Riding in Jeopardy on the Asian Rim

The motorcycle is an essential form of transportation-nowhere is this possibly more true then in the emerging economies of Asia where increasing urbanization, infrastructure development, and personal wealth have led to astounding growth in the local motorcycle markets of China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other Asian countries within the past few years.

Unlike in the U.S. and other highly developed countries, the use of motorcycles in Asia as a leisure pursuit is largely ignored in favor of the sheer necessity for personal mobility in the face of smaller per capita purchasing power. In many parts of Asia today, motorcycles are the predominant motor vehicle seen plying through public roads with sales regarded as at or near their peak.

Unfortunately, motorcycle rights advocacy in Asia has largely failed to follow the growth in this amazing market. In China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines, evidence of the suppression of the rights of motorcyclists can be seen to varying degrees. Anti-motorcycling regulations have and continue to be established without public debate or the support of scientific evidence. Asian governments have succeeded in enacting these regulations largely as a result of the lack of any organized motorcycle rights advocacy groups in the countries concerned.

The regulations come in all sorts of forms. For example, in Taiwan, manufacturers are not allowed to build any motorcycle over 150cc and such may also not be imported. In China motorcycles are not allowed to travel between cities, and in the Philippines, motorcycles are not allowed or have only limited access to expressways.

Most frightening of these regulations are comprehensive bans on motorcycle use being implemented city by city in China. As of July 2000, 58 large- or medium-sized cities in China have banned motorcycles from their streets on the basis of unproven allegations that motorcycles are gross polluters, accident-prone, and block traffic. Forecasts indicate that if the present anti-motorcycle trend continues, China's motorcycle market, with annual sales of over ten million units today and a growth rate of just over ten percent per year will be dead by the year 2010.

Here in the Philippines, motorcyclists' rights advocacy still remains in its infancy (as is the case in much of Asia). While a motorcycle manufacturers' association has existed for many years, it has remained largely apolitical and unresponsive to challenges against motorcyclists' rights. The association represents the interests of the Japanese big 4 (Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki) with assembly plants and dealers in the country and various import dealers of Italian (Ducati, Italjet, Cagiva, Vespa), American (Titan), and Taiwanese (Kymco, SYM) motorcycles.

More recently, a small group of motorcycle clubs have banded together to challenge one of the most incomprehensible and useless anti-motorcycle regulations known to exist, the aforementioned total ban on expressway riding. The ban has been in place for over a generation, and apparently is the result of a single fatality involving a motorcycle-riding police officer (wearing a straw hat and no helmet) who tragically died while on escort duty for visiting U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon. Consequently, an embarrassed Philippine government established official policy that declared motorcycles as unsafe for use on expressways without any reference to, or basis on, scientific research to support the presumption of inherent lack of safety.

In some Asian nations such as Malaysia, motorcycle use is publicly supported by governments which encourage the use of motorcycles. In contrast, those governments that seek to eliminate motorcycle use produce an impact on society in innumerable ways, affecting traffic, safety, heath, and even the pollution. Motorcycles would normally be selected as the preferred form of transportation by certain income groups (in the absence of any severe restrictions on use). When motorcycles are not available, public utility buses, many of them dilapidated, unsafe, highly polluting, and poorly regulated, have become the predominant alternative.

Again, using the Philippine archetype, the appalling reality of safety of these public utility buses as "replacements" for restricted motorcycles shows that these governments have deftly chosen to disenfranchise the largely unrepresented motorcycling community in favor of politically active and organized alternatives. The tragedy of these "alternatives" becomes starkly obvious to the outside observer when they learn that motorcycles, at 32% of the entire motor vehicle population, accounted for less than 3% of the recorded accidents, while buses, at less than 1% of the motor vehicle population, accounted for 21% of all accidents in 1999.

Attempts today to nurture embryonic motorcyclists' rights advocacy groups or MRO's as part of the Philippine political agenda started some three years ago. The challenges are many and are representative of the entire region.

First, unlike in the US, legal challenges to government authority are considered highly unusual and rarely prosper. Culturally, people tend to accept government edicts with little or no questions, believing that governments know better or otherwise resigning themselves to the futility of openly challenging any imposition. Although local laws do have the mechanisms for addressing concerns such as those requiring government officials to respond to requests and inquiries of citizens within a set time period, this is by and largely ignored where a request or inquiry would reveal government's position as untenable.

Furthermore, despite the preponderance of motorcycles, the vast majority of the population blindly embraces a common misconception of motorcycles being inherently unsafe as a reflection of official, albeit largely unwritten government policy that motorcycles are dangerous vehicles. Asian government anti-motorcycle stands are encapsulated by the official written response of cabinet Secretary Vigilar of the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways who heads one of the agencies that has implemented and maintains the baseless ban here in the Philippines. In response to inquiries seeking to clarify the imposition and maintenance of the ban, the Secretary stated, "the tendency of motorcyclists to sneak in and out of traffic, combined with the joy and exhilaration [of] speed are a sure formula for disaster."

Much more can be said about the state of motorcyclists' rights in Asia but in sum, the situation is that the aforementioned quote is the typical response of anti-motorcycle governments in Asia. In these, less enlightened countries, the bias against motorcycles is not by any means stagnant. The chilling reality is that these governments have, by increasingly expanding the motorcycle bans, indicated that their agenda is clear: the eventual elimination of the motorcycle altogether.

James Mirasol
Vice President, The Freedom Riders of the Philippines