorcycles, not motorcyclist causing accidents. I asked for the quote on ‘just liability’ insurance. $20-30 a month. What does that say? We are not the causes of accidents to others in regards to severe accidents, we‘re the victims of severe accidents, due to others, as a general rule. Why else would a monthly rate go from $225 a month to $25 a month? Think about it.
My point: Why do why all have to pay for the lack of ability and pointless speed limits that appeal to the lowest common denominator? A several ton 18 wheeler cannot stop in the same amount of time as a 500 pound Hayabusa at 55mph.
When I set my cruise control at 58mph in the rented car after getting my ticket in California, every car was up my arshe for the next 60 miles. I was more concerned with people trying to speed past me against on-coming traffic while I was doing the 55mph speed limit.
As a motorcyclist, I never stay in the same speed arena as cars; they simply don’t focus on you as you sit in the same spot, hopefully not a blind spot.
Getting tickets for nonsense is what makes me question selling my Hayabusa. Getting ticketed for 30mph over the speed limit while there is nothing around me for miles and miles, and come on now, we’ve all done it, scares me. 8 points and $500 dollars a more a year for insurance for 20mph over the speed limit and now I’m 4 points away from losing my license?
By the way, did you know that insurance companies buy quite a bit of those speed guns that the Highway Patrol use? For our safety, or to drive our rates up?
Sorry for the length of the rant, but I could go on for another 10 pages easily.
God Bless and ride safe, but enjoyably!