Koz
Expert Class
Posts: 304
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posted August 20, 2002 09:05 AM
 Edited By: redelk on 20 Aug 2002 10:18
Deal's Gap Maybe History!
Read this post!
http://www.gixxer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=27;t=018385;p=
Koz
  
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redelk
Moderator
Please... speak to the hand.
Posts: 3212
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posted August 20, 2002 09:25 AM
The "federal funds" comment is correct. They attempted to ban bikes from Lakeshore Drive in Chicago until it was pointed out that it was also a "highway" and federally funded (by AMA lawyers). Since Deal's Gap is located on US highway 129, state and local laws can't no superseed federal regulations on federal property.
Federal laws allow any properly registered and licensed vehicle to operate on any US interstate and highways. Plain and simple.
BTW - the "motorcycle death toll" on those area highways (US 129 and the parkways) is more like 8 or 9 for the year.
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There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
-Ernest Hemingway
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slug
Pro
Out in search of my mind...
Posts: 1433
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posted August 20, 2002 02:06 PM
8 or 9 per year, how many thousands and thousands of bikers ride that road every year totally safely?
i hate nanny state...
i want to be able to CHOOSE to risk myself.
though not my place to risk someone else, which is why semi's ought to be banned through there.
anyway it is the nature of government to grow larger and larger until overthrown or the people live in misery. see "rest of civilized world"
  
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TurboBlew
Moderator
BUSY DOING THE SCHIAVO
Posts: 4590
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posted August 20, 2002 04:49 PM
Personally I wont spend another dime in Blount county. They have made it abundantly clear they do not want sportbikes there...period. They will use underhanded and sneaky tactics to "net" every sportbike for some kind of ticket or infraction. A thinnly veiled money making venture.
It wasnt so bad a few years back. Times have changed. There are much better roads in the area that a less patroled and traveled.
Ill just ride alittle further to West Virginia were there is NOBODY on the roads and the folks are happy to see you!
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Official Charter Member of the RIDERS OF KAWASAKI MEMBERSHIP REVOCATION CLUB
Also a BadAss Internet Forum Moderator 4 Hire!! Come at me brah!
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eddie
Parking Attendant
Posts: 11
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posted August 20, 2002 05:09 PM
Wonder how many unsolved killings, robberies & rapes took place in that State during the same period! The filthy stinking low life slime ass scum politicians need a issue to promote their image.
They don't give a rats ass about how many motorcyclist died.
Where is this half assed AMA when it is needed? We have already been given a speed restriction that a chip will eliminate.
We NEED to solidify in all of our bike related endeavors. We NEED to have ONE location on the NET to represent Sport Bike riders!!!
Only UNITY will protect our right to ride!
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zx11_12
Expert Class
Posts: 207
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posted August 20, 2002 09:31 PM
TurboBlew
Your welcome here in WV anytime. Watch the gravel and the coal trucks though. 
Steve
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"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
PJ O'Rourke
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Zx12RNinja
Novice Class
Posts: 59
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posted August 21, 2002 04:37 PM
Can't happen, Federal ground.
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Lead, Follow, Or get the hell out of the way.
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DaveInDaytona
Pro
Posts: 1696
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posted August 21, 2002 04:48 PM
From this article http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=901984
BLOUNT COUNTY (WATE) -- Two more victims felt the bite of The Dragon Sunday and are in the hospital. They wrecked their motorcycles while driving a stretch of U.S. 129 in the mountains of southern Blount County.
The highway motorcyclists call The Dragon snakes around Great Smoky Mountain National Park to the North Carolina line. Now that the highway's been ranked in a nationwide biker survey, some worry it's going to get worse before it gets better.
It's been another dangerous summer for the highway that features 318 curves in eleven miles with zero side streets. Thrill-seekers love it, but nearly two dozen cyclists have had serious wrecks this summer. Two died.
Memorials to these riders have been placed as sad reminders, but they haven't been a deterrent to cyclists like Rodney Pettit, who came from Wisconsin just to slay The Dragon.
"Driver beware, you know?" Pettit said. "You get bit by The Dragon, you get bit by a curve."
"Whoops," he added nonchalantly.
The state has tried to make The Dragon safer with more patrols. Fifteen drag-racing citations were issued in a crackdown two months ago.
The speed limit has also been lowered by 10 miles an hour. Officially, it is now 30 miles an hour, but bikers don't seem to be paying mind to it.
"I wouldn't be coming up here if it was only 30 miles an hour," Pettit said. "Guess you can't have enough patrolmen covering the place."
At the Deal's Gap Motorcycle Resort, which features a board covered with snapshots of people who got bit, bikers say cracking down on everyone isn't the answer.
Linda Aughenbaugh from Ohio, who took up motorcycling three-and-a-half months ago, plans to take it easy. But she figures others won't.
"If they're doing something that's going to hurt somebody, then, yeah, they should do something," Aughenbaugh said. "If they're just out to hurt themselves, let 'em go."
The bikers 6 News spoke with worry about the stepped up patrols and they worry even more about the prospect of the state banning bikes on the highway entirely. THP doesn't know what to do, officers say, and they're taking suggestions.
One of the bikers injured over the weekend is stable at UT Medical Center. THP has not released the name of the other.
More Info
Dragon Facts:
Five bikers are known to have died on U.S. 129 between 1995 and 2001.
Two bikers have died so far in 2002.
Bikers first started promoting U.S. 129 as a tourist attraction exactly 10 years ago next month.
The next year, Tennessee lowered the speed limit to 40 miles an hour.
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DaytonaSportbikes Forum
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redelk
Moderator
Please... speak to the hand.
Posts: 3212
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posted August 21, 2002 06:32 PM
You'd think the politicians would "do the math". All one has to do is add up how much revenue is generated for area businesses AND how much state and local taxes are generated for their little "coffers"... by visiting and local motorcyclists. JUST THE MOTORCYCLISTS ALONE!
Now compare those amounts to what would be generated from fines. Don't forget to figure in the lost revenue for the area businesses (due to layoffs and closings?). While they are at it, they can figure in the lost taxes from that reduced revenue AND combine that with the reduced employee payroll taxes, business fees and taxed (can't tax a business that's no longer in business).
After all that is done, allow them to get on their pulpit and tell us how they "saved lives". Oops! The fatality rate didn't go down? It stayed the same? It actually went UP? Oh well. At least our unemployment numbers went up and we're paying out more in unemployment and welfare benefits for all these folks we put out of a job.
It's kinda like the tobacco settlement. They make the manufacturers of a legal product pay millions into their little fund, tax the consumer more that just about any other product sold and then tell us we need to stop smoking. Yeah, right. Since they have become so spoiled with settlement and tax money from cigarettes, the forget that all that income is based on people... SMOKING! If everybody stopped smoking all that tax money AND all that settlement money is GONE!
Ain't this a great country, or what?
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There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
-Ernest Hemingway
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DaveInDaytona
Pro
Posts: 1696
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posted August 21, 2002 08:12 PM
Maybe we can ride in Rockford, TN, they had enough of their police department.
From American Motorcyclist, the magazine of the AMA:
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Police Force Disbanded
A small town Tennessee police department with a history of run-ins with motorcyclists has been disbanded, in part because of those tragic incidents.
In a meeting held June 5, the City Commission of Rockford, Tennessee, voted to disband the city's four member police department immediately.
Rockford is a town of 650 residents in Blount County, about 15 miles south of Knoxville. The town gained attention of the AMA, and motorcyclists nationwide, when allegations surfaced that Rockford Police Sgt. James Ray Johnson had intentionally swerved his police cruiser into the path of an approaching motorcyclist on Old Knoxville Highway on March 10, 2001 killing the rider instantly.
The motorcyclists, Philip Laton, 27, a father of three, was a corrections officer on his way to work at the Juvenile Detention Center in Knoxville when he was killed. Johnson has been charged with vehicular homicide and is free on $25,000 bond pending trial.
That was the third serious incident involving the small police force in less than a year. Previously, a woman had been killed when a police car struck the vehicle she was driving, and another motorcyclist was seriously injured in a high speed pursuit involving the department.
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I followed this story when it first came out. The police in car video was what showed what really happened. Sad times, but it's something that the people have spoken there.
Red, that tobacco thing burns me. I am the government and I allow you to grow and sell tobacco legally and I tax the hell out of you when you sell it. But when a certain group of people complains I sue you for something that I told you that you could do. Lots of people are getting rich of that deal, and it ain't the people that are smoking. I don't smoke, never have, never will BUT if you want to that's your choice and it's cool with me. Just if it effects you when you get old (and I hope it doesn't) please don't be one of the people that trys to blame someone else for the choice you made. Same with people suing gun companies, car companies, motorcycle companies........
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DaytonaSportbikes Forum
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redelk
Moderator
Please... speak to the hand.
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posted August 22, 2002 06:56 AM
The only thing I will EVER be a victim of is... MYSELF. PERIOD!
Weather it's pack of smokes or hot coffee from McDonald (and now it's burgers & fries)... this BS just screams for tort reform. I've done jury duty on an insurance case the runs along this same line of thinking. We actually ask the judge if we could make the ones that brought the suit pay money to the insurance company (we couldn't).
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There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
-Ernest Hemingway
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ZHooligan
Moderator
Post Whore Extraordinaire!
Posts: 3829
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posted August 22, 2002 08:12 AM
Unfortunately elk you are one of the rare people on the jury! It would be an interesting system if the loser had to pay the court costs and legal fees for the winner!!
Dave.. Regarding the tobacco industry It is pretty amazing. According to statistics, the tobacco companies make an average of 21 cents on a pack of cigarettes. It varies in all of the different states, but between the feds and state the taxes money / profit for the government is somewheres between a $1.00 and $2.00 or even more!! The government makes 5 to 10 times more on a pack of cigarettes then the tobacco companies!! And then the states and feds sue them and make even more!! I don't smoke, my mother died from lung cancer (4 packs a day for 40 years) and it was her fault.
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To those who do not count their life in years, but in how life
has touched them in the past and how much it can hold in the
future; -- Youth is forever.
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princesskiwi
Administrator
MISTRESS of SMACK
Posts: 7688
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posted August 22, 2002 03:01 PM
Well then...
When I win the lotto and buy my Island and build the track around it, y'all can come over and ride with me.
Either that or we all can pool our $$$, buy a small country and make our own rules.
Like - NO CAGES.
Cheers.
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