CPSIA For Dummies

If your anything like me, it's requiring a few too many brain cells to wrap your little noggin around the whole kids bike ban thing. I've been posting updates over the last few weeks, which were intended to explain a few things about this rather confusing issue, but they still made for pretty thick reading. While they certainly read much easier than the Public Laws and Federal Register I had to sift through - which, as you can imagine, read like a German VCR manual - I still feel that I can make this even easier to understand. So here it is, free of words like "notwithstanding" and "whereupon" to make it as clear as possible for the rest of us.

Here are the characters: First, there is the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission). Let's just call them "The Commish." Next, there are the people and organizations fighting this case for us - namely Paul Vitrano, the (MIC) Motorcycle Industry Council and the SVIA (Specialty Vehicle Institute of America) along with the AMA, etc. That's just too much to think about, and a case of T.M.A. (Too Many Acronyms... ). When I talk about all them, I'll just say "Paul." Think of him as the good guy - the Han Solo of the rebellion, fighting for our cause (the rebellion, of course, being us - the motorcycle industry).

Here's the story: "The Man" created this law and handed it over to "The Commish" to deal with. The guidelines created by The Man didn't give The Commish much leeway before they were required to enforce the new law, and as we all know, that led to the entire motorcycle industry getting bent over, quite unexpectedly.

"Paul" saw this coming, but thought for sure, our good buddy, The Commish would surely side with us and see the logic behind our argument that a kid isn't going to eat a dirt bike. Paul and The Commish have worked together before on quite a few ATV safety projects, and usually, The Commish is very receptive to Paul. In fact, the same law has an entire section that Paul and "the rebellion" had created and had already been following voluntarily since the late 80s. The Commish simply put their stamp of approval on it... 20 years later.

Paul hired some scientists and stuff to show that a kid isn't going to get lead poisoning from a dirt bike (probably the easiest job that scientist ever had). He gave the report to The Commish ahead of schedule, but was then shocked to see that motorcylces and ATVs did not end up listed under the exclusions. That was in mid-January, and the law was scheduled to take effect in early February.

Paul sounded the alarm to the industry, and we all kinda went, "Who? What?" But by then it was too late. The law was in place, and The Commish said that because of the way The Man worded it, there was nothing they could do to help us.

Paul is busy in Washington DC, still trying to convince The Commish that they have the power to grant us an exclusion. At this point, Paul has made his argument (which happened on March 11) and The Commish has now gone back to its cave to ponder it all before making its final decisions (which will probably take several weeks).

Paul gave it everything he had at that meeting, but sadly, isn't optomistic that The Commish is going to cooperate. Meanwhile, he's urging us to write letters Congress committees to try to get The Man's attention, since that's what we'll need next if The Commish doesn't help us.

What will have to happen then is the law needs to go back to Congress so they can fix the one word that is creating this whole problem. That's right - one word! The word that The Commish keeps stumbling over is "any."

"The Commission may exclude if ...lead in such product or material will not result in the absorption of any lead into the body..."

That word "any" is a problem because Paul's report to The Commish showed that touching a dirt bike and then licking your finger would result in a trace amount of lead being absorbed... and we're talking less than a glass of water! Still... The Commish says that since it says "any" and not something like "harmless trace amounts," their hands are tied and the law has to be changed in order for us to sell mini-bikes.

That brings us to the present.

What do we know? We all owe Paul (the MIC, SVIA, Paul Vitrano and everyone else on this case) a big thank you for all their hard work. Also, we need to do everything we can to get an exemption for youth OHVs as soon as possible.

So is The Commish is being too rigid, or have they just been stuck dealing with a poorly-written law? That's a matter of opinion. The Commish told us that they are aware of what we're going through, and that they're "fast tracking" the CPSIA exclusions and not just because of us, but because it affects many other childrens products, right down to books and clothing.

Stay tuned to www.MIC.org and CycleNews.com for more updates on the issue, and prepare for the next step we might need to take: Sticking it to The Man so our kids can ride!