Goldwing Road Riders Association
Posted by Chuck Chase
on May 08, 2014
Rod Pender introduced Ken Kintner along with Craig and Tanya White, representatives of the Gold Wing Road Riders Association (GWRRA). They titled their presentation: “Share the Road” the thrust of which was alerting motorists to be aware of motorcyclists traveling the same highways and byways as they do.GWRRA, founded in 1977 with 80,000 members and 820 chapters in the US and 52 chapters worldwide, is the world's largest, non-profit, single-marque social organization for owners and riders of Honda Gold Wing/Valkyrie motorcycles dedicated to their motto, Friends for Fun, Safety and Knowledge. There are various levels, they explained, within the organization with 4 being the highest requiring riders to have a minimum 25,000 road miles and training in CPR and the use an electronic defibrillator.
In 1955, they said, there were only 450,000 motorcycles registered in the United States. Today there are over 10 million! They spoke on a number of topics: why it is so important that motorists should become more familiar with riders and their vehicles, motorcycle characteristics, who rides them, possible hazards, and why typically motorists collide with motorcycles.
Accidents with motorcyclists often occur with motorist who don’t see them in their blind spots or they may be traveling faster that one might think they are, they said. Research has shown that 75% of accidents involve another vehicle while 40% of accidents occur at an intersection. Motorist must remember that motorcycles are not as stable as automobiles since there have generally only two wheels and they are harder to identify in traffic, their speed is difficult to calculate, they can brake quicker than cars so the incidence of “rear end collisions” is greater, etc.
The different types of motorcycles, they mentioned, include 3-wheelers (classic trike – 2 wheels in the back, one in the front), a new design with 2 wheels in the front and one in the back (Spider), crotch rockets, ones with side cars, and motorcycles with training wheels which go down when they stop and retract when they move forward. Some cycles can be as small as mopeds.
The most common accidents motorists have include: turning across on-coming traffic, making left turns in an intersection, ignoring blind spots, following too close at unsafe distances behind a motorcycle. Some sage advice the speakers gave us were to look both ways when at a stop sign or light and then look both ways again. Another tip – be on the lookout for motorcycles and not just other cars.