The showroom at Hitching Post Motorsports in Hopkins is filled with big power. Missing is what's little.
"We're not allowed to display them. We're not allowed to sell them," explains sales manager Andy Buddensiek about the absence of youth sized dirt bikes and ATVs on the Hitching Post sales floor.
The store's entire inventory of children's power sports equipment is now gathering dust in a storage area. As of Tuesday, the sale of small dirt bikes and ATVs is banned under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, a federal law passed last year that's meant to keep toys containing lead out of the hands of children.
"They just covered a blanket over everything without taking the time to understand what they were doing," complains Buddensiek.
Most people think about lead in paint, but it's used in many parts on ATVs and dirt bike, including metal alloys, batteries and tire valve stems.
"We don't believe that the lead content provisions of the act were ever intended to apply to youth ATVs and motorcycles," says Ty van Hooydonk, a spokesperson for the Motorcycle Industry Council, a trade organization seeking a motorsports exemption to the new rules. "I've been around a lot of dirt bikes and ATV riders -- I was one myself -- and I never had the idea my little motorcycle was particularly tasty."
van Hooydonk sites industry estimates that the value of frozen inventory nationwide may exceed $100 million dollars. "We're really just asking for some common sense here and for some exclusion of these parts that just don't present any risk to children in the real world."
Sonia Hayes-Pleasant, a spokesperson for the Consumer Products Safety Commission says the concerns of the motorsports industry are being taken into consideration and the Commission hopes to "issue guidance in the very near future."
Hayes-Pleasant says the last thing the Commission wants to do is encourage children to drive ATVs that are too big for them to handle, an outcome some dealers predict if the Commission does not overturn its ban on small ATVs.
With his small dirt bikes and ATVs in storage, Buddensiek can't believe the government let things get this far. "The economy is tough enough right now, and now I'm not allowed to sell dirt bikes?"
(Copyright 2009 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
