From the Marin Lately Editorial Board
On Tuesday, 12 year-old Brandon Fargo once again defied naysayers by arriving at school on his electric dirt bike without having died. In fact, attendance records show that Fargo (like the vast majority of motorcycle-riding children) has made it to school alive every single day this year.
Those statistics apparently don’t matter to the overzealous babysitters who run Marin County, where children will soon be denied access to motorcycles based almost entirely on anecdotal data from a few local emergency rooms.
Those of us who have supported kids’ “right to ride” see what the government has chosen ignore: that children are very good at riding motorcycles. In fact, most kids can do wheelies and other advanced maneuvers shortly after acquiring one. We only discovered this hidden talent after more than a century of discrimination against this community ended, allowing many children to realize their dream of motorcycle ownership for the first time.
That dream is now ending before our eyes; Brendan Fargo may have already buzzed his last senior citizen. But our kids will count themselves lucky to have lived through this golden age, and we'll never forget what these eyes have seen: children, on motorcycles, at long last.