‘So wait a minute … what you’re telling me is that this 50cc motorcycle is not available for my 7-year-old son?" asks the customer.

"That’s right," I reply.

"But the 50CC from that manufacturer is okay for my 7-year-old?"

"Yes sir."

"And you’re telling me that this 50cc motorcycle is only for riders 13-years-old and older?"

"Yes, that’s what I’m telling you."

"That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard."

"Legally, I’m not allowed to agree with that statement, sir."

What I couldn’t tell this customer was that when government gets involved with things, there is suddenly no room for common sense. Sure, the average size for a 13-year-old would make a stock 50cc motorcycle’s handling become fairly dangerous. Of course, the government doesn’t account for the dangers of riding a machine that is too small. Instead, they account for the lead content of the machine in parts like spoke nipples and battery terminals, which could be licked by any child at any time. Honestly, if your kid is licking spoke nipples, a little lead ingestion ain’t gonna make things too much worse.

However, because the government decided to not exempt motorcycles and ATVs from the lead toy ban, manufacturers were forced to find ways to retail the millions-of-dollars-worth of product already out the door. After all, we’re not talking about dollar store junk here, we’re talking about machines that cost $1,000 or more. That interest adds up quickly for a dealer and even more quickly for a manufacturer who is covering interest for thousands of dealers.

Interestingly, different manufacturers handled this problem in different ways. Some scrambled to hire scientific companies to perform expensive lead tests on their machines. This was problematic since every toy manufacturer in the galaxy was scrambling to do the same for literally thousands of SKUs all through a few testing companies at the exact same time. Gridlock doesn’t begin to describe it. In fact, there are several manufacturers who have pulled 50cc models from their websites as if they never existed.

Others manufacturers took a page from the history textbooks and got creative. Here’s a historical example of what I’m talking about: At the beginning of the space race one of the obvious problems we faced was the ability to write in a zero-gravity enfironment. If you’ve ever tried to write with pen upside down, you know what I mean. After investing more than a million dollars in research and development, American scientists came up with a pen that featured a pressurized barrel, which forced the ink to the tip. Faced with the same situation, the Russians simply decided to use pencils.

So, some OEMs simply sharpened their pencils to deal with the lead situation. If they couldn’t take the lead out of the pencil, they’d just take the pencil out of the lead. The problem was really very simple; there was a ban on machines for children under 12, so they changed the age rating so that all youth ATVs were for children over 12.

So we now find certain vehicles from certain manufacturers suitable only for children of a ridiculously old age group. I wish that we could agree with our customers who say that these restrictions are stupid, but we don’t want to be liable should the customer’s kid start sucking spoke nipples.

Honestly, the entire "age-based" restriction on any ATV or motorcycle is unrealistic. Personally, I know 12-year-old kids who are over 6 feet tall and left 150 pounds in the dust long ago. These kids have absolutely no business being restricted to a 90cc anything. So, how do we better serve the youth? How do we ensure that what we’re selling is reasonably safe for them to ride?

The answer is as simple as a video game: Give kids a simple reaction speed test, testing the speed at which the kid hits the brakes or steers around obstacles thrown his/her way. Then we could combine the results with the kid’s individual size to see if they are a good fit for a specific sized bike/quad. The test would be supervised by the parents and the salesperson, and the results would be electronically posted, attached to that kid’s name and product registration. That way, the parents feel comfortable about the kid’s ability to ride his/her new bike/quad, and the dealership and manufacturer are off the hook for liability purposes, and the kid just got a virtual rider training course all in one.

Basically, you let a kid play a simple video game, tell him not to lick his machine and everyone can go away happily and safely. And furthermore, we won’t have to dance around the fact that obviously ridiculous regulations just seem to the customer as though they were meant to be broken.