Was a GoPro camera responsible for Michael Schumacher's brain injury?

There are stories circulating which suggest that Michael Schumacher's skiing injury may have been made far more serious because a GoPro camera mount on his helmet somehow weakened the helmet. Schumacher fell while skiing, and struck his head on a rock. Although the camera itself was undamaged (and has provided investigators with video of the fall) his helmet shattered.

I think this news has implications for the people who write racing rules.

As the story goes, a French technical institute examined the broken helmet and determined that the structural failure was not the result of manufacturing or material defect. They've speculated that the GoPro mount somehow caused the failure.

It's become incredibly common to see ordinary commuters or recreational riders with GoPros mounted to their helmets or bikes. God knows what they do with the hours of incredibly boring video they must record; presumably it's deleted without ever being watched. And, of course, every fucking stinter has a camera, or two or three, mounted. This new toy for narcissists incredibly tiring. (Although I do admit that some of the videos they record are entertaining…)

Even Marc Marquez was wearing a helmet mounted GoPro at the Superprestigio. I mean, WTF? There's not enough video of him? He has to record his own?

I can sort of see why club racers record their own races; races that aren't being recorded any other way. But when Marquez and Baker tangled in the Superprestigio, Marc's camera ended up on the track. Probably no big deal on a slow speed, dirt short track. But I don't like the idea of purposely adding non-essential components to road racing bikes—components that are just another thing to fall off and, possibly, cause a crash.

Now, with the suggestion that a helmet mount may have greatly exacerbated Schumacher's injury, it's time for racing organizations to ban helmet cameras, and give serious thought to banning bike-mounted cameras, at least until technical rules have been written that ensure they won't just become track debris.

Jay Leno can't stay retired

This past summer, I dropped by Jay Leno's garage, looking for material for my column in Classic Bike magazine. Leno dropped a little bombshell in the course of our chat. Here's the text I sent in for my September "Classic America" essay…

“And of course there’s this: the most misunderstood bike of all time.”

Jay Leno and I had been meandering through his bike collection, and stopped by a Suzuki RE5. 

“At 70 miles an hour, this thing is so smooth; it’s like a turbine,” he said. Then, he reached down, turned a key, and punched the starter. It spun for a few seconds without catching. He punched it again; again with no joy. He shrugged.

“Is that a Water Buffalo?” 

That question came from Roland Sands, who walked up with another guy who was introduced to us only as Anthony. 

Sands—one of the most respected custom bike builders in the U.S.—had been over in an adjacent room, where he was installing one of his bikes near several tables laid for a formal lunch. As it happened, on the same day I came to interview Jay, a dozen motorcycle journalists had lunch in the garage, as part of a press junket organized by BMW. They were all riding the new R nine T. 

Sands was there because BMW hopes that the R nine T will become a favorite of the custom crowd. And, as I was told later, ‘Anthony’ was Anthony Kiedis, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’m pretty sure that Leno thought he was Roland’s assistant, as I did.

I worked on a couple of events with Jay, back in the days when he was the star of the Tonight Show and a fixture on American TV five nights a week. Every time I visited the garage, I marveled at his 150 cars and 100 motorcycles; his facility and tools; and a staff devoted to nothing but maintaining and restoring his bikes and building almost anything that he could imagine. 

He’s got an Ariel Atom open-wheel car that came, stock, with a 300-horsepower GM Ecotec motor. His guys built a bespoke V-8 out of two Hyabusa top ends, that makes about 500. That’s the kind of shit they can do in-house. 

A lot of people would be jealous, I guess, but I’ve spent enough time behind the scenes with him to realize the price of fame at that level. People literally grabbing him to adjust microphones, or wardrobe, or makeup, or whatever, right up to the second the cameras started taping. And more grabbing any time he was out in public, shaking hands over and over again. They’d wrap a show in mid afternoon and Jay’d hide out in the garage for a few hours. Even then, there always seemed to be someone from the network lurking nearby; a signature needed here, someone who wanted to meet him; a script revision. Long after dark, he’d go home—not to sleep but to work on the next day’s monologue.

Those nights I left thinking, if the devil offered me all Jay’s bikes and tools, with the caveat that they had to come with his life, I’d turn it down.

Leno was thinking about restoring this Brough, which has an Isle of Man history. But when they looked inside the fuel tank, they saw that there was a message engraved inside, which read, "Whip it like a mule"(!?) That tiny detail made him reconsider changing the bike at all. That's the kind of minutiae—and story—that makes him treasure a bike.

This summer, I went back to see if his life is any different, now that he’s turned over The Tonight Show to Jimmy Fallon. I guess I hoped—for his sake—that he’d tell me that he’d finally learned MIG welding in his free time, or show me some project that he’d been saving for years so he could tackle it himself, rather than have his staff work on it. 

I suppose he does have more time, but not that much more. And more privacy, although while we talked, a golf cart rolled through slowly; some private tour for NBC advertisers, or contest winners, or whatever; and there were the 20 or so people associated with the BMW thing; and one more pesky journalist—me. The only real change I noticed was that he said ‘fuck’ a lot more in conversation. I guess when he was on TV five nights a week, he had to rein that in. 

The television network still operates the jaylenosgarage.com web site, which gets six million hits a month and is the home of a web-TV series, which just earned its sixth Emmy nomination (the equivalent of the BAFTA Awards for U.S. television.)

In passing, Jay mentioned that there were plans afoot to produce a broadcast TV version of the web series. He was evasive when I tried to pin him down on details, but said it would be on the air soon. 

Actually, he said “probably by the time this comes out,” but Classic Bike takes forever to show up on U.S. newstands, so Jay may have thought an interview done in July would appear around Christmas. There’s an excellent chance that you’re reading a bit of a scoop, since—at least as I write this—the fact there’ll soon be a broadcast version of Jay Leno’s Garage is not common knowledge.

On the way out I ran into John Pera, who told me, “There’s a lot of people fighting for [the show]. NBC wanted to do a five-day a week show, but they wanted to control the scripting. Jay said, ‘No, no, no, there’s not going to be any scripted, Orange County Choppers fake bullshit.’”

That’s as it should be. They can make a great show just by tapping Jay’s enthusiasm and love of detail. He showed me a Brough-Superior from the estate of Cecil Clutton. It had been raced on the Isle of Man in the ‘Twenties. 

“I was going to restore this,” he told me. “But then I looked inside this tank with a flashlight, and I saw something written in there. It turned out that someone had scratched ‘Whip it like a mule’ on one of the pieces of metal before it was soldered together. I thought, this is history; I’m not touching it.”

Obviously ‘retirement’ isn’t really changing Jay. At least, not too fucking much.

Well, just today the Hollywood Reporter claims an exclusive on the news that Leno will soon have a prime time show on CNBC. Was he really trying to give me a scoop? Maybe I should've done more with the story...

Have you no sense of decency, AMA? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Just when you think the AMA can't be more of a would-be NRA (with all the shameless pandering and disingenuous bullshit, but without the political clout) the Kochsuckers in Columbus come out with… wait for it… an assault on the Centers for Disease Control.

After the NRA succeeded in blocking the appointment of a Surgeon General who had the temerity to address gun violence as a public-health issue, the AMA's decided to attack the CDC for considering Americans' propensity to ride motorcycles without crash helmets as a public health issue.

Then, it has the sheer fucking unmitigated gall to coyly say, "The AMA strongly encourages the use of personal protective equipment, including gloves, sturdy footwear and a properly fitted motorcycle helmet certified by its manufacturer to meet the DOT standard."

NO IT DOESN'T. Let's just make that clear, OK?

If the steady flow of press releases I get is any indication, the AMA's single largest legislative focus is fighting mandatory helmet laws. There is simply no reason to say, "We want you to be able to ride without a helmet," unless it's OK to ride without a helmet. This is exactly the same as when tobacco companies argue against smoking restrictions, while claiming that they aren't encouraging smoking.

What the fuck, AMA? How can killing off your constituents possibly make sense to you? I mean, the tobacco industry sells a product that comes with a guaranteed level of risk, but the AMA continually uses its words to make a qualified argument for helmets, but devotes its effort and budget to REDUCING helmet use. Because make no mistake, states with mandatory helmet laws have close to universal helmet use, and states without mandatory laws… don't. Ipso facto, the AMA's working to reduce the use of the single most effective piece of motorcycle safety equipment. And if the AMA's pathetic shills trot out the tired old lie that, "We don't want the helmet debate to distract from driver education blah, blah, blah…" I will fucking puke.

Let's get this straight! All the effort that the AMA spends arguing against helmet laws—all that effort and expense is, in fact, effort and expense that otherwise COULD be used for driver education.

And now, they're capitalizing on the media's fucking trumped up ebola panic to get in a little dig at the CDC. That's just great. You know what, if there's a fucking ebola epidemic, it won't matter whether we wear crash helmets or not. It'll serve the AMA right.

Parsing MotoAmerica's 2015 class structure

So, the other shoe’s dropped—sort of—as far as MotoAmerica’s class structure goes.

It seems there will be one race for literbikes, but it will have two separately scored classes, ‘Superbike’ and ‘Superstock’.

Superbike rules basically are broken into three subsections: chassis, motor, and electronics. The chassis rules will be as per this year’s AMA rules. Engine rules will be as per 2015 SBK rules. Teams can choose to run either last year’s AMA-approved electronics package, or next season’s SBK electronics.

The Superstock class will be as per FIM Superstock regulations.

There will be two races for 600s; ‘Supersport’ and ‘Superstock’.

In 2015, Supersport bikes will be, basically, what we have been calling Daytona Sportbike. The plan is to use the AMA’s 2014 chassis rules, and FIM Supersport engine rules. Electronics will be as per the AMA’s 2014 rulebook.

Meanwhile, Superstock bikes will be built to rules similar to last year’s Supersport bikes.

If you’re confused, this chart might help.

Race	Class	Previously known as	Chassis	Engine	Electronics
Superbike	Superbike	Superbike	AMA 2014	SBK 2015	AMA or SBK
...also includes	Superstock 1000	New class	FIM STK	FIM STK	FIM STK
Supersport	Supersport	Daytona Sportbike	AMA 2014	FIM SS	AMA 2014
Superstock 600	Superstock 600	Supersport	FIM STK600	FIM STK600	FIM STK600
Spec TBD	?
TBD?	?

From what I read, discussions are underway that could see at least two additional classes added. Apparently, MotoAmerica has talked with Harley-Davidson about the existing spec class for the now-discontinued-due-to-commercial-failure Sportster XR1200X. There’s also been lots of talk about a spec class suitable for junior riders, perhaps a la KTM RC Cup.

MotoAmerica has said that they’re leaving the possibility of incorporating a Moto2 class in 2016, when—I expect—the FIM will open Moto2 to other engine manufacturers. There’s been no mention, so far, of Moto3. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Spain’s thriving Moto3 class is probably the single best steppingstone into the World Championship right now.

Oka-ay...

I guess what we’re seeing here is MotoAmerica doing what it can to ease the transition for existing AMA Pro teams, while also lowering the barriers to entry in 600 and 1000cc classes. It would be churlish to point out that just before the DMG takeover, the AMA took a lot of heat for a show that included two 600 classes (SuperSport and Formula Xtreme) and two 1000cc classes (SuperBike and Superstock). And that the class-within-a-class structure was dismal when there were CRT teams in MotoGP. In fairness, EVO rules seem to be fairly comprehensible in BSB and World Superbike.

I would rather have seen them tear the bandaid off right away.

My suggestion would have been:

• Superbike—a la CEV; run to FIM Superstock rules
• Moto2—with flexibility of running any manufacturer’s motor, and grandfathering in Daytona Sportbikes
• Moto3—allowing 125GP machines to fill the grid, a la Motostar British Championship, which is a BSB support class.

It would be easy to tweak the existing Moto2 rules to allow for additional manufacturers. Basically, it would mean using existing chassis rules, while allowing for any motor built to FIM 600 Supersport specs. You could enforce reasonable parity with claiming rules or rules forcing any manufacturer that wanted to participate to supply x number of motors at a fixed price.

I don’t know how easy it would be for American entrants to build or buy enough Moto3 bikes to fill a grid, but there are Moto3 classes in Britain, France, Spain, and Japan amongst other places.

KRAVE’s wishy-washy class structure could mean that KRAVE’s principals are stuck in the old ways themselves, which would suck; it could mean that the “manufacturers” (read: distributors) and other stakeholders (read: privateer teams and key sponsors & suppliers) are running the rules making procedure, which would also suck; or it could just mean that Wayne Rainey and KRAVE feel they need an interim year in which they have something—anything—to put on track, while they bring American road racing into the 21st C.

I’m reserving judgement. But I’d feel better if they’d announced the 2015 class structure—which is a bit of a dog’s breakfast—in the context of a statement about, “this is where we’re starting, because we have to start somewhere, but let’s be clear about where we’re heading: in two years’ time, our classes will be...”