Overseas News
Biking around the world
Motorcycle theft, the Indian solution
Three men accused of stealing a motorcycle were brutally assaulted and one had his eye "gouged out" in Gaya district.
According to reports, on Sunday evening, three youths intercepted Mahendra Prasad and looted his motorcycle at gunpoint near Sirdala in Nawada district and fled towards adjacent Gaya. Prasad immediately called up his relatives living nearby, who caught up with the youths near Telgee village in Gaya district and beat them up.
The right eyeball of one of the three, Pinku Singh, was allegedly gouged out by the mob. Later in the evening, Sirdala police rescued the youths, all in their late teens, from the village and admitted them to the local government hospital, after which they were sent to Nawada.
Rajauli Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar Singh, however, strongly denied reports that the eyes of the three had been gouged out by the mob or pierced with a sharp weapon.
"They were brutally assaulted and, in the process, the right eye of one of them was badly damaged," Singh told The Indian Express over the phone. He also added that all the three-Pinku, Guddu Singh and Saket Kumar-were known troublemakers. Two FIRs, one for the motorcycle theft and the other against unknown villagers, have been lodged, Singh said.
Nawada, Civil Surgeon, Sabitri Sharma denied that any sharp weapon had been used to pierce the eyes of the three. She said that though the eyes of all of them were injured, the right eyeball of Pinku was hanging out, attached to an optical nerve. "All of them have been sent to Patna for treatment", she added.
Noise enforcement in the USA
US states are trying to tighten up but...
The first and only ticket that police have issued to a motorcyclist under Denver's controversial new noise ordinance has been dismissed. Attorney Wade Eldridge, himself a biker, challenged the law on behalf of his client, Stuart Sacks, who was pulled over in and ticketed for having an 'unlawful modified muffler,' records show.
"The officer neither inspected his bike to see if it had the stamp nor did he use a sound meter," Eldridge said. "So the most they would have had was the officer's gut feeling that it was too loud, which is not enough."
Designed to curb motorcycle noise, the controversial new ordinance took effect July 1st and limits noise levels to 82 decibels from a distance of 25 feet, and requires motorcyclists with bikes made after 1982 to have a muffler with an EPA noise-certification stamp.
Eldridge, who is the Aid to Injured Motorcyclists (A.I.M.) Attorney for Colorado also claims the noise ordinance is unconstitutionally vague. The law "lends itself to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement," he said.
Eldridge said the law leaves enforcement up to the "unfettered discretion of the individual officer," adding that his client was told he was stopped because his pipes were too loud.
Police Capt. Eric Rubin, who used to head the Traffic Operations Bureau, didn't know the details of that stop but said officers are using their training and experience in the field "as reasonable suspicion to briefly stop the rider" and check for the EPA stamp.
But the city's decision to drop the case highlighted a fundamental flaw in the law - Denver police aren't equipped with the $1,000 noise monitors needed to make the charge stick, said Eldridge, adding that, "In any case in which it's properly challenged, the city has an impossible burden.
Ellen Dumm, spokeswoman for the city's Environmental Health Department, said an "oversight" caused the case to be dismissed. "The police officer did not inspect the pipes for the required (Environmental Protection Agency) sticker," she said, adding that the dismissal was a "one-time" thing and that the ordinance's enforcement will result in quieter streets.
Eldridge points out that even police bikes may be louder than Denver's allowable limits. According to court documents, tests conducted by the city on police motorcycles found sound levels at redline of 81.3 decibels and 81.7 decibels, and since the accuracy of the sound meters the city used is within plus or minus .5 decibels, police motorcycles may be in violation of the new noise law, Eldridge said.
There are similarities between the situation in the UK and the US in that officers on this side of the Atlantic do not routinely carry noise measuring devices. Even if they did the problems of trying to make an accurate assessment with uncontrolled ambient noise render any roadside test fraught with problems and open to legal challenge. What an officer here may do is write you a ticket to submit your vehicle for an MOT test if he thinks it is outside the law for a variety of reasons.
Sturgis bar bans colours
One-Eyed Jacks saloon on Main Street Sturgis was the only bar in town to ban motorcycle club insignia, and they even barred South Dakota State Representative Jim Putnam from entering while wearing the colors of his own 'dangerous' motorcycle club, the Lawmakers.
Now, Putnam supports a boycott of the saloon. "I'm not going in there," he told the Sturgis Journal. But One-Eyed Jack's owner Ray Gold is just as adamant about keeping his new ban on "back patches," which he told the newspaper is to keep out the Hells Angels, whose Sturgis headquarters is near the bar.
But the ban on patches also angered Louis Nobs of Hibbing, Minn., who was barred entry wearing his Soldiers for Jesus colors. "You can't ban patches for just one group," he said. "If you ban them for motorcyclists you have to ban them for bowling teams, the Knights of Columbus -- everyone."
2007 World Championship Of Custom Bike Building
Top honours in the 2007 World Championship Of Custom Bike Building held at Sturgis Bike Week was taken by Stellan Egeland of Sweden. Stellan wowed the crowds with a speedway inspired board tracker, featuring hand made cylinders and heads on a Knucklehead bottom end. His bike - Hulster 8-valve - takes engineering excellence to a new level. The one-off, four-valve cylinder heads had the cooling fins filed by hand and the ports manually cut, drilled and then filed to shape. In one of the closest results in the event's history, returning World Champion Chicara Nagata of Japan's Chicara Motorcycles, polled enough votes to take second place with Chicara Art Two, a bike built around a Harley flathead motor.
Bucking the trend for traditional styling is Jolly Roger Customs with the Jolly Roger. Built by Mario Audia and Darrion Tefft, the futuristically and organically styled machine runs a 196in Hawaya billet motor.
The World Championship is run by Englishman Robin Bradley, publisher of American Dealer News, a trade magazine that focusses on the Harley-Davidson aftermarket.
Tel: +44 1892 511516
Email: neil@amdchampionship.com
Website: www.amdchampionship.com
Helmet laws and fatality rates
Supporters of helmet laws make much of the rise in motorcycle rider fatalities since many US states repealed their helmet laws. What they are less enthusiastic about reporting is that the pictures is not necessarily better in states with helmet laws.
Despite passing a mandatory helmet law in 2004, motorcycle fatalities in Louisiana are on a record pace and on course for one of the worst totals in the country, Highway Safety Commission executive director James Champagne told attendees at a safety summit in Baton Rouge.
US bikers rescue safety funding from the axe
A move to eliminate funding for motorcycle safety funds has been successfully challenged by US bikers. A total of $6 million in grant money provided to 44 states for motorcycle safety programs has been saved from politicians who would have axed it. US bikers have historically advanced the use of training programmes in lieu of helmet laws and other restrictions that inhibit riding pleasures and freedoms.
Belgian police doing fine
Traffic police in Belgium have made so much money in fines that they hardly know how to spend it. The money is supposed to be spent on road safety projects but if that is not done then it goes to the government. One force spent its money on lottery tickets for drivers who obeyed traffic laws. One police station bought motorcycles even though none of the officers there knew how to ride them. The motorcycles are now lying unused in a basement. This year the police have collected £67m in fines which is more than twice the sum they raised six years ago.
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