Hackney riders protest parking plan

Save London Motorcycling (SLM) is organising a mass ride out to protest against proposed new parking charges from 2023 for powered two-wheelers by Hackney Council. The Council is planning to charge motorcycles and scooters £6 per hour to park in a marked bay, with a maximum stay of four hours. The charge applies equally to mopeds, litre-plus adventure tourers and even to electric motorcycles and scooters. In response to a question from the BMF, Hackney Council provided this statement: “As a Council we are committed to improving local air quality and tackling the climate emergency. As part of this commitment, and following a full public consultation in 2020, Cabinet agreed in February 2021 to place motorcycles on the same footing as

Battery swapping hits 300,000 a day

Battery swapping for electric scooters is big business in Taiwan, where 340,000 swaps are made every day by riders who subscribe to the service. Rather than charging batteries at home or work, the riders simply rock up to one of nearly 11,000 swapping stations and change their depleted battery for a fully charged one. It’s one answer to the conundrum for flat dwellers – how to charge your scooter when you live on the 7th floor. The system is run by Gogoro, which launched it in 2015 and now provides a standard battery swap service for ten different brands of scooter, including Yamaha. It claims to have 92% of this ‘electric refuelling’ market in Taiwan, covering 25% of all powered two-wheelers sold

Fred Warr – Britain’s Mr Harley-Davidson – dies

Fred Warr, who with his father did more than anyone else to bring Harley-Davidson into Britain, has died aged 93. He had been suffering from motor neurone disease and passed away peacefully at home. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Warr family to Harley in this country – it was the company’s only UK dealer from the early 1950s to the early ‘70s. Warr’s Harley-Davidson, now occupying two sites in London, has been the classic tale of a family dynasty. It remains Harley’s oldest dealer in Europe and the business (though not as an official dealer) will celebrate its centenary in 2024. It was in 1924 that Fred’s father Captain Frederick James Warr was demobbed from the British Army. He

BMF & Weeble have teamed up to support mental health

BMF & Weeble have teamed up to support mental health. We asked our friend Weeble of Weeble's World to come up with a new design to symbolise our ‘for all’ ethos and we are blown away by it….  We think it's a great design and really gets the message across that BMF is for ALL RIDERS, whatever you ride... Each shirt is ethically sourced, made, printed and packaged, 10% of all sales will be donated to Mental Health Motorbike  We have an established relationship with MHM and feel it is important to support them in the work they do. We ran an article in Motorcycle Rider Spring 2022 and previous article on our website Available in unisex sizes Medium to 3XL MEDIUM 38 – 40” LARGE 41 – 43” XL 44 –

Record Motorcycle Tests & Passes

A record number of people are taking, and passing, their motorcycle test, according to the latest figures from the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA). Undeterred by the spike in fuel prices and the ever-rising cost of living, 65,711 riders took their Module 2 (on-road) test between April 2021 and March 2022, more 2000 up on the previous record set in 2012/13 – 50,000 a year is a more typical figure. Of those who took their Module 2 in 2021/22, 72% passed the test to receive their full licence, slightly bettering the previous pass rate. This impressive increase is partly down to the efforts of Driving Test Centres to catch up on the backlog of tests which built up during lockdown –

Triumph Display at British Motor Museum

A line up of 12 Triumphs bearing the Daytona name makes up a new display at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, which until now has focused on cars. The Daytona badge was coined for Triumph’s twin-carb 500cc twins after Buddy Elmore won the famed Daytona 200 race back in 1966 – his race bike takes pride of place in the exhibition, along with three more of the early 500s including a 1974 bike, one of the last made. The line up goes on to include the early Hinckley-built Daytonas – sports bike of the Hinckley Triumphs – and a good selection of 675cc triples, including the original 2008 Daytona and the latest Daytona 765 Moto2 Limited Edition, taking in road

New Research into Motorcycle Usage in the UK

We have been asked by a bmf member to help with his research into motorcycle usage in the UK..... Have you ever commuted by motorcycle or scooter? Have you ever thought about commuting by motorcycle or scooter? Is it something you do every day, or a few days a month? Or are you thinking no way, I’m not doing that! What stops you, what spurs you on? What are the pros and cons, the barriers that prevent more people from doing it? This is the subject of my latest research. There is lots of evidence to suggest that there are many benefits to a wider use of motorcycles and other forms of powered two-wheeler for commuting to work. From environmental benefits, to reduced road congestion, to improved

Purple Helmets Retire

The Purple Helmets, the hilarious and highly skilled motorcycle stunt team, is to retire this summer, with its final show scheduled for August on the Isle of Man. Anyone who has attended a major open air motorcycle show in the UK in the last 25 years can’t have missed them. Mounted on ageing Honda C90, dressed in identical dirty brown macs and with deadpan faces hidden behind shades, the Purple Helmets attempted to replicate White Helmet stunts such as the Pyramid, adding their own wackier versions, such as dustbin racing (imagine a Honda 90 towing a sawn-off bin at speed) or a naked man playing a piano in a sidecar. For something which started out as a few friends having fun,

Rotary record

Guy Martin is planning an attack on the rotary-engined motorcycle speed record, riding the Crighton CR700W. BMF members will have read our profile of the machine and it’s Dorset-based manufacturer Rotron, which also builds paramotors and jet boards – see Motorcycle Rider, Spring 2022. The CR700W is a development of Norton’s rotary racers of the 1990s, masterminded by ex-Norton man Brian Crighton, who carried on refining the racers until they were banned from circuits in 1995. He continued R&D, first with Stuart Garner and now with Rotron. The CR700W is now being built in limited numbers by Rotron, with a price tag of £95,000. Ironically, given that the rotary was banned from racing over 25 years ago, the new bike is

Motorcycle Trailer – Vehicle Towing Guide

The Auto Cycle Union (ACU) has launched a guide to towing a motorcycle trailer  – that’s a trailer towed behind a car or van, carrying a motorcycle, not a trailer towed by a motorcycle! The guide covers the law surrounding trailer use, safety checks, and hints. It’s all good common sense information, the sorts of things we probably assume we know, but maybe don’t in practice. For example, the licencing laws changed in December 2019 and you can now tow a trailer without a towing licence. For driving licences received before 1st January 1997 the maximum authorised mass (MAM) is 8250kg – for post-1st January 1997 licences, it’s 3500kg. Other legal restrictions cover size and weight of the trailer and its

Petrol mopeds & 125s could be banned by 2030

The UK Government has proposed banning new sales of petrol-powered mopeds and 125cc machines by 2030, with all bigger-engined motorcycles and scooters following suit by 2035. The ban could come sooner “if a faster transition seems feasible,” according to the long-awaited consultation document, which was launched on 14th July. It covers all L-category vehicles, from L1 to L7, including mopeds, motorcycles, tricycles and quadricycles. “We have already committed to phasing out fossil fuel use across road transport,” said Trudy Harrison MP, Minister of State for Transport, “with sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans ending as early as 2030…It is therefore important that L-category vehicles do not remain fossil-fuelled as the rest of the transport fleet cleans up.” The UK

Wheels to Work Expands

Shropshire is the latest UK county to adopt a Wheels to Work (W2W) scheme, offering cheap moped and 125cc scooter hire to younger riders. There are currently 22 such schemes across the UK, all of them aimed at younger riders who could not otherwise afford personal transport. Shropshire’s Community Resource charity has contracted Wheels to Work Silverstone to administer the scheme, which offers moped hire from £40 a week and 125s from £55. Based at Silverstone race circuit, W2W Silverstone has been supplying bikes and administration for similar W2W schemes since 2019, and currently runs schemes in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Berkshire, as well as Shropshire. They have a particular role in the more rural counties, where public

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