Coronavirus pandemic has already caused significant disruption to the motorbike industry (even GP races have been postponed), and is also affecting bike sector.
BMW is the first major manufacturer to announce that they are pulling out of the shows and said: “This decision was made in order to counteract current planning uncertainty at an early stage, also for all our partners involved in BMW Motorrad motorshow appearances, in the interests of the greatest possible security, predictability and transparency.”
While BMW is the first, it is probably not the only manufacturer to pull out of the shows their motorcycles. Paris Motor Show has already been cancelled and also Tokyo and Ginevra shows were called off as well. So motorcycles fans will not have their shows.
While Formula 1 is thinking about a 15 racer – championship, Moto GP is more cautious and avoids announcement on the next races. Many teams would like a 10 racer – tournament, with a reduced audience, in order to confirm the championship.
Meanwhile the motorbike industry survives through many doctors moving a lot in this period to go back and forth to the hospitals. Many witnesses report about them on the social media, calling them “new heroes” and explaining the method to “turn of” when they ride their bikes.
Some people use their passion to help people in this emergency. I’m speaking about the “Blood Bikers”, a group of volunteers who want to give a special help, in addition to the Sanitary System in England.
Their aim is to relieve sickness, protect health and save national health system money, which should be used in the frontline for the provision of emergency transport of urgently needed blood. For example they help in transporting donor breast milk, drugs, human tissues and other medical equipment from hospitals / hospices and blood transfusion units or blood banks primarily.
A charitable member of them has revealed he has been carrying potentially life-saving samples of the Covid-19 virus as part of his volunteer work with Blood Bikes.
Andrew Harrison, 58, from Telford has been riding as a Blood Biker for the last two years and recently he stopped working at his shipping company since he had to spend all the day to help hospitals. “Everything is triple-bagged, so you generally don’t know what you are carrying. The technician just said that this was one of the Covid-19 tests and that’s how I found out what was onboard,” that is what Andrew do to help in this emergency. Andrew then discovered he was transporting samples of the virus on Sunday, March 29, during a 150-mile day across the Shropshire countryside between facilities.
Some people have a negative opinion of motorcyclists; whether this is because of impatient city-centre couriers, or scaring stories about biker gangs, it is something that can unfortunately taint all motorcyclists. I disagree on that because I think that in this situation of pandemic emergency they really give an important support to the nation!
All the groups promote good practice among their volunteer riders, who hold an advanced qualification to ride on a marked-up blood bike. High-visibility jackets and marked motorcycles mean our riders are very visible to the public when riding so it is essential that they behave with the utmost professionality at all times. People who see blood bike riders collecting money, or walking into a hospital ward are often amazed that the groups exist and walk away, impressed with the work that they can do. Slowly, person by person, they manage to change people’s impressions of bikers.
This isn’t certainly the groups’ main reason for existing, but it is a happy side-effect of the work that they do.
Pietro Pelizzari
The engines paradise 