It's Black Tuesday: Kids' bikes officially illegal!
Youth ATV and Dirt Bikes Banned by CPSIA
Posted February 10 2009 11:43 PM by Jesse Ziegler
Filed under: News



Effective today, February 10, 2009, all youth ATV and motorcycles are banned from dealer floors, service shops and made illegal to sell by anyone in the United States.


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This is actually happening. It’s not made up or exaggerated. You cannot buy a youth (defined as being intended for children 12-years old and younger) motorcycle or ATV. You can’t even buy one from a private party or your own parents.

That means no more models such as the Honda CRF50—long standing as the largest selling production motorcycle in the world (versions of it labeled as Z 50 and XR 50 included). How scary is that?

The story has been unfolding for weeks. If you’re just stumbling upon this now, here’s a blog from Dealernews with some up-to-date info. It’s not good as in cheery or happy info. But it’s as current as anything I’ve seen or been able to report.

The only grassroots glimmer of hope for the powersports industry surviving this blow is coming from Missouri State Representative Tom Self who has set up his own website as a letter-generator of sorts to Congress. Cruise over to www.tomself.com and take five minutes to send a letter. It’s crunch time. And those with influence over the Consumer Product Safety Commision (CPSC) should be aware of how important the sales of these small products are. Also, they need to know how ridiculous it is to ban them for violating a lead-content law that was intended for children’s toys.

But there’s more you can do. You can go to the CPSC Website and ask them some questions. I asked: “I strongly oppose the CPSIA's restricitions on off-road youth motorcycles and ATVs. Also, bicycles? Really? Why did you take my motorcycles, ATVs and bicycles away? My dealer said he couldn’t sell them to me. I don’t get it. I promise I won’t eat them. Can I have them back now?”

You can log on to the Congress.org website and get the phone number for your state representative(s). I got six phone numbers in ten minutes. Just type your ZIP code in the box on the top right of the screen. Then, pick your State Representatives from the list and start dialing. Easy. And a phone call really gets attention. They’re harder to ignore. So make them try and ignore you. Call your state representative!

More when I hear it.

Yeah, this is almost unbelievable. I emailed the info to a co-worker who rides and has two young boys. Asked him if he had heard. He replied with No, and he just called his dealer. No bikes or parts

Gov't regulation at it's absolute worst I'm already sending nastygrams to everyone I can think of, and posting this on other sites.

We were at a couple of bike shops this weekend and now that you mention it I didn't see any of the little bikes for kids. What's next?

Diesel trucks
Guns
Freedom
The end of the US

Probably in that order. Welcome to change and hope.....

They can't have my diesel truck

Taken From Race-Dezert.com:


Dear OSET Customer,

You may have heard about a new law that came into effect on February 10th. The law is a broad, sweeping law called the ‘Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act’ (CPSIA). The law was enacted as a knee jerk reaction by Congress to the importation of lead tainted toys from Mattel etc. The new laws give very strict guidelines that have had unintended consequences for many industries. Many metal alloys often contain lead. Engine casings on mini motorcycles, valve stems, spoke nipples etc all now fail the new standards. The fact that lead in metal alloys is ‘insoluble’ has escaped the Government and the CPSC. The lead content in alloys poses no health risks whatsoever. The law was entirely political, and will do little or nothing to protect our children. How many of us have seen kids sucking on motorcycles?

At this point in time, all motorcycle manufacturers have stopped selling youth motorcycles for kids age 12 or under. Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, KTM, Polini, Cobra, Polaris and OSET are all in the same boat. Any bicycle with 24” wheels or less is now illegal to sell, although the bicycle industry appears to be ignoring the law. To be clear, none of the above Companies are now selling youth motorcycles! You can NOT go to a Honda dealer and buy a CRF50, CRF70 or CRF80, or their youth ATV’s.

This is clearly a HUGE issue that needs to be fixed. With the economy in recession, what sense does it make to stop dealers selling inventory, and to effectively close thousands of American businesses, costing tens of thousands of jobs?

We emphasize that this law has no effect on what you have already purchased, only on products you buy going forward. OSET, and all the above companies, have satisfied all lead in paint and other applicable laws, and put a high emphasis on safety. Of course we want to keep kids safe from lead, but the law should focus on products that kids can eat, and that have accessible lead!

There is something we can do. Congressman Tom Self is a moto-Dad, and has taken up our cause. Tom has a standard letter that needs to be signed by every motorcyclist in the Country. If you go to http://www.tomself.com you will see the letter on the home page, and can sign & send in less than a minute.

OSET are being as proactive as possible, on blogs (see http://blogs.dirtrider.com/6470022/n...sia/index.html & http://www.racerxonline.com/article/...on-waiver.aspx ). There are many other active blogs and industry groups that can be found by searching for CPSIA. OSET attended press conferences for local TV in Denver yesterday, and will be interviewed for ‘Dealer News’ later. We will attempt to get this on CNN as well.

All is not lost. The CPSC and Government MUST see sense, but we want them to see it quickly. Please go to http://www.tomself.com and sign the letter to Congress, and please pass this instruction to whoever you can. There are suggested amendments on the desks of the CPSC right now. To quote the Tom Self site

The government got creative with the new laws for lead content in childrens' toys. The youth motorcycles somehow fall under the category. Funny as I would think most parents would teach their kids that these bikes aren't toys but are to be respected.

And, before anyone goes after Obama, Bush signed the law But it was drwn up by a Dem congress

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned this story yesterday, and here are the details. It's an AP story from Helena, Montana: "A new national limit on lead in children's products -- which has toy makers scrambling for new testing methods and retailers for storage space for inventory they're not sure they can sell -- also is forcing motorcycle dealers to pull dirt bikes off showroom floors. It became illegal Tuesday to sell off-road machines geared for children younger than 12 because parts in them contain lead at levels greater than 600 parts per million. Most motor vehicles have such parts. 'I think they took this law a little too far,' said Margie Hicklin-Krsul, the owner of Redline Sports, a sports bike dealership in Butte. 'I've never had anyone come in and say, "My child keeps putting parts of his motorcycle into his mouth."'"

So you could say here that government regulations are about to ruin yet another business. I'm unable to get to the bottom of this. People have been sending me so much stuff I've gotten confused now. The esoteric analysis of this, it's above my pay grade to listen to some of these scholars write about this stuff, but apparently it's possible, and I'm not sure if it's the case, some people believe that it is, that children's books, hardcover children's books printed before 1985 will become illegal because of lead content in the manufacture of some hardcover books. Now, some people say, "No, no, no, no, no, this been changed," others say, "No it hasn't been changed." It's like so many other things in the stimulus bill, most people don't know really what's in it yet and won't know until it's signed this afternoon and people start implementing what's in it. Do you realize people can do whatever they want and say it's in the stimulus bill and who's going to know? Nobody has read this thing. So the stimulus bill can be pretty much what anybody wants it to be. But the dirt bike provision here is a pretty serious thing, and it's more government regulation ruining or threatening to ruin yet another business under the rubric here that we just can't police ourselves, we can't protect ourselves, we're too stupid, we're too idiotic to know what's good for us, or at least a few of us are and since some of us are so stupid and incompetent, rules have to be written for all of us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hillsdale, Michigan. This is Sean. It's great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you doing today?

RUSH: Just fine. Thank you.

CALLER: Good. Rush, I'm calling about the CPSIA, or the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 --

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: -- and how it's affecting some of the small businesses around this country.

RUSH: Well, that's the lead rules. Yeah.

CALLER: The lead rules, exactly. You referred to them in your last set there. There's two things about this act that really I think need to be brought to light and the first one is, how the act came to be. You know, I've been around the automotive industry for years and when legislation and regulation came in to those industries, there was years to react; years of time to be able to react to new rules and redesign products and whatnot. And this act was passed last August, it was kind of sprung on everybody this winter, and now companies like mine who manufacture products for the off-road motorcycle market are literally blindsided and given only a few weeks to react to this whole thing. I think that's one of the reasons why there's so much up for around this new legislation.


RUSH: Well, the uproar is just now starting to build. I wouldn't even call it an uproar yet. I think it's just now starting to percolate. I don't think it's reached uproar status at all. Which is why we here on the cutting edge of societal evolution, if there's going to be big, we'll tell you about it when it's small. You're in the dirt bike business, right?

CALLER: Yeah, yeah. Our company focuses on the youth off-road market, mostly on the high performance end of things. We're the only manufacturer in the US of this kind of product. We're a small business. We have under 50 employees, but we use several manufacturers around the country for our products. We actually have about a hundred other countries that rely on our business to help stay in business. So the tentacles that are out in the marketplace, even though we're a small company here, are pretty deep.

RUSH: I know. This is sad. It's happening turnover industry that the government attacks. The Congress has attacked the private jet industry. You wouldn't believe the number of orders that have been canceled. The ripples throughout that industry, which I tried to chronicle last week, are profound. I had a story yesterday that I did not get to but it was a story about the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay in California. They've had 30 cancellations of golf trips -- conventions, business golf trips -- because these people simply don't want to go someplace nice to appear conspicuous. So the ripples of commerce, ripples of these attacks and the class envy are happening throughout the country. Your business, making dirt bikes, is all about inventory. I read a story that there are some retailers, Sean, that have a hundred million dollars worthwhile of inventory they may have to take off the showroom in weeks just to comply with this stupid law! Because the kids, of course, are going to come in and lick the lead parts that are in these dirt bikes and of course they might get sick and die and so forth. This is a tragedy that's happening throughout the American capitalist system. There's an all-out assault on it.

CALLER: Yeah, there is -- and, Rush, to clarify one point there, they've already taken their products off the shelves. This has happened last week. The big four manufacturers (the big four being Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha) have all mandated that their dealers take everything off the floor and this weekend I was at a trade show. I talked to a lot of these dealers, and a lot of them are on the brink anyway because of the shape our economy is. This is enough in many cases to just push them over the edge.

RUSH: Right. Because if you can't put your product on the showroom and you can't display it, how do you sell it?

CALLER: That's it. That's it. So that's the first part of this issue. The second part that needs to be brought to light is the testing requirements that the CPSC is putting in place, and they put a reprieve of one year on these requirements, but the fact of the matter is that each and every component of one of these kids' products -- it could be a motorcycle or it can be anything. But as of February of 2010 each and every component has to be tested by a third-party, government-accredited laboratory. And we've done some initial looks into this. We've obviously tested a lot of our parts already, from non-accredited labs because the accreditation process isn't even done yet. But to do this is going to cost us about one year of revenues, which is, you know, obviously that's going to put companies like ours completely out of business.

RUSH: Why don't just pass the prices along in the consumer? You know, amortize it over an annual bunch of sales, and pass it along to the buyers?

CALLER: Sure. Sure. I think that's the mind-set of the people that wrote the legislation, but you and I both know that it doesn't work that way.

RUSH: Obviously. They think you can pass your cost on like they can.

CALLER: Yeah. Sure.

RUSH: Well, now, let me ask. You've done a lot of looking into this. People hear you speak this way, and they just can't believe that their own government would take action like this so punitive as to put an industry out of business. But that's a real possibility with you, isn't it?

CALLER: Absolutely. And it's not just dirt bikes. I think dirt bikes and ATVs got brought to the forefront mostly because the companies. I'm not speaking of my own company in this case, but the other big companies that are in this business are big targets. They're big targets for trial lawyers, they're big targets for legislators, and they don't want to appear dirty in this whole things.

RUSH: Well, you see, you've just mentioned one of the motivation ideas for doing something like this. This is a pure payback to the trial lawyers for their loyal support, hefty donations to the Democrats. You come up with all these ridiculous laws like lead in books, children's books before 1985; lead above a certain allowable limit in say the product you manufacture; and you just open the door for tort lawyers to come in here and round up supposedly aggrieved citizens who unwittingly purchase one of these products. Their kids then got it home and started licking it, got sick and so forth, and, "Why didn't you tell us these were dangerous if you at 'em? We thought motorcycles were to be driven but my kids tried to eat it and my kid got sick!" You know, the jury, "You evil, rotten manufacturers," because the Democrats have done such a great job of creating hatred for big business, small business in this country. So that's one of the inspirations for legislation like this is to provide a target-rich environment for trial lawyers, who need movement. They need movement. They need people having accidents.

CALLER: Rush, I'm not so sure that some of the motivation behind this wasn't kind of a trade barrier in disguise as well.

RUSH: How so? Explain that to people.

CALLER: Well, if you look at the history of this whole thing and how it got started, it really came about, what was it, maybe two years when lead was found in infants' toys; and most of those infants' toys (in fact all the ones that had lead in them) happened to come from China so there was outrage there was lots of talk about what are we going to do about this and the CPSIA really is the end result of all that, but I think -- and this is just a guess at this point, but I think -- what was kind of a feel-good piece of legislation that nobody was willing to vote against because it was For the Children ended up throwing a huge net around many industries that nobody even anticipated. And dirt bikes are certainly one of those. But I think that the government in some way didn't really think through that a whole lot because they were thinking, "Well, you know what? China's involved here," and a lot of this is kind of a punishment, payback for taking jobs away," so to speak, and there was no thought of the ramification it was going to have to American business.

RUSH: The old unintended consequences.

CALLER: Sure. Sure.

RUSH: Well, you are very charitable to your government, who has passed legislation that could essentially shut you down. I don't buy this unintended consequences business. There are too many of them, too often, too frequently -- and I think we have a Democrat leadership now who professes a full disdain for our capitalist system, and whatever they can do to change it, they'll do.


END TRANSCRIPT
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