READ THIS NOW…The DSA have at long last announced full details of how the 3rd European Driving Licence Directive will affect motorcyclists.

“Getting Started” -tells you everything you need to know about 2 wheels – order now from

http://backroadsrider.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/well-he-would-say-that-wouldnt-he/

Unfortunately, I agree with much of what he says, though I hear through the grapevine that Mr Penning has been very approachable by riders’ groups.

However, that approachability hasn’t stalled the imposition of the stepped licence regime which leaves the training industry and all new riders facing massive financial and logistical hurdles to jump. Details of how that will work appear to have been finalised during the lifetime of this government, rather than the last.

The Motorcycling Minister Says Yes To Motorcycling

In an exclusive interview conducted for the BMF’s membership magazine, Motorcycle Rider, Mike Penning MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, reveals himself as a motorcyclist keen to tackle the issues facing motorcycling today.

The wide-ranging interview, conducted by the BMF’s Government Relations Executive Chris Hodder, covered rider testing, the red tape challenge, type approval regulations and Britain’s strength in Europe.

The Minister, having first started riding motorcycles as an Army despatch rider, currently owns a 900cc Ducati Monster and a Royal Enfield and despite his own riding being limited these days, said he saw motorcycles as “an enormous benefit for the environment because of their ability to keep moving, give off less emissions and cause fewer traffic problems than a car.” He was however concerned at the “number of riders inappropriately dressed for riding” and that was one of the reasons that he was passionate about training and educating riders.

Tackled over the thorny problem of rider testing and licensing, the Minister said that he fundamentally disagreed with the previous administration’s knee-jerk reaction to the European legislation on testing. “I keep referring to a single test and I still think that’s the best idea. We have to create a test that

gives people the skills to enjoy their future riding and ensure that they are safe with other people on the road” he said.

On the test itself Mr Penning said that while he was frustrated at how long it has taken to get to the present revisions, “getting it wrong would be devastating to the industry, motorcyclists and, indeed, Britain. It’s not so much about getting people on to two wheels, but rather getting people to stay on two wheels – and stay safe,” he said. “In fact, one of the only television advertising campaigns I’m doing this year is focused on motorcyclists, because I’m committed to their safety” he added.

Tackling red tape had also been a priority he said and streamlining the SORN arrangements by removing annual renewals was just a start, adding that his red tape challenge (www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk) makes it easy for people to submit suggestions.

On European issues he said he had permission from the Prime Minister to “push back as strongly as possible” on anything he didn’t like and on the Commission’s latest Type Approval legislation he said he would do just that.

Questioned on our standing within Europe since the finance veto, the Minister said that all that will happen is that the European Parliament will realise that when we say no we mean no. “I get on very well with my European counterparts, but they know exactly where I stand” he said.

Note: Mike Penning is the Member of Parliament for Hemel Hempstead. After the May 2010 election he was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport. He was born in North London in 1957 and educated in Essex at Appleton and King Edmund Comprehensive Schools.

Note 2: Motorcycle Rider is the BMF’s quarterly membership magazine sent to all Individual Members and officials of affiliated clubs.

The impact on new riders has been well-publicised, what’s not been given the column inches is the serious impact this stepped licencing regime will have on motorcycle trainers.

At the moment (ignoring mopeds and scooters), training schools need 125s and a Direct Access bike, which must produce over 46.6hp (35kW) to be legal for use.

The revised situation is that all training schools WILL still need 125s, but they will also need a 395+cc machine producing between 34 and 46.6hp, and a 595+cc bike producing at least 54hp.

Most schools are equipped with twin cylinder 500s likes Suzuki’s GS500 or Honda’s CBF500. Spot the problem? Yes, the current Direct Access bike produces OVER 46.6hp, but aren’t over 595cc. So unless a training school has bikes like the ER-6 which they are using for DAS already, not only do their training bikes fail to meet the standard for the top licence tier but they are now TOO powerful for the intermediate licence step too.

At a single stroke, the DSA has rendered totally redundant the most expensive bikes a typical training school owns, AND requires them to buy TWO NEW BIKES to replace them – the lower powered intermediate bike and the bigger capacity, more powerful full power machine.

This is petty bureaucracy at its worst. The GS500 produces 47hp in its current incarnation; a miserable 0.4hp over the top. The CBF makes around 56hp. The difference between a 46.6hp bike and a 56hp bike is negligable – I doubt if the average rider would even notice the extra 9hp.

None of this is going to come cheap, and come at a time when bike test numbers have already collapsed because of the chaos that surrounded the implementation of the Module One off-road test. Some trainers are already leaving the industry, having decided that the likely costs of offering all three levels of training are punative.

In an ideal world where the DfT has some sympathy for the cost all this new legislation imposes on training schools, the DSA would give schools dispensation to run their slightly-too-powerful DAS bikes until they die a natural death of old age. Realistically, I can’t see that happening because it would technically be illegal – the trainee and the instructor would both be breaking the law.

As a cut-price option, presumably older carb’d models could be mechanically restricted via washers in the inlet tract or stops on top of the carb slides in the same way that the 33hp versions of some bikes are stifled, though how the DSA are going to tell if such a kit is in place I have no idea.

I wonder if there’s an opening here for the manufacturers of electronic restrictors that simply plug into the wiring loom. I’d be looking to punt out a restrictor which drops the full power 54hp+ bike down to under the 47hp limit, thus allowing training schools to buy just one replacement bike and switch the power output according to the course it’s being used for via the plug-in module.

But then again, that would be far too simple a solution.

“Details of a new motorcycle licencing regime to be implemented next year have been confirmed by the Driving Standards Agency.

The new rules will limit all riders under 19 to 125cc machines and under-21s to 47bhp.
Those aged 17-19 will only be able to gain a licence for a machine up to 125cc and 15bhp by taking a test on a bike of similar spec.

… At 19 they can qualify for a bike up to 47bhp by doing another test or undertaking additional training. This must be done on a machine over 395cc and between 33bhp and 47bhp.

They then face a further two-year wait – and yet another test or further training – before they can qualify to ride a bike of any power.

Alternatively, people over 24 can take a single Direct Access test to immediately qualify for bikes of any power. This test must be taken on a machine of at least 595cc and 54bhp.

Each step-up in power will involve a further test or training. A DSA release said: ‘The feasibility of the training option is currently being looked into; a final decision is yet to be made.’

The new regime is due to be implemented from January 19 next year.

It means 17-year-olds will face three exams or training sessions over a minimum of four years before the can ride an unlimited bike.

There are grave concerns about the impact it will have on new rider numbers. Paul Dickinson, Chairman of the Motorcycle Trainers’ National Council, said: “It’s going to be a problem just explaining the new process when people phone up. There is a concern it may put people off.”

At the moment there are two routes to a full motorcycle licence without power restrictions. Riders can either do their test on a 125 and spend two years restricted to 33bhp or, if over 21, they can do the Direct Access test on a machine of at least 47bhp and bypass the wait.”

A key phrase in the statement is that the DSA are still looking at the “feasibility of the training option”. My own guess is not to get too excited by the idea that the DSA might hand over the ‘certification rights’ to training schools to validate the next step up the licence ladder. Although they could use CBT where a qualified instructor delivers a training course and signs the CBT certificate to ‘validate’ the provisiona licence as a precedent, I’d be very surprised if that turns out to be the case. The DSA are apparently looking at a wholesale reorganisation of the structure of motorcycle instruction and training schools, with the downtrained instructor classification coming to an end.

The main concern for training schools is that instructors will presumably have to be qualified to take the new stepped training – I’m still waiting on that news. Whilst I’d take a guess that the DSA will allow existing DAS-qualified instructors to take the 33-47hp step, I’m sure the DSA won’t miss the opportunity to create a whole new instructor licence grade for the full-power bikes.

If this is the case, a year isn’t too long for the DSA to put the testing procedure in place at Cardington, and for training schools to actually be able to book slots to send their instructors to Bedfordshire to get qualified.

Last time we had a change of this magnitude was in 1996 when Direct Access was created, and in the event the introduction had to be delayed until 1997 as hardly any schools had had a chance to get their instructor cadre qualified.

“Learner riders in the Shetlands will now be able to take both parts of the motorcycle test without leaving the islands.

Since the introduction of the two part motorcycle test in 2009, candidates had to travel to the mainland to take the off-road, module one part of the test. But from this week the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) will be conducting module one tests at Anderson High School in Lerwick.

Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said:

“Our aim is to provide a local service that is both convenient for candidates and cost effective.

“We want to offer people the best service possible wherever they live so I am delighted that riders in the Shetlands will soon be able to take their whole motorbike test without needing to travel to the mainland.”

The move is part of an initiative to make module one tests available more locally by using non-DSA sites on a part-time, casual-hire basis.

At present the majority of module one tests are conducted from purpose-built off-road test centres. However, in rural or remote areas where candidates have to travel a long distance to take the module one test, DSA is working with motorcycle trainers to identify suitable local sites where tests can be delivered, such as car parks and motorcycle trainers’ sites.

The first module one tests at Anderson High School are taking place this week, and tests will subsequently be provided on an ad hoc basis depending on local demand.”

Whilst there probably aren’t that many motorcyclists taking a test in Shetland every year, it does make me wonder how it took the DSA so long to identify a need for a local site, given that they actually conduct Module Two there already.

I mean, travelling fifty miles for us mainland dwellers isn’t ideal, but at least the average L plater doesn’t need to take a twelve hour journey each way on a ferry to do a ten minute round the cones gymkhana!

The tankbag idea is long-overdue. Whilst the conventional underseat installation might suit long distance tourers who don’t swap bikes very often and also advanced instructors with only one bike, it’s pretty hopeless for basic trainers who are often hoping from bike to bike, or even for riders who like a new machine every year – having something that’s independent of the machine is far more convenient for most riders than a permanently-wired system.

It will be interesting to see if allowing their system to link to existing bluetooth headsets will revive their fortunes. I’m not sure how long Autocom have been around but I’m guessing twenty years at least. When they first appeared, they produced virtually the only bike-to-rider and bike-to-bike intercoms worth bothering with, and even as competition appeared they were able to trade on their quality, but that quality came very much at a price premium.

In the last few years, the appearance of bluetooth intercoms might have meant more riders are using intercoms but I suspect the competition has also eaten into Autocoms sales, for it turns out the original company was in trouble in late 2009 and went into receivership in December that year.

I have to admit that the demise of Autocom was one of the news stories that slipped past me, and in any case they were bought out a few weeks later in early 2010 by their newer rival Tecstar who manufacture the Starcom system, which incidentally explains why they had a joint stand at the NEC last year.

As a matter of interest, I originally approached Autocom for a training set up back in early 1997, when I realised the old 49MHz ‘baby alarm’ radios were totally inadequate for DAS and advanced training. They’d been fairly useless on 125 courses where at a 4:1 ratio with the instructor at #2 in the group of five bikes, the rearmost trainee was often out of radio contact, but at least all he had to do was follow the ‘ducklings’ ahead. With the 125s, I could always quickly overhaul the leader if he went the wrong way, but on a DAS course where the trainee was riding a bike as quick as mine, the rider was liable to be down the road out of sight and radio contact if I got stuck at a junction, and of course the same applied to post-test training.

So as the acknowledged leaders in the field, I looked up Autocom, who’d just started advertising for the bike training market as they spotted the need for decent sets. I introduced myself to their staff at one of the bike shows, and yes, they were more than happy to provide me with a trainer radio and two trainee sets. That was the good news. The bad news was the price. It wasn’t just chin on the floor stuff, I dislocated my jaw when I heard the price. They wanted well in excess of £2000. HOW MUCH? I could get a nearly-new GS500 for that and the VOX-operated 49MHz systems were around £100 each!

Given that two sets only had to receive and plug into an earhanger speaker, and didn’t need all the complicated VOX and noise-cancelling circuitry, this seemed exhorbitantly expensive as an Autocom bike-to-bike intercom was around £1000 per bike at the time.

And that turned out to be the GOOD news. After I’d got my heart rate back to normal and reset my jaw, and figured the bank account could just about stand it if I ate beans for the next 12 months, I asked if they offered a trial of the equipment. The answer to that was a straight no.

“We’re confident enough of our product that we don’t offer kit out for trial”.

Sadly for Autocom but not for my diet, that was the end of my involvement with their company, and truth be told, as I walked away they didn’t seem particularly bothered.

A few days later I contacted another company offering a set of three Motorola Handicoms operating on the short-lived and now defunct “short-range business radio” frequency, and next day by post arrived a complete three radio set on extended try-before-you-buy trial.

One Handicom came with VOX, a headset and battery eliminator for the trainer, and the other two were straight press-to-talk jobs with simple earpieces for the trainees. The whole job including battery packs and chargers still came to £800, which was pricy but at least it didn’t need a bankloan to purchase, which I duly did after a month or so.

In the event, I used the Handicoms for several years, and although they didn’t offer noise-cancelling, they performed fine apart from a steady diet of headsets which suffered regular fractured wires. I ditched the battery eliminator as it required wiring into the bike’s battery as cumbersome and inconvenient when I was hopping on and off different bikes. The only downside to that was the rate of consumption of rechargable batteries in the trainer set. I went through about five battery packs per day, and had to build a charging rig to keep on top of that.

I would have continued to use them for longer still, but soon after I’d bought the Motorolas it was announced that the SRBR frequency was to be withdrawn in 2003, making it illegal to use my £800-worth of perfectly functional kit. Does government ever think about the costs of changing legislation in this way?

Once again I headed off to Autocom to see what they could do. And once again, I came away disappointed. Although the noise-cancelling box had dropped in price, their PMR-based trainer/trainee sets still cost far more than the PMR alternatives which were rapidly dropping in price and offered a combination of decent range and affordability – in fact, I already knew I was able to source an instructor set and two trainee sets for around £140, which if I remember rightly was around one fifth of what Autocom were asking. The drawback was that just like the Motorolas the basic headsets didn’t have any noise cancelling circuitry so as speeds went up, so did the windnoise in the trainee’s earpiece.

So couldn’t I just pair their noise-cancelling box with my own PMR radios, I asked hopefully. Nope, turned out that wasn’t possible either, so once again Autocom lost a sale, and I equipped myself with the basic PMR radios and headsets for a fraction of the price.

Frustratingly Autocom’s kit couldn’t talk to mine even when trainees turned up with Autocom-supplied PMRs, even though we were both using standard PMR radios which should have been able to talk to each other. I discovered later the Autocom radios were locked on an obscure channel setting, presumably to make interconnection with non-Autocom kit difficult and encourage more sales.

(As an aside, at this point I did actually invest in the rival and much cheaper Starcom system which only needed a specific radio-to-box lead to get it paired with my existing radios, but never got on with it – too many leads, and I failed to get the VOX operation working properly.)

That takes the story forward to 2008, when I got hold of a Scala Rider Teamset, the paired rider and pillion bluetooth headsets to test. Now, these were not sold as a bike-to-bike intercom, but a quick check of range showed that with a clear line of sight we actually had around 25-30 metres of range. It doesn’t sound much but it was about the same as the old 49MHz sets, and in practice it proved enough for bike-to-bike use, with the sets re-pairing if the connection dropped, and with surprisingly good sound quality – much better than the PMRs. Unfortunately, the helmet mounting system used by Scala and the other bluetooth headsets to date doesn’t lend itself to slipping in and out of helmets – the plastic bracket and wiring is far too fragile – so I’ve not made the obvious next leap to the long range bike-to-bike bluetooth intercoms. I did actually by a set for my own use though.

Which brings us back to Autocom. Today’s press release reads:

“For those that want to maintain all of the features of their Autocom but
have the need to get off the bike and still talk to the pupil [which is virtually every instructor basic or advanced!] we do have the new Wire3A product, which is a Bluetooth dongle that basically replaces the extension lead. You will need a third party helmet or Bluetooth headset for the dongle to connect to, but it will provide all the performance and multi connectivity of the Autocom system with a wireless headset solution.

“We are looking at producing Bluetooth headsets in the future but these won’t be available until later this year. They will of course be available to
upgrade your system as required.”

I had a quick look at the relevant bit of the autocom website (http://www.autocom.co.uk/AutoComRiderTraining.htm). The top-of-the-range stuff is much more competitively priced than it was a few years back, with a tankbag-mounted instructor kit now costing under £500, and I found that their basic noise-cancelling headset with a PTT button and Kenwood PMR radio can be picked up for £170 (the 2011 brochure says £150 so either there’s VAT missing from the brochure or the price has gone up).

Even at the higher figure, that’s actually a reasonably competitive price as it includes the headset, and something I’ll think about as I need a new radio as the jack socket has gone on my spare.

But ultimately I’d like to go wireless. So listed under Options and Upgrades, I can buy a “Wire3A – This allows you to connect any of the instructor systems to another Vendors Bluetooth headset”. That way I could link my Scala Rider headset to a PMR radio, giving the convenience of a helmet-mounted wirefree set up for me, with the range of a PMR radio.

Unfortunately, it’s listed at £99, which seems a bit steep for a bluetooth receiver wired on the end of an audio/microphone jack. So for the moment, that idea’s on hold.

I’ll be interested to see if they can keep the price of their own bluetooth headsets reasonable when they appear later this year. If they can keep the complete headset the right side of £100 then Autocom might finally make a sale to me after 15 years of trying!

Courses and FLEXIBLE BOOKINGS now available in MARCH

As I update the site in early January, it’s blowing a gale and spring seems a long way off, but I’m now taking FLEXIBLE bookings for early spring. Keeping an eye on the weather forecast… and making a flexible booking allows you to see if the weather here in Kent looks good then grab those decent hours between the wind and rain. So why not make use of the first weeks of the riding year and have your new and improved skills ready to use when the summer arrives?

I’ve got four days free in the next week, so why not look through our selection of courses to find one that fits you?

Our ‘Survival Skills’ two day course covers a broad base of core riding skills, from rural roads to urban centres and will enhance your skills to cope with just about any situation you’re likely to find yourself in.

For the sporting rider, our one and two day ‘Bends’ and ‘Double Bends’ courses will show you the best way to despatch the twisties with style, whilst our unique ‘Hairpin’ course (yes, there are a few in the south of England) will point out the correct way to deal with mountain roads before you’re faced with a 100 metre drop beyond the guardrail.

If you’re a new or returning rider, we’ve ‘Confidence Builder’ and ‘Creaky Rider’ courses for you too whilst for commuters there are our ‘City Riding’ and ‘Collision Avoidance’ courses.

I’m still running courses in France for a couple more weeks – until the clocks go back – you can take the ‘Bends’ or the ‘Hairpin’ course in France for no extra cost – you just pay your cross-channel fare.

SPECIAL MONEY-SAVER OFFER – training for just £60:

We’re all feeling the pinch, so why not take a two hour
‘Bends Basics’ course for just £60?

We’ll look at the basics of advanced cornering technique, including positioning for view and for safety, how to plan your line round a bend, how to avoid being surprised by a tightening corner, countersteering, and throttle control. The course will cover the core advanced cornering theory, then we’ll spend time riding round some of the more scenic parts of Kent to let you try the theory out. This course may be run 2:1. Check out the website www.survivalskills.co.uk

It seems I ticked the wrong box when making the domain renewal just before Xmas day, and having gone off for a New Year holiday into a wifi blackhole, I didn’t discover this until the weekend, and couldn’t fix it whilst I was away.

However, I’ve been online this morning and hopefully it’s now sorted. Although the site is still showing ‘suspended’ it should be back online in a matter of hours. I’ll put out another update as soon as I know.

Thanks for your patience.