January 18th, 2009 
admin New Letter provided by IronMaiden:
MPP Jaczek,
With all due respect for your well-meaning intent to protect the children of the motorcycle community from injury we know that what we believed from the beginning is true, that your concern is misguided and your ‘alarming statistics’ are bogus.
You have been relying most heavily on statistics from an organization called Smartrisk. Have you, since presenting Bill 117, continued your research and discovered that you are misrepresenting the Smartrisk data?
As recently of January 14 of this year you have continued to forward that same standard email response stating those same false statistics to all who send you a letter voicing their concern for Bill 117.
A research associate from Smartrisk has provided us with the data files where you got your numbers. First of all, what we see is that the ‘motorcycle related injuries’ from Smartrisk include mopeds, motor scooters and motorized bicycles. This explains to some extent, why your numbers are so much higher than the statistics from the Ministry of Transportation’s Annual Safety Reports on motorcycle injuries.
More importantly though, is that this data contains figures of ‘motorcycle-related’ injuries to riders only. The Smartrisk document is indeed titled ‘Motorcycle Rider Hospitalizations’. Did the title elude your attention? Did you overlook that one small yet extremely significant piece of information? That the Smartrisk figures pertain to riders only and the question is, did Smartrisk inform you that their data includes riders of mopeds, scooters and motorized bicycles?
It was not very difficult to acquire this information yet it would appear to have been a much more difficult task for you or your assistants to take on. Nothing more than a shame considering the implications of such a restrictive, controlling Bill becoming law in Ontario.
To the Ontario Legislature last month, in the same paragraph you stated that since the 2005 MTO figures of 21 children injured as passengers, Smartrisk has noted for the fiscal year 2005/06, 556 emergency department visits from children 14 and under and that these numbers seem to indicate that injuries are increasing.
Is it common for our elected officials to use implied statements by adding such words as ‘seem to indicate’? Is that how you get away with misrepresenting true sources and avoid responsibility for your statements in the future? The MTO separated motorcycles from mopeds, 50 year olds from 10 year olds, riders from passengers. You did not. Smartrisk did not but they make no such false claims.
We, in the motorcycle community knew something was terribly wrong with your figures but the general public would immediately believe this as truth, not thinking that an elected official would embellish the truth to this extent on a subject for which they know nothing about. We can understand why our well-meaning members of the Ontario Legislature would feel intimidated to vote ‘no’ as this may indicate they are unsympathetic to the issue of child safety. We believe you were counting on this.
You and they, can feel comfort knowing that there is no problem to solve. You did not discover some hidden, alarming matter that needed immediate attention to create a law to protect our children. We are responsible adults who treat our most precious cargo with the utmost care, we always have and the numbers are there to prove it.
As to your statement that ‘It is important to know that riding on a motorcycle is more dangerous than driving in a car’, are you aware that in 2005 1.6% of motorcycles, 6.0 % of cars, vans and pick-up trucks, 2.0% of commercial trucks, 14.6% of buses, and 16.2% of school buses were involved in reportable accidents? In other words, motorcycles are the least likely of all forms of powered transport to be involved in a road accident in any given year in Ontario.
We believe too, that if you have indeed looked at the statistics in the Ministry of Transportaion’s Annual Safety Reports, that you would be aware that they counted 111,587 motorcycles in Ontario in 1993 and 18 injuries to passengers 15 and under. In 2005, 145,194 motorcycles, 21 injuries. Obviously no increase exists nor can it be understood as anything close to ‘alarming’. Surely it is a record that we, in the motorcycling community can be proud of.
Now that we know the truth we will do our best to get the word out. Not only to you but to everyone in the motorcycle community, the general public and all MPP’s who are willing to listen to the truth.
It is just as important for them to know that the statistics you give out are false as it is for them to know that you are misrepresenting data because you simply did not have the numbers to garner support for your ’cause’. Children are not being hurt on the back of motorcycles. You can continue to spew false claims of ‘alarming statistics’ but we will continue to get the word out that your numbers are bogus.
If you were not clear what the figures from Smartrisk represent why did you begin a campaign for Bill 117 before doing the proper research? Is it better for you to knowingly spread untrue facts or to be unsure and declare them anyway?
It seems the time has come for us to research what course of action we, the citizens of Ontario, have at our disposal should we discover an elected member of the Legislature has knowingly passed on false information.
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