Tennessee Had a Good Year

Tennessee started out its 2005 legislative year with a brand new team and a brand new Legislative Chairman. No files, no experience, no expertise. From day one, we knew we were going to be working at least 8 different bills. Talk about learning to swim by being thrown into the deep end of the pool! We had just come through some tough internal turmoil. A legislative team that was forged by turmoil was quickly formed. With help from MRF contacts and the most motorcycle friendly legislature on the planet we passed 7 of our 8 bills in the first half of the session (sessions last two years). The full freedom of choice helmet bill is taking a little longer.

The Proclamation of May as Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month was presented in the House and passed on Feb. 2. That was in conjunction with the first motorcycle lobby day Tennessee has seen in a decade. 87 members and friends were present and we visited with 45 of our 132 legislators. The proclamation was presented with about half of us standing on the floor of the House and the rest in the gallery. All Representatives joined as co-sponsors and the vote was unanimous. We left the chamber with a standing ovation from the Members. It made an awe inspiring start to a very productive year.

In 2003, we had gotten a law passed making strobing brake lights legal on bikes. Some of you may remember the story about the bureaucrat who was afraid that Memphis drivers would mistake us for hundreds of tiny two-wheeled fire trucks running around. This year, the City went back on its word to leave that issue alone and submitted a bill making blinking brake lights illegal in Tennessee. After a short but diplomatic talk with the sponsors of the bill about them publicly being against safety and in favor of motorcyclists being killed when hit from behind, they both decided to withdraw the bill. We honor them and thank them for their common sense.

Tennessee still had an apehanger law prohibiting any handlebar more than 15 inches above the seat. We showed them the sales tax revenue from all the “illegal” Big Dogs, Titans, etc. sold in Tennessee. We also wondered what compelling interest the state had in controlling one engineering parameter on one type of legal motor vehicle sold in the state. Federal standards seemed good enough for everything else. The House put up a surprising fight but we won it anyway. Apehangers are now welcome in this beautiful state.

We passed a good ROW bill that will be the basis for more legislation to follow. It says that regardless of any other traffic laws broken, it is separately illegal to violate the right of way of any stationary or moving object in or beside any roadway. That’s right, we gave telephone poles their own right of way. What it actually does is to remove the prosecutor’s argument that driving left of center or whatever was the only violation and the only thing the driver can be cited for. The downside here is that causing serious injury is only a Class D misdemeanor and a fatality is only a Class C. We will work on getting that raised along with additional ROW laws.

We passed a parade bill. It says that we can go lidless in a parade if we stay under 30 miles per hour and are 18 years of age or older. That means we can have a bare headed parade along the entire length of Tennessee. 635 lidless miles at 30mph anyone?

Then there’s the ventilated helmet bill. It will soon be legal for a motorcyclist in Tennessee to wear a certain type of ventilated helmet. One of our Senators got peeved because the helmet Tennessee forced him to wear made his scalp itch and made him hot and dizzy on a summer ride last August. Being a reasonable Senator, he wrote a bill making ventilated helmets legal for motorcyclists. These helmets are very similar to what kayakers wear. We got a good House sponsor and got the thing passed. It collected more amendments than a show bike has spokes but in the end, we eliminated nearly all of them. Getting it passed also generated a whole year of good stories to be told late at night with the biker’s favorite beverage in hand. The final rewrite of the bill was approved by the Dept. of Safety. Our toughest audience was the House where it passed 77/13.

Last and certainly not least, there are 23 types of military license plates available for cagers in Tennessee. They range from branch of service through medals from Congressional Medal of Honor through Bronze Star plus Purple Heart and retirement tags. It was a surprisingly tough fight but it was because these tags will cost the state some money. They are not self-supporting as the purchaser only pays an additional $5 initially and then the regular fee for subsequent years. We now have all 23 types available for motorcycles. Purple Heart tags are free for life to those who are qualified. That even took some doing.

The full helmet choice bill is taking a little longer. It started out with a negative fiscal note saying that additional head injuries would cost our Medicaid program $100,000+ in medical costs to the taxpayers. We had lost the helmet bill battle for the last 4 years because we could not get past the Budget Committee in the House with the negative fiscal note. We’ve always lost it in the first meeting with that committee. This year, we held it in that black hole committee for five different meeting and finally achieved the impossible. We convinced the Fiscal Committee to change the note to $3million positive. We did that by proposing an amendment that would put a $30.00 annual fee on any Tennessean wanting to ride free. They completely ignored the $23 million in taxes that sales of additional bikes will bring and the millions of additional tourism dollars Tennessee will have when we become a free state. That takes us to next year where we will fight against our own $30 amendment – we’ve got seven months to prepare and five months of session to do that. The politics surrounding this Budget Committee are anything but simple. We will prevail.

If one of the ways that the success of a state motorcycle rights organization (SMRO) is measured is by the sheer number of legislative victories, CMT/ABATE stands proud of our achievements. The success came by having first and foremost a group of legislators who are truly passionate about our issues and our freedom. We owe them a huge debt. We will partially pay that debt by getting out at election time and working as hard for these people as they have worked for us during this legislative session.

The other key to our success is the members and friends of CMT/ABATE. So many have helped and in an untold variety of ways. 87 members and friends were at the Legislative Day on Feb. 2. That impressed the legislators and made my job easier for the rest of the session. More than 60 members came to Committee Hearings. That was a key factor in our committee successes. So many made positive suggestions on our Yahoo Group or in a conversation, or found crucial data or thought up an argument to use or an idea to build on. My special thanks goes to Nancy Carr who is the hub of the wheel. She kept the whole thing organized and gave up weekend after weekend to work on it.

The frosting on the cake came for us when the Department of Safety gave us a $15,000 grant to implement Motorcycle Safety and Awareness Month. We now have 50 billboards in cities across the state with the motorcycle awareness message. We’ve also got signs on city busses and 8,000 bumper stickers. Our thanks to team members Rhonda Williams and Bob Edwards. They pulled off a miracle.

With all that’s happened in the last 5 months, I think we can make the case that Tennessee is a very motorcycle friendly state. By this time next year, we will also be a free state.

John R. Pierce

State Legislative Chairman

CMT/ABATE

MRF Rep. Tenn.

fogman@bellsouth.net