In an effort to try to respond to sailor fatalities on motorcycles, the Navy requires training for any rider before they are permitted to ride on base. Should taxpayers be concerned?

There are two reasons why requiring all motorcyclists in the Navy to attend training is misuse of taxpayer resources.

1. Experienced riders, (ones with more than a year of riding experience), ride daily in traffic, on freeways and around town, on a variety of motorcycles, at many different speeds and are naturally exposed to many different training scenarios during their daily or weekly commute.

During rider training they are in a small parking lot with up to 12 or so other motorcyclists. They have an instructor and in civilian training they are on bikes which are typically under 300cc engines.

Compare for a moment these two training scenarios, which is more likely to develop skill?

Riders who routinely commute get almost nothing out of training courses, because in most cases they already ride a skill level which exceeds the completion level of the training they receive.  

So, hopefully we agree that is a waste for experienced riders to take the required basic rider training. They will not ride much better after training but I guess they will likely be more confident and ride faster.

If we removed experienced riders from the motorcycle courses, we would be left with likely less than half the students to train, in other words we would save big money.

2. The riders who need training the most and for whom the training is most beneficial is the new rider. That is a rider with less than a year of experience and especially those who have never been on a bike.

Most Navy courses have no bikes available for new riders, in other words riders must own a motorcycle and ride it to the course. Since we have already discussed how difficult it is to ride in traffic, it seems illogical and irresponsible to require new riders to the course to get training.

What are your thoughts?