“Euro politicians want to ban motorcycles”

Brussels politicians want us off the roads, according to the president of the Association of European Motorcycle Manufacturers.

European law makers intend to ban all motorcycles from the roads for good because they view them as too dangerous, ACEM president Stefan Pierer told MCN.

Pierer said: “The politicians in Brussels are a big problem. They would like to forbid riding on public roads. This is something I honestly believe they would like to do.”    

Pierer, who is also boss of KTM, said Brussels politicians had zero understanding of how to improve safety for motorcycles and saw getting rid of them altogether as the path of least resistance.

“The problem is that the decision-makers in Brussels don’t understand motorcycles,” he said. “Only maybe 1% or 2% of them ride motorcycles, and the rest don’t understand anything about the risks, so they just think they are dangerous.”

UK Government has already proved powerless to stop a series of increasingly restrictive Europe Union licensing directives making it more difficult to take up motorcycling.

Pierer’s fears were shared by the UK Motorcycle Industry Association. Craig Carey-Clinch, MCI’s policy director, accused the European Commission of using “spin” to paint a negative view of motorcycle safety.

He said key types of motorcycles had been excluded from a review of casualty reduction to arrive at pessimistic conclusions.

“They talked about rises in motorcycle casualties when in fact what they were doing was excluding all bikes under 50cc,” he said. “If you include those, total powered-two-wheeler casualties are actually going down.

“This is the sort of thing makes people like Stefan quite concerned about what’s actually going on there” he added. “We need to step up our campaigning efforts within Brussels. We’ve got to keep our eyes on them basically.”

Get MCN, on sale tomorrow, to read our full exclusive interview with Pierer.