BMF NEWS ROUND UP – AUGUST 2022
The monthly news roundup, brought to you by the BMF
The monthly news roundup, brought to you by the BMF
There was good news from the DVSA in August – their latest year-on-year figures revealed record numbers of people taking their motorcycle test. Undeterred by the spike in fuel prices and the ever-rising cost of living, 65,711 riders took their Module 2 (on-road) test between April 2021 and March 2022, – 50,000 a year is a more typical figure. The pass rate was up slightly as well. It’s partly down to the efforts of Driving Test Centres to catch up on the test backlog, but maybe also due to a recognition that motorcycling is the ultimate socially distanced transport.
In Surrey, the County Council is to pilot a 20mph limit on some of its rural roads. Until now, most 20mph limits have been applied to previously 30-limit urban and suburban roads only. Many smaller rural roads still use the default single-carriageway speed limit of 60mph, which has been in place since 1977. The Council cited the higher fatality rate on rural roads, which account for 57% of road deaths.
Talking of councils, the London Borough of Hackney seems ready to forge ahead with radical plans for urban transport – it’s volunteered to act as a guinea pig for road user charging experiments and is planning to charge motorcycles up to £6 an hour for parking. London Mayor Sadiq Khan is aiming to introduce variable road charging across the capital but has described such a scheme as being, “many years away from being ready to implement.” Hackney seems especially keen to hit drivers who own more than one car and take vehicle type into account – logically, that should mean lower charges for bikes and scooters. The Council appears to be less enlightened in its proposed parking policy, planning to make pay £6 per hour to park in a marked bay with a maximum stay of four hours, and charging electric and petrol PTWs alike. Save London Motorcycling was organising a ride-out to protest against the charges on 10th September – if you read this in time, sign up at facebook.com/events/6242031.
Hackney may be making no concessions to electric two-wheelers, but they’re forging ahead elsewhere. Kawasaki will be launching two 125cc-equivalent electric motorcycles later this year, both rated at 11Kw (14.8bhp), but with peak power of up to 30bhp. That makes big K the first of the big-name Japanese manufacturers to launch a production electric motorcycle. Meanwhile, in Taiwan, battery swapping is seen as the answer for urban electric scooters. Gogoro runs nearly 11,000 swapping stations where riders can change their depleted battery for a fully charged one. Could we see it in the UK? Not yet, but with Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki co-operating on electric vehicle hardware, battery swapping could become an everyday part of our urban transport network.
Triumph Daytona’s are now on display at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, which until now has focused on cars. The Daytona badge was coined for Triumph’s twin-carb 500cc twins after Buddy Elmore won the famed Daytona 200 race back in 1966 – his race bike takes pride of place in the exhibition, along with later generations of Daytona. Sadder news from veteran dealer Warr’s Harley-Davidson, which announced that Fred Warr has died aged 93. Fred was Britain’s Mr Harley, who with his father did more than anyone else to bring Harley-Davidson into Britain. Warr’s became H-D’s first official dealer in 1957 and stuck with the company through good times and bad – it thrives to this day.
Bike crime as TV entertainment? Viewers of TV’s Frontline Fightback watched a stolen Husqvarna 701 successfully recovered recently, thanks to high tech security. Bike crime doesn’t often feature in mainstream media, but one edition of the Frontline Fightback show focused on the issue, including the use of tracking devices to pinpoint the location of stolen machines. The Husqvarna was fitted with a Bike Trac system, which pinpointed the Transit used to steal it, and in which it was still hidden – the police duly swooped.
And finally, Guernsey Police reminded us to beware of slippery road surfaces as rain returns. It’s teaching some of us to suck eggs, but worth remembering that rain after a prolonged dry spell makes tarmac slippy as the deposits of oil, rubber and sludge rise to the surface before getting washed away. So be careful out there.
Written by Peter Henshaw – Editor BMF editor@bmf.co.uk