Proposed changes to the use of powerful motorbikes by novices, including 50-year-old enthusiasts, could be over the top, reckons Elspeth Mclean. And if Harry Duynhoven is determined to be a killjoy about things, then why not a law prescribing "sober walkers'' for tipsy pedestrians.
If you have never been on a motorcycle, it's hard to explain the attraction.
There's something about the throb of a decent-sized bike that never ceases to thrill. In the days when traffic cops used to ride supreme, I was almost tempted to break the law, just to hear the roar of a BSA Lightning turning up at the scene of the crime.
"Just start with sex and go on from there,'' an aficionado said to me once when we were pondering the attraction question.
Yes, it is sexy, but it also seems carefree, risky and slightly bad. And it says youth, or lost youth, or youth you might have wished you had but never did.
It's easy to conjure up a stereotype of the over-30 novice motorcyclist who is causing concern to Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven because he reckons too many of them are having crashes.
Mine is a guy closer to 50 than 30 with a beer gut, a missus (who has, not to put too fine a point on it, let herself go), a boring job, kids virtually flown the coop and a mortgage all but paid off.
The sort of guy who wakes up one morning, probably a Saturday, knowing that the most exciting thing which will happen to him that day is a wrestle with the lawnmower, possibly followed, triumphantly, by a cold beer.
Wrestling with the missus . . . well, that was fun once. When they were young. But she's not that keen now and he's got used to that.
When he bothers to think about it, it seems his life is chugging relentlessly to the rest-home and the closest he might get to rebellion could be singing Born To Be Wild at the community sing-along there. Deep down he knows the reality is more likely to be endless verses of Little Boxes.
Sometimes, he'd like to feel alive, as long as it didn't take too much effort. And then he gets a blinding insight. (It's either that or the aftermath of one too many with the boys at the pub last night.) His life would be complete if only he had a motorbike.
He's never ridden one before, but he likes the loudness of a Harley and a few of his mates have got them. Sucking the gut in a bit he might squeeze into some leathers and if the bike was big enough he'd look well, sexy might be going too far, but powerful, commanding even.
And so the die is cast. My mythical bloke is heading for obliteration or injury at the very least. Or is he?
Harry doesn't want him to. He is introducing measures, including restrictions on the use of powerful motorbikes by novice riders and changes to the licensing system, which he hopes will cut what he calls the high crash risk of novice riders.
Harry says that since 2001 there has been a 28% increase in licensed motorcycles and this figure is expected to grow with predicted rising fuel costs.
Over the same time "there has been a staggering 80% increase in motorcycle casualties''. Last year, the number of deaths was 10% of the road toll.
That may be true, but is there an element of overkill in Harry's concern? The number of motorcyclists killed in 2006 (the most up-to-date details I could find) was 38, also 10% of the road toll.
Back in 1988, when presumably our population was lower, 146 people died in motorbike smashes, 20% of the total road toll.
For the years 1981 to 1990 the yearly toll was always more than 100 and the number of people injured every year was often more than 3000, hitting almost 4000 in 1985.
In 2006, by comparison, there were 1017 people injured, comprising 7% of the total road injuries for that year.
In the years between 1980 and 2006, there have been only eight years when the number of motorcycling deaths have been under 10% of the total road toll.
When you consider death and injury according to age groups, the oldies show up more frequently now, reflecting the move to motorcycling by born-again bikers or those like my stereotype.
Road safety authorities will say that any death or injury is one too many and who could argue with that? But the recent motorbike totals aren't that different from those for pedestrian deaths (although of course, since most of us are pedestrians, the risk of death or injury for walkers
is not as high).
Forty-four of them died in 2006, 11.3% of the total road toll, with 960 suffering injuries (6.3% of total road crash injuries).
In its Crash Fact Sheet on pedestrians for 2007 the Ministry of Transport points out that intoxication increases risk to pedestrians, but drinking and walking is considerably safer than drinking and driving.
"It is difficult to develop countermeasures to prevent excessive drinking and walking. However, any changes to the infrastructure that increase the safety of pedestrians in general is [sic] likely to also increase safety for intoxicated pedestrians.''
How unimaginative. What about a law insisting that anyone imbibing and walking must be accompanied by a sober walker?
Still, the reluctance to clobber the drinking walker could be helpful to my stereotype. If he wants to be free of moves to control his desire to be carefree, risky and slightly bad he could forget the Harley, have a few more drinks at the pub on Friday night and stagger home (carefully avoiding changes to the infrastructure if he can recognise them).
It won't make him sexy, but belting out Born to Be Wild as he zigs and zags on his merry way, he won't care.
- Elspeth Mclean is a Dunedin writer.
