Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of DirtBikes.com, its parent company, VerticalScope, Inc., or its employees:
Here we are, in a sport surrounded by dirtbike detractors, and we’re trying to figure out who the really bad guys are and what started the perennial land use fight in which we find ourselves in the first place?
A lot of people think that our land-use hassles started when we got a real bad image in the movies and TV. Not so. The real problems started when dirtbiking became popular and a lot of people started getting into the sport. Up until the mid-1960s, only a handful of certifiable lunatics were involved in our sport … and most of the equipment was modified streetbikes with knobby tires.
The Start of It All
Around the late 1960s, real dirt bikes started to appear on these shores from Europe; Huskies, Bultacos, Maicos, Greeves and so forth. People bought these things like crazy. And then the Japanese manufacturers noticed this and started to bring out their own products to meet the needs of this new dirtbike market.
Honda sold a gazillion little trail bikes for low bucks that would take the abuse of a typical American kid. Yamaha brought the first real Japanese dirtbike–the DT1–in 1967. The rest of the Japanese manufacturers quickly followed suit with all kinds of poor handling, low-cost and ultra-reliable dirtbikes.
In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the boom had started. Dirtbikes were everywhere. They were affordable and more fun for the dollar than just about any kind recreation imaginable. Entire families bought dirtbikes. Dad had a racer, mom rode around on a 100 or 125 trail bike and the kids ran all over the place with little bikes using chromed shocks.
Oh, it was fun and affordable. All you had to do was go out your favorite riding area with a 5-gallon can of gas and you could ride around till you were good and sweaty and tired.
From 1970 through 1975 the dirt bike industry went wacko. Fortunes were made. Small companies became huge companies. The Japanese foo-foo bikes that used to be the brunt of jokes, were now excellent. Trail riding and racing was happening all over the country.
But nobody, least of all the industry that rode the wave of the dirtbike boom, had done any homework. They just sold your units and plenty of spares. The profit on a dirtbike was enormous compared to a comparably priced street bike.
A European motocrosser from 1974 sold for about $1500. The actual cost of the bike delivered to this country averaged about $700. With a typically priced street bike, a dealer made about $250 profit and the distributor made about $350, so you can see there was plenty of money to be made with dirtbikes.
The margin was even greater with pseudo-dirtbikes, or the early enduro general/dual-purpose bikes from Japan. The true manufacturing costs of some of these were running around the $350 to $400 range.
So here we were, buying all manner of fun dirt machines, and enjoying ourselves immensely. But where? Mostly on public land, as it turned out, in the deserts, woods, back-country and trails of this nation.
A full-scale invasion like this was impossible to ignore, especially when a large number of these dirt machines were piloted by people who had no concept of courtesy on the trail, or how to act at the controls of a powerful machine.
The industry had made no provisions whatsoever to handle the glut. No land was purchased and set aside. No informational booklets were given to purchasers of new dirtbikes to tell them how to handle themselves. Bikes were so loud and noisy in fact, the industry was literally forced into using mufflers by magazine tests, which I’m proud to say, I did the first one.
The Reaction
Dirtbikers started getting chased off land, both public and private. Lawyers licked their chops and lawsuits start to proliferate. The motorcycle industry still did nothing.
One moment, please. I stand corrected. They did do something! They brought out ATVs, all-terrain vehicles, as they are commonly known. These cute little machines were designed with one thing in mind: make them so simple to ride that a gopher could be taped to the gas tank and make the ATV move forward.
It takes a certain amount of skill to ride a motorcycle at any speed. It took almost no skill to make an ATV move forward. No clutch, automatic shifting and electric starters. Now the hills, trails in the desert were inundated with know-nothings on ATVs to compound the problem. Even the most ill-mannered dirtbiker looked aghast at the antics of the new ATV crowd. Still, the industry did nothing, except damp more and more dirt machines and other cookie-cutter models.
It took Big Brother to shake the industry by its roots. Do you recall the uproar over the Ban-The-Three-Wheeler witch hunt? In 1987, the Consumer Product Safety Commission voted Tuesday to confirm an agreement negotiated by the Justice Department to ban the sale of ATVs. Rather than fight on the grounds that the machines themselves were not inherently dangerous, the industry simply switched to selling four-wheeled ATVs. The fear of litigation and government sanctions backed them into that corner.
Which brings us to today.
We are surrounded by enemies who are literally trying to kill our sport as we know it. We’re being attacked from all sides and being accused of destroying everything from the ozone layer, to the mating habits of rodents. Finally, the industry is starting to react. Is it too late? Are the axioms they are taking the correct ones? Who are the real enemies? Stand back. You might not be ready for the answers.
TOP 10 Enemies List
10. The Sierra Club. No doubt about it, this group of 1.2 million hard-core eco-freaks has the clout to make life miserable for us. With membership starting at $33 per year, they start their work chest with over 30 million bucks! With this money, they hire top level lawyers and use the legal system as a battering ram. They also use their PR flacks to feed misinformation to the public via media that follows their every word.
When the Sierra Club cannot find a way to stop something, they’ll spend a fortune to find some sort of endangered “whatever” to halt things in their tracks. They have even been accused of allegedly planting endangered species in an area and fabricating a find.
9. Radical eco-freak groups like Earth first. This is the dark side of the environmental movement, ones that mainline groups like the Sierra Club public decry, but support in spirit, and possibly funds.
Yes, these are the clowns who spiked trees, string piano wire across trails at neck level and put sugar in the gas tanks of construction equipment. They are often people with criminal backgrounds, or rejects who never graduated from the mind wasting nuisances of the 60s. They look like characters out of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers underground comic books.
While not having any real answers to the problems that beset this planet, they operate out of rage and hate, striking out as vandals to booby-trap the wilderness. They are scum, pure and simple, and she should be exposed as a true menace.
8.The BLM and Forest Service. These two don’t like each other a whole lot. Why? Because there has been a movement afoot to merge the two into one group, under the arm of the BLM. Recent actions of the BLM are clear cases on how they operate. They tend to ignore federal regulations and go about their own business in their own way to harass off roaders.
7. Liberal Democrats. I don’t need to get into politics, but as a group the Lib Dems are voting with the eco-freaks on land closures, restrictions, personal freedoms, more government control and less personal responsibility for actions.
6. Feinstein and Pelosi. These two politicians from California work hand-in-hand with the most radical environmental groups you can imagine, receiving huge donations from groups like Earth First.
5. Newcomers to the sport. Much of our grief is caused by people new to the sport. They go out and buy a dirt bike or an ATV because it looks like a neat thing to do, and proceed to fire up their new machine and ride all over the neighborhood without ever thinking about their actions. These are the people who go riding in shower shoes and shorts, with no helmets, and think it’s a great idea to chase livestock.
They put a few coolers on their quads, plus at least one more person, and then they drink a whole lot of beer before they go riding, and even more beer when they stop. What happens when they crash the entire load? Why, they go running to their friendly lawyer and sue everybody from the landowner, to the builder of the fence they just ran into. Think back to how stupid you were when you first started riding. Yep, you were pretty dumb. Is it reasonable to expect anything more from any new rider?
4. Many riders under 16. This is not meant to be indictment of all young people, but if you think about it, very few 12- or 13-year-old people are placed in positions of authority. This is because the process of growing up is a slow and painful one. Most of the generation riders from the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s paid their own way. The minibike boom started in the early ’70s and recently peaked by the late ’80s. I recall my own problems with my son, many years ago, when I came home from work early and found him running up and down the street on his RM80. He got his butt tanned and was grounded for a long time, as well as being assigned many unpleasant chores for a month.
Right across the street from my house, a 15-year-old kid received a used YZ80 as a Christmas gift from his dad, and the kid immediately took off the muffler and fired up the obnoxiously loud bike and rode around the neighborhood. When his father was informed about this, his reply was that the kid was just having fun and wasn’t hurting anybody. Nobody except hundreds of people in the neighborhood forming horribly bad opinions about dirtbikes every time this little pinhead went by their house.
3. Lawyers. Predators all. The lawyers salivated when they discovered that millions of people were running dirt bikes and ATVs. The treasure chest was popped open and the Pirates put out the shovels and the burlap bags. Racer gets hurt and his insurance company looks at the potential debt with six zeros, then decides to put a lawyer on the case, rather than pay out the money. The lawyer then sues everybody even remotely connected with situation. The helmet maker, the bike builder, the race promoter, the sponsors, the guy who dragged the track, the person who put up the chain-link fence, the flagman, the man who dragged the track with the tractor and any other racers on the track.
As the legal fees skyrocketed, insurance costs kept pace. Did you ever wonder why gate fees are so high now days? It’s to pay for the increased insurance costs, which are related to higher legal fees, which are directly related to involvement of more and more lawyers. Think about it.
2. The motorcycle industry. For their tardy reaction to a problem that could have been seen by a nearsighted mole; they did almost nothing.
1. Number One. Who is the biggest enemy of dirtbikers everywhere? It’s us. You and me. How? Why? Because of our attitude, our amazing lack of interest in keeping land we have open to us. Our almost complete belief that things will stay as they are forever. We truly deserve the number one enemy of dirtbiking. We form groups to fight the land abuse problem and what do we get? A few hundred people here and there show up for some sort of a meeting. You want to keep getting your land taken away? Fine. Remain uninvolved. Let the Sierra Club have over one million dues-paying members, and keep our organizations working with peanuts.
Get off your dead butts! Your very way of recreational life is being threatened because you won’t take a stance. We have never counter-attacked our enemies. We know who they are, and it now becomes a matter of priorities. The days of sitting back and hoping that your favorite riding area will be open next week are over. We either fight back or risk losing it all.
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