Just failed the CA DMV motorcycle popsicle test (and I thought Ihad passed)

gpsman wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:38:09 -0800:

The instructors and administrators are not paid?

If they're all volunteers (i.e., no money goes into their pockets),
that would be news to me and I would apologize publicly.

 

gpsman wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:38:09 -0800:

We don't need to stoop to name calling, as we both know what that
does to the level of the discussion, given the level of experience.

I do think you missed my point wholly - which was to respond to this
eloquent statement of Robert Bolton:

I was responding to the part that "people are free to use the service",
which is not true in California for underage riders - and - which one
could argue, is only partially true for those with expensive motorcycles
(given the dynamics of the test).

My inference was that those dynamics are created on purpose, as nothing
in the keyhole test is an accident. It's all designed to modify behavior.

If you think those two statements make me a "moron", we will end the
discussion here as I have no desire to stoop to name calling.

 

So, I did the research. Per the MSF's IRS tax filing for 2011:

The Motorcycle Safety Foundation collected $1.76 million in
contributions and grants (most, presumably, coming from motorcycle
manufacturers who sponsor them), $10 million in fees for services, and
$743,000 in other income.

They spent $10 million on operating costs, and $2.4 million on
salaries and benefits for their total of 40 employees, nationwide.
That works out to an average of $60,000 in salary and benefits per
employee.

Oh yeah, they're making TONS of money and people are getting FILTHY
rich off of their little scam!

Oh, you guys might what to tell the IRS about the small discrepancy
between the $250 million you think the MSF is collecting versus the
$12,516,604 that they reported... maybe you'll get a percentage of the
civil and criminal penalties that are sure to be assessed!!!!

 

I'm reminded of a nitwit I knew who justified shoplifting with the
logic that retail prices exceeded wholesale, and prosecution exceeded
the value of pilfered items, just for starters.

 

"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by
incompetence."

You appear to have concluded that the keyhole test was deliberately
designed to force people to take the BRC. But so far as I can see,
you haven't presented any evidence to back up this position.

The fact that the keyhole test may be a bad test of a rider's skill,
and may have been very poorly designed, perhaps even blatantly
incompetently designed, does not prove your position. If there was
a deliberate intent to force people to take the BRC, having a bad
test could be consistent with that. But the fact that the test is
bad doesn't prove the design of the test was done deliberately in
such a way to divert people to the BRC.

 

One of my favourite sayings.

Like Occam's Razor, it's almost always right.

 

When I worked as an MSF-certified Instructor for the Virginia Rider
Training Program from 1991~2004, we collected $85 from each student.
We originally had 12 students per class with two instructors, later
that was doubled to 24 students per class (so we had to conduct every
range exercise TWICE) with three instructors. The state of Virginia
matched the $85 student-paid tuition 1:1 from a $2 per motorcycle
registration surcharge that went into a statewide motorcycle safety
education fund.

The program at that time was run only at local community colleges.
Motorcycles were contributed by local dealers. Helmets were
contributed by local riders. Some motorcycles and helmets were
haphazardly and infrequently purchased by the local community college.

Instructors were paid $300 each for a week-end's worth of work; this
was later raised to $350. That's gross pay, not net. We generally
worked 5PM to 10PM on Friday night, 6:30AM to 5:30PM on Saturday, and
7:30 to 5PM on Sunday. We seldom had time for a break, other than to
eat our lunch on the range while watching students practice during
their "free time." So we grossed about $11.75 to $13.75 per hour for
giving up our weekend. No one I taught with did it for a living;
everyone had real jobs on Monday-Friday.

The total class revenue for a weekend was $1,920 for a 12-person
class, and $3840 for a 24-person class. We used to have a range aide
(pick up and distribute cones, haul water for the students, cone off
the parking lot, help get the motorcycles out of the shed in the
morning, and put them away in the evening) who was paid $75 for
working Saturday and Sunday. So salaries cost $675~775 out of the
$1,920 for the 12-person class, and $975~1,125 out of the $3,840 for
the 24-person class. There were two site coordinators and a college
administrator who ran the program; I do not know how much they were
paid. The college itself made most of the money on the program; I
figure roughly about $1,000 on a 12-person class and $2,500 on a 24-
person class. Classes were (and are) run every weekend from the third
weekend in March through the second weekend in December; or about 41
weekends a year. ERC classes were scheduled as needed and run on
Sundays on the parking lot beside the MRC/BRC.

I do not know what the state of Virginia paid the MSF in licensing
fees for access to the curriculum, or for training for the "Chief
Instructors" who ran the Instructor certification classes, or for MSF
student materials (class books, tests, videos, completion cards, etc)
or how much the state spent on the annual Motorcycle Safety Conference
in Richmond, Virginia, that all certified instructors were invited
to. I do know that we paid for our own travel, hotel rooms, and meals
out of our own pockets if we went to the conference.

Since then, Virginia continues to have the program run at local
community colleges, but they have also opened the business up to
independent companies that are able to pass stringent certification
rules (provided by the MSF) and which run their classes with MSF-
certified rider coaches. I do know that the independent classes -
run by Harley-Davidson dealers and other, private companies - are much
more expensive than the state-run classes at the local community
colleges. I presume that is because they have to provide a range
(parking lot) and a classroom (building) and motorcycles and
motorcycle storage and motorcycle maintenance. I do not know if the
private entities are eligible for a state tuition contribution from
the rider safety fund, or not.

I did a business study in 2005 and determined that - at that time -
there was no way to make a living providing rider safety training, at
least not in northern Virginia where there are long, long, waiting
lists for the community college classes, and where real estate prices
simply boggle the mind. Business liability insurance for such a
business is also, as one might expect, mind-bogglingly expensive, too
- if you can get it at all.

I presume liability insurance and real estate in California are pretty
expensive to acquire, as well.

 

I've also seen car and motorcyle clubs raise substantial amounts of
money for charities with no salaried employees. Also not on the
scale of the MSF, but if you add up all those little things, they
might. There always seems to be someone who's an accountant and can
handle the 503 paperwork. Someone ought to Kickstarter a movie "Biker
Accountants From Hell."

Nowadays we are starting to see things like some high school kid does
a community service project, it spreads worldwide through social
media, then by the time they get out of college they have paid staff
and can take over the org. (There was an example of that in the
uniontrib, but I can't seem to find the right search terms with their
crappy search.)

jg

 

Sorry; let me be more precise:

"Which is true of all non-profit organizations that have paid
employees."

The MSF, for example, had 40 employees in 2011 and paid them a total
of ~$2.4 million in combined salary and benefits.

 

And even if you were to collect such stats, they would be meaningless
without more information regarding each license applicant's measured
abilities before and after taking the BRC.

 

tomorrow wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:40:35 -0800:

This is great information to know! Thanks!

I wonder if the MSF is actually the same people running the California BRC?

In this Ca DMV web page, they say the group is the CMSP.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl655/mcycle_htm/requirements.htm

They say:
"The Basic Rider Course offered by the California Motorcyclist
Safety Program (CMSP)"
"Motorcycle applicants under 21 years of age are required to
complete a Basic Rider Course before receiving a motorcycle
instruction permit"
"The Certificate of Completion of Motorcycle Training (DL 389)
is valid for 12 months from the issue date."

So, now I will google to see what the relationship is between the
MSF and the CMSP.

 

tomorrow wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:40:35 -0800:

According to http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl655/mcycle_htm/requirements.htm
the CMSP runs the BRC in California.

According to http://www.ca-msp.org, "the CMSP expects to train 65,000
motorcyclists per year" in California.

Can we presume this to be the math?
65K * $250 = $16,250,000 per year in California alone.

So, somehow, we're talking apples and oranges because the MSF
takes in 10 million dollars for fees and services, but, a quick
calculation of what the CMSP takes in is almost double that alone,
which is just for the state of California.

Can someone clarify the discrepancy?

 

tomorrow wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:34:46 -0800:

The CMSP (http://www.ca-msp.org) says it trains 65,000 bikers a
year in California but I can't find the number of employees on
their web site by way of comparison (they have 120 training centers).

The CHP web site (http://www.chp.ca.gov/programs/motorcycle.html) says
that California Motorcyclist Safety Program (CMSP) has trained
"As of March 2012, over 800,000 motorcycle riders" - but it too
doesn't give anything by way of financials.

I called both the CHP (800-835-5247) and the CMSP (877-743-3411) to ask
them questions, but both were dead ends. The CHP answered the phone
immediately, and was nice enough to listen, but they had no clue.

The CMSP doesn't answer their phone and all you can do is leave
a message.

 

Twibil wrote on Sun, 24 Feb 2013 22:19:39 -0800:

Since the DMV and the CMSP are so closely intertwined, I googled
and found this FAQ:
http://www.ca-msp.org/FAQ.aspx

Which says:
Q: Who administers the CMSP?
A: The CMSP is administered by the CHP pursuant to California Vehicle
Code section 2931, which established permanent funding for the program
in 1994.

I wasn't sure what "administers" meant though ... so I called the CHP
at 800-835-5247 to ask.

They told me that they run the overall program, they make the rules,
they watch for any signs of breaking the law in the running of the program,
but that they don't get the actual $250 paid by the adult students for the
class.

So, of the 65,000 students trained every year, the schools get to keep
the 16 million dollars (or so).

Seems to me, it's neither wholly private nor public - but some incestuous
mix of the two.

 

There is no discrepancy. I've pointed this out in dozens of threads
about the MSF in various newsgroups over the past 22 years; including
ba.motorcycles.

The California Motorcycle Safety Program is *not* the Motorcycle
Safety Foundation.

In general (and there may be exceptions, because I know things have
changed) but IN GENERAL the individual states run their motorcycle
safety programs through their Departments of Motor Vehicles or their
Departments of Transportation. They use the Motorcycle Safety
Foundation curreculum (I believe Oregon is one state that does NOT)
and MSF-certified instructors, and they pay the MSF for the use of the
curriculum, but the fees that the riders pay go to OPERATION of the
classes within the state where the classes are held.

In another post I described in somewhat exhaustive detail how this
works (or worked) in Virginia in its Virginia Rider Trainign Program,
or "VRTP" whcih can be considered to be the Virginia equivalent of
the California Motorcycle Safety Program. Neither of them are part
of the MSF, and - as far as I know - the MSF does NOT receive direct
payment from the the tuition that the students pay for the classes.
Ultimately, yes, the MSF gets *some* payment from the state in the
form of a curriculum license, but whether that is per rider trained,
per training site, or a fixed fee, or a negotiated contract, I can't
tell you.

But I can tell you that I would have a very difficult time making a
profit teaching a weekend class of 12~24 students how to ride
motorcycles if I were only charging them $250 each, and I had to rent
or buy a facility with a licensed, certified range, rent or buy
motorcycles, rent or buy helmets, buy liability insurance, pay
instructors, pay range aides, coordinate class schedules and buy class
books and videos and video equipment and EZ-ups for the range, and
water dispensers, and storage facilities for the motorcycles, and
website management, and e-mail accounts and all the other things that
go into putting together real, everyday, routine, rider training.

And yes, I've done the math.

Again, this suspicion that someone, somewhere, is getting rich because
motorcycle riders are taking basic motorcycle training regularly
rather than just passing a DMV parking lit test (regardless of how
easy or hard the test is) is simply not supported by the financial
facts.

 

Wow. I wish someone would make a law that forces people to come
to MY business, to the tune of 200 million dollars in total revenue!

 

Well, of course, the state of California (nor its contracted
motorcycle training agents) doesn't train 800,000 motorcyclists EACH
year. Sheesh, does anyone ever think critically any more?? Even if
it did (which it doesn't), not all the riders would pay $250 each,
since the course fee is capped at $150 for underage riders.

And of course, no one FORCES riders to go to the California rider
training programs, a rider desiring a California motorcycle
endorsement can damn well learn how to ride well enough to pass the
DMV riding test without taking the training, if he/she wants to.

And, have you ever developed a business plan for motorcycle rider
training? Of course you haven't. I have. I gave up rider
training as an employee of the Virtinia Rider Training Program (via
Northewrn Virginia Community College and the Virginia DMV) after 14
years of being a damned good instructor after I finished that plan.

 

So now do the rest of the work and tell us how much it COSTS to run
those classes. Because without that information, your gross REVENUE
numbers are meaningless.

 

http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2011/520/963/2011-520963363-08d37f65-9O.pdf

Guess no one made you do your homework when you were going to school,
eh?

 

Tim M. wrote on Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:11:47 -0800:

The actual riding coaches are paid a regular salary, and are not
getting rich. I don't think anyone is intimating that the low-level
people are getting rich off this gig.

However, the math showed that the single law passed by California
(California Vehicle Code section 2931) resulted in the CHP administering
a program (at public expense) which has resulted in over 200 million
dollars of revenue going into the coffers of the CMSP.

Two hundred million dollars resulting from a single law is a LOT of money
no matter what you say!

(If it's not a lot of money to you, please send me just 1/10 of 1% of
that and keep the rest for yourself.)

The point is that there is a LOT of money involved here (to the
tune of hundreds of millions of dollars).

If anyone insists the CMSP is merely a 'private' not-for-money
organization, they'll have to reconcile this obvious fact of huge
amounts of money involved, with their notion of not-for-profit.