Beginings of the Adventures

Last December, I went for a HOV (Hazard Oriented Vision) advanced riding class conducted by Lip Seng aka Endlessloop. I learnt a life saving skill, a method of riding that significantly reduces chances of accidents. Impressed by the magnitude of this discovery, I floated the idea that night to Lip Seng that we could get a civic society organisation going, to go to polys, camps, ITEs and perhaps road shows to spread this method of riding/driving and the safety msg. Too many riders were dying out there, one in three days at current statistics and rising fast. I, by the way, am Zhehong, a 21 year old P plater who has a higher chance statistically of dying on the road. But my P plate can be taken out in about 2 weeks and I'm also turning 22 in 2 weeks ok? Not that it makes much of a differences anyway.

I went for a Melecca countdown trip 06 with Team Hornets at the end of the month, and was surprised to meet the gang of big bikers from the HOV trip. Hornets must be a very safety conscious group who takes care of small bikers like me, and indeed it turned out they were! That began my affiliation with this fun group of big boys and lady bikers. We had plenty of fun riding around and holidaying, discussing all things bikes and life. Soon, I would hang out pretty often with them, talking about safety, bikes, accidents and riding skills. Of course, we also talked about a lot of other things, but we could connect on a same plane where i couldn't connect with my other non biker friends.

In January this year, Lip Seng called me to a kopi session with Traffic Police Safety Branch Commanding Officer, Simon. Alan (Mr Lau) and Alan (Spectrum) were also there. We were going to be seriously considering setting up an association to spread the safety msg to bikers, from the bikers angle. TP education campaign can tell you "dun speed", "dun this and dun that". Our angle of approach is different. We tell them what happened to us, how we lost loved ones and got hurt seriously by failing to this and that. The impact is vastly different. A biker who lossed a loved one or got seriously hurt is never really the same biker again. A deep sense of safety consciousness dawns from such moments, although not to same extent in different people.

In March this year (2007), it turned out the second meeting gathered people from all walks of life. They all wanted to do different things with the association. Some wanted it to organise annual big events like "Singapore Bike Week", a local version of the 3 nations Charity Ride that Singapore is a part of but never got to host. Some wanted it to fight for riders' rights, to represent bikers politically, in other words. They wanted this organisation to do for bikers what the Automobile Association does for car owners, perhaps complete with the free towing services for accidents. They wanted this body to be a force to be reckoned with, as the collective voices taking on the bureaucracy together can be quite loud, rather than sporadic, un-coordinated shouting. Simon wanted this body to be the ears he could disseminate info to bikers, on top of what we could do in education campaigns together with his safety branch. Soon, power hungry people were going to join this association. Through some coffee sessions on our own, we got the riding community's attention. 2 years ago people talked about it, and then the talk died down. Endless, the two Alans and me got straight to the "doing" stage. We are on the brink of registration under the Registration of Societies Act. A minister is to unveil this association to the public next month.

But the 4 of us are really not interested in the politicking and power grabbing. Elections, administrative stuffs, AGMs, commitee meetings, vote canvassing, all these are messy and boring. Sure, bikers can be more represented in Parliament in future, but the 4 of us are really just bikers who wanted to do our safety thing with young riders and hope to save lives. That may be all that we can make time for anyway. Every 3 days, one rider never gets to see his loved ones forever. We are just a bunch of riders who seen or heard too many riders dying on the road. We want to help. And so, as it stands, we may pull out of this commitee, but we will probably push it through for others to run it. It is a visonary idea, one that we took concrete actions to organise, but one that may slow us down in spreading the safety msg rather than help us. With or without Singapore Motocycling Association (name not finalised by the way) we were going to do our safety thing on our own, without the power plays, in a light hearted easy way. We are The Safety Team, as Spectrum calls it.