Right To Ride Gets a Re-vamp

Our partners over at Right To Ride have re-vamped their site, press release below, and RTWW can’t stress enough that riders show their support to Right To Ride and their efforts in ensuring Bikers rights are not over-looked.  Check out the Right To Ride press release below and head over to their site today and sign up..

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Back To Rights

9th June 2010

Right To Ride today launches its brand new website with a new address www.righttoride.co.uk dropping the “Write” and putting the “Right” back into Rider’s Rights.

Apart from looking all shiny and new, the main change is to give a direct opportunity for visitors to the site to comment on the news stories, the issues, the consultations and the campaigns that we are involved in.

Our main aims and objectives remain unchanged, however we are reiterating that at Right To Ride we can only do this by consultation with and support from riders; to define our position which is that there is always a line that we will not cross when engaging with authorities and decision makers, principles which we will not compromise under any circumstance.

Right To Ride’s, Trevor Baird, says, “Our thanks to all the clubs and individual riders that have supported Right To Ride over the past year.

We’ve been asked what added value can Right To Ride give to Northern Ireland motorcyclists.

The answer is simple: Right To Ride is a point of reference not just for bikers, riders, motorcyclists, whatever you ride but also for decision makers.  When the authorities put out consultations on road safety issues, training, legislation etc, they always look for a relevant organisation to discuss these issues with.  When bikers are given a raw deal or are unfairly treated by businesses or the authorities, they look for a fellow biker who can help them. In a nutshell, this is what we do.

The other change at Right To Ride is that you can sign up to support Right To Ride either as an Individual Rider, Motorcycle Club or Business, with no membership fees. As a supporter you will receive a supporter’s card.

We also have, “”Don’t Expect Us To Be Quiet!” stickers. You don’t have to be a supporter to receive these.

What’s coming up from Right To Ride?

Our reply to the DOE’s consultation on a Road Safety Strategy for Northern Ireland;

Our views on proposals regarding the introduction of the 3rd European Driving Licence Directive in Northern Ireland, as a follow up to our reply to the Northern Ireland consultation;

Keeping an eye on the review that Roads Minister Department for Transport in Great Britain has announced which will re-evaluate:

1) The manoeuvres carried out in both modules 1 (off-road) and 2 (on-road) and whether these manoeuvres could safely be conducted in the on-road test.

2) Other related motorcycle testing and training issues, including the options for training and testing for progressive access under the third driving licence directive and how any changes relate to wider proposals to improve motorcycle training and testing.

We have written to our authorities to ask if motorcycle riders, trainers, road safety groups, the wider public and others will have the same opportunity in Northern Ireland;

We are looking at a project in Europe which is proposing a force feed throttle to warn riders if they are speeding, where the throttle of a motorcycle can be controlled automatically and the rider has no control over the throttle and thus the bike.

Right To Ride is attending the 1st International Motorcyclists’ Conference to be held in Brussels at the end of June.

This conference is organised by the Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations, with the support of other rider federations from Canada and Australia, safety organisations, businesses and the European Commission.

Notes

The old website, www.writetoride.co.uk if technology works, will automatically route to the new website www.righttoride.co.uk so if you have linked to us or certain pages these links will go to the new website.

We have produced new logos which can be downloaded from http://www.righttoride.co.uk/?page_id=80

If you have linked to our RSS feed this has now moved to http://www.righttoride.co.uk/?feed=rss2

Also our email addresses have changed to reflect the new website.

General Inquires: info@righttoride.co.uk

Trevor Baird: trevor.baird@rightoride.co.uk

Elaine Hardy: research@righttoride.co.uk

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Making Connections..

Taking a blog break today to focus on building Ride The Wild Wind’s ‘social networking’ profile, as is the done thing these days.  One of the reasons RTWW came into being was to allow me (the Editor Nick) to connect with bikers everywhere to learn about all the cool stuff going on.  Motorcycling is such a diverse field to be involved in with so many types of bike, from sports, to adventure, cruiser, chopper, cafe, custom, dirt, and then to the challenges undertaken on them, on tracks, both smooth tarmac and loose gravel, touring around the world, endurance runs, drag racing, freestyle stunts, and the list goes on.

So in order to keep learning, and reaching out to motorcyclists across the globe, RTWW is getting a Facebook profile to better help the site make connections to bikers for whom the differing activities mentioned above, are their daily adventure.  RTWW already has a Twitter profile http://twitter.com/Bikers_RTWW which is great fun and hopefully Facebook will be another way of making friends and getting to know people who make bikes their hobby, passion, obsession, and essential part of their lives.

RTWW on Facebook will launch in a few days, back to regular blogging shortly.

Think Bike – Think Biker – Making the Video

Our partners over at Write To Ride have the making of video for the new Think Bike – Think Biker safety campaign we posted earlier in  the week.  This is a great video and hopefully a campaign that people will take notice of.  The TV advert is presented again below and head over to here on Write To Ride to see the making of.

Kawasaki Day! Part 2 – The Versys 2010

Our second Kawasaki offering for today
is the restyled Versys, again due in early 2010. The ‘jack of all
trades’ bike falls into the sports tourer category and is already
highly regarded as a consummate all rounder.

The well thought of commuter, tourer,
and simply get on and go bike, gets reworked body panels and
headlights for the new year as a simple refresh of the existing
model. The basic bike spec isn’t being altered it would seem but
then the old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ would apply.

This blogger is hoping for a lower seat
option as he unfortunately is a member of the short-arse biker club,
and would definitely consider the Versys as a ‘work’ bike… if my
feet aren’t dangling.

Check out the Kawasaki Versys promo
video below..

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Motorcycle Safety Survey for Northern Ireland

It's not very often that Government actually asks Motorcyclists for their opinion so seize this chance while you can.

Bikers are being asked to take part in a survey to hopefully help
make NI roads safer.  The fantastic weekend weather here in Northern Ireland had dozens of bikes out on the roads, and unfortunately a series of accidents occurred with two bikers killed and a third critically injured.

The Department of Environment wants Motorcyclists to give their views about why crashes happen and how they can be stopped which is great and we'd encourage all riders in NI to fill in the survey.

In 2007, 153 bikers were killed or seriously injured on NI roads, and any attempt by the government to reach out to the biking community for ways to help prevent that should be welcomed.

Motorcyclist's views will feed into a new road safety strategy which aims to cut road
deaths by a third each year and reduce children's deaths and injuries
by half on the 1996 – 2000 average.

So please visit www.motorcyclecasualtiesni.com to complete a short survey which looks
at rider attitudes, experience and behaviour on the roads.

Stay safe out there!

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Opening the shutters..

Almost ready to get this 'Ride The Wild Wind' VOX blog up and running.  I previously set one up on Blogger, but I wasn't impressed with it technically.  I've a personal blog on VOX and thought it would be good to shift my old posts across. 

So I've updated my profile so you know a little about me
and what this blog will be dealing with. As for the Ride The Wild Wind
website, it is currently under construction and I hope to 'launch' it
properly within a month or so. It will be updated throughout next week
with more page structure and email addresses for folks to send in their
pictures, stories, tips, etc.  Oh and for those reading this who aren't in NI pictures and stories can come from anywhere in the world, so send them in and showcase your pride and joy!

Hopefully this will be a fun
project and I'm looking forward to hearing from fellow bikers both from
N.I. and further afield. Biking in Britain has been getting a bit of
bad press lately, with some high profile speeding cases getting bikers
punished as if they were murders. Hell you get less of a sentence for
murder these days in Britain.

Despite the best attempts by UK
and Euro Gov's and Health & Safety enthusiasts, I don't see it is
fair to allow them to demonise us. With the site and the blog I would
like to showcase the good natured fraternity of motorcyclists, which is
one of my favourite aspects of being part of it all.  Even with my
crappy L-plates, which will be dumped soon, virtually every biker nods to acknowledge that I'm part
of the club.

I'm looking forward to hearing you're views and opinions on every aspect of being a biker, and I'll post my old Blogger thoughts here shortly..

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