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Riders protest ban on old motorcycles

French riders protest a proposed ban on old motorcycles
French riders protest a proposed ban on old motorcycles

How long will it be before air-pollution Nazis around the world follow the lead of the Paris mayor who wants to ban old motorcycles?

In an effort to curb air pollution in the crowded city, Mayor Anne Hidalgo is seeking to restrict the bikes registered before 2000 in major areas of the French capital between 8am and 8pm.

Harsher bans throughout the country are now being considered by some French politicians.

However, the French are well known for protesting and some 15,000 riders on 10,0000 bikes blocked the capital’s outer ring road recently to make a stand against the bans.French riders protest a proposed ban on old motorcycles

They were joined by tens of thousands of riders in 34 other French cities.

The protests were organised by Biker France and the Federation Francaise des Motards en Colere which is French for “French Federation of biker gangs in Anger”.

Biker France claimed “the PTW (powered two-wheeler) is a solution, not pollution”.

FFMC spokesman Jean-Marc Belotti says they find the policy “unacceptable”.French riders protest a proposed ban on old motorcycles

He says motorcyclists and scooterists are told they “are a minority that has a lot of accidents; and now we are a minority that pollutes”.

“That’s enough! I recall that we drive on gasoline and not diesel,” he says referring to the recent controversy around VW cheating on its diesel engine emission levels.

He points out that in France there are 40,000 premature deaths due to fine particles from diesel engines.

There has been no call by politicians to ban VW diesel cars from cities.

French riders protest a proposed ban on old motorcycles

  1. The silly thing is most pollution rules are aimed at greenhouse gasses such as carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide so all attempts to clean up those emissions ironically result in greater local pollutants such as diesel particulates and reduced economy so greater amounts of the nasties are produced, so they want to ban VW diesels from the city’s but they are probably the cleanest ones to have.

  2. You can bet some of the new bike dealers are quietly lobbying for this as the same thing is brought up occasionally
    about old cars and it is always the dealers pushing for it. They must really hate those of us who never buy new,
    and do our own repairs.

  3. Watch out! The wording of these press releases are biased against motorcycles. “Federation Francaise des Motards en Colere” does NOT mean “angry biker gangs” as some would have you believe. There is NO mention of gangs/clubs/groups in this. “Colere” is a word that implies less random violence than our English-language “angry”; somewhat like “frustrated” or “annoyed”; “en couleur” means they “have been angered” (by others’ actions) or “have been frustrated”.

    Politicians would rather fight against what they call “French Angry Biker Gangs” so they can pretend righteousness and scare the general public. These are the subtle lies that the politicians use to bias the emotion of the media, so they can win the minds of the public. Translating it correctly as “French Federation of Frustrated/Angered Motorcyclists” sounds like quite a reasonable protest group, and doesn’t give the politicians any imaginary moral high ground.

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