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France: Massive Motorcycle Protest Planned For March |
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File under France Opinion Protests
Author: Mike Werner
Location: Normandy, France
Via: FFMC
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The French motorcycle riders are angry, again. We've always been a wonderful cash-cow for successive governments, with biker rights being trampled upon.
Now, a new law that comes into effect in April, will allow any LEOLaw Enforcement Officer - any kind of Police Officer: municipal, state, federal or national., based on only a suspicion, to take away your motorcycle, have it towed (at your expense) to a garage, and have a technical person check out your motorcycle for nonconformity.
The law does not stipulate that the person checking out your motorcycle needs to be technical proficient with motorcycles; any car mechanic is allowed to do the job!
After you have "repaired" your motorcycle to put it into a "legal" state, you will need to have it verified again by the so-called experts. You will need to pay for everything, the towing, the initial expert review, the repairs and the validation by the experts. If your motorcycle is towed, and found to be conform, too bad for you, you still need to pay!
The French government is doing this, according to them, to ensure that the motorcycles are in good working condition. But official statistics have shown that less than 1% of all motorcycle accidents are caused because the motorcycle was not properly maintained (source: MAIDS  ).
So why bother if it's not to generate money. After all, we bikers aren't enough voters to really count, and we have the money to pay ... apparently. 
So on the weekend of 21 and 22 March, the FFMCFederation Francaise des Motards en Colere - Angry French Biker Association, an association of bikers fighting for the rights of motorcycle riders is organizing a massive protest ride all over France. They demand that the law gets changed to exclude motorcycle (the way it was before), or at the very least, have motorcycle experts look over the motorcycle in question, and only after the insurance company makes the request (ie after an accident).
Let's see if the protest rides will result in anything. Having 1000's of bikers close down Paris usually does have some results....
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