The Motorcycle Riders Foundation is a national organization dedicated to lobbying for those who ride, to protecting and defending our rights as motorcyclists, and to addressing the concerns of street riders and the motorcycle industry they support.
In 1985 the MRF held its first annual Meeting of the Minds conference. For many activists from around the country this marked the first time they’d met to discuss how to best preserve and protect motorcycling. The main issues of the day – mandatory helmet laws, unfair insurance laws, and the right to modify our motorcycles – are ones that we still face today, along with many others. In 2022, the MRF will hold its 38th Annual Meeting of the Minds, representing an unbroken chain of unparalleled training and networking opportunities that has molded the American biker’s rights movement into the highly effective force it is today. MRF also holds its annual ‘Bikers Inside the Beltway’ grassroots lobbying event where riders from all over the country go to Washington, D.C. to help fight for their rights.
In 1987, the MRF became the first organization to hire a full-time lobbyist to work in Washington, D.C. Since that time, MRF has advocated for American street riding motorcyclists and the motorcycle industry. For over 35 years the MRF has been recognized by members of the U.S. Congress and their staff as THE voice of American street riders in our nation’s capital.
Working with our partners at the state level, the MRF led the successful repeal of a national mandatory helmet law; later rallied to defeat the Lautenberg Federal Helmet amendment in the United States Senate with a unanimous vote, fought against motorcycle horsepower bans, stopped federal legislation that would have classified any group of three or more riders wearing similar clothing as a ‘gang’; stopped unfair insurance provisions; stopped the federal government from using taxpayer dollars to lobby for anti-motorcycling legislation; overturned road bans for motorcycles and federally funded motorcycle only checkpoints; supported voluntary rider education programs; and protected the motorcycle industry from onerous and restrictive federal regulations multiple times. Throughout its history, MRF has fought to defend riders ‘right to repair’ and to modify their bikes. MRF stopped unfair EPA regulations that would have forced riders to use only OEM parts on their bikes. We can still modify our motorcycles today thanks to the MRF.
Issues we’re facing today include: End-of-Life directives for older motorcycles; the end of internal combustion engines in favor of all-electric vehicles; availability of fuel compatible with motorcycle engines, making sure motorcycles are accounted for in autonomous (self-driving) vehicles and that we have a place in any Intelligent Transportations System in development, updating the definition of a motorcycle, continuing our decades long focus on crash avoidance versus safer crashing, and working diligently against motorcyclist profiling evidenced by our Resolution in the United States Senate that passed condemning motorcyclist profiling with a unanimous vote.
Thanks to the MRF and its partners, American bikers today can ride the kind of bikes we want to ride, with the people we want to ride with, wearing what we want to wear, on the roads we want to ride, and make the changes to our bikes that we want to make. If you’re not already a member of the MRF, why not?