Motorcycle Seatbelts Required?
Joan Claybrook Heads the U.S. DOT: A Pig Rides the Ultra-Safe Motorcycle Using a Seatbelt

• POST a QUESTION or COMMENT about motorcycles, pigs, and motorcycle safety regulations in the U.S. and Mexico

This article describes how a pig ended up driving a 350 Honda across Mexico.

Pig Tests Motorcycle Safety Improvements

She had, it was rumored, a project hoping to require seatbelts and pressure sensitive seat switches on MOTORCYCLES. By god, as a biker, I was very worried about this.

If you weren't on the seat and buckled in, the motor would not start. Her idea was killed when CYCLE mag published a hilarious story about a guy who tried out one of these bikes.

Seems that after picking up his new bike and testing it out at Virginia Beach, he was riding down in New Mexico, on some desert and deserted highway, when he swerved to miss a pig in the road, and ran his bike down into a culvert and fell over.

He was unhurt, but the culvert sides were sandy and he couldn't ride the bike back up, and was threatened with being trapped in the desert in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight.

After an hour or so of failures he realized he needed to run alongside the bike - if any of you ever did dirt biking you know this trick - guiding the bike up the hill by running along it.

Of course the seat belt and seat switch, not to mention some experimental training wheels were an obstacle since he couldn't be both running beside the bike and sitting on it at the same time. Brainstorm.

And there, in moments, was the pig, still stunned by having been clipped by the motorcyle a few minutes earler. Now the piggie was strapped onto the seat of the bike, providing both weight and an object to be sensed by the seat belt retractor.

Unfortunately when the bike, ridden by the strapped-on and semi-conscious pig cleared the top of the culvert the biker slipped and fell, and the bike took off down the highway, teetering on its training wheels, and you know how long and straight are those New Mexico roads.

The bike was last seen heading from Mexico back twards Virginia Beach, the pig was grinning ear to ear, and the biker was left hoofing it into town.

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