TESTIMONY OF:
HYE WEISMAN
Executive Director
California Motorcycle Dealers Association

Hye Weisman: My name is Hye Weisman. I'm the Executive Director of the California Motorcycle Dealers Association. We represent three hundred and fifty franchise dealers in the State of California and many dealers who are non-franchised as associate members.

I want to say here first of all that we are for this bill 100%. I brought this study that Mr. Rasor just talked about to the attention of Senator Ayala this morning, and the reason I did that is that the last time I talked with Senator Ayala, he asked me to check with the State of California and see if I could get some statistics.

I checked with the Department of Health. They sent me some material that back in 1991, and it's from the various studies that we believe now are flawed and then I started checking around the country to see if there was a study that was meaningful and we found this one in North Carolina. Because they studied a hundred and uh . . . they studied a hundred and forty thousand motorcyclists and they compared apples with apples and oranges with oranges. And the unmistakable conclusion that they came up with is that it is not true that you spend a tremendous amount of public money on injured motorcyclists in the hospitals.

Be that as it may, I would be remiss to say if I didn't mention somebody in this room that I've been working with for the last twenty-five years, and who I probably did more than other man, he and his staff and the people he worked for, to bring about motorcycle education in California. Because we worked on that at least starting at least fifteen years ago, and we brought it up a number of times before it finally became law. We didn't . . . although we supported it, it wasn't our bill when it became law, but it was a good bill and much of the decline in the motorcycle accidents and fatalities is because of education. And far above anything else, I think it's the most important thing. That man who helped bring this education bill to the State of California is none other than Dick Floyd. And he is to be commended for that tremendous job.

And with that I'll close and thank you and urge you to support 244.


Senator Kelley: Thank you very much Mr. Weisman. You're close to your half an hour, but I see that you've more witnesses that have come up here. I'm going to allow the two witnesses to make some brief comments and then we'll go to the opposition.

Assemblyman Morrow: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

Senator Kelley: Sir, if you'll state your name please.


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