Tom Lindsay
Public Information Director
American Motorcyclist Association

Dear Tom,

I stand by my story in the Courant.

1) With regard to membership numbers, here's exactly what happened: you'll recall I asked if you could give me membership numbers over the past 10 or 20 years, and you said you could not. You said current membership is 264,751.

Just how forthcoming were you? Since you wouldn't give me the membership numbers year-by-year, I asked how the present number compared with the peak. You said that you couldn't give me an exact number but that it was "within a couple thousand" of the highest membership year.

I might have left it there, except further research turned up the August, 2000 total of 270,484. That may not be the peak number, but let's say it was. The difference between that and the present number is 5,733. 5,733 is a difference that might be described as "several" thousand. It is certainly not a "couple" thousand, as you stated.

Under the circumstances, to describe your response as "[not] exactly forthcoming" was actually charitable, wouldn't you agree?

2) I should have caught the error about the number of total motorcyclists in 1997. Unfortunately I was misled by a hashed reference in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation document which misquoted the MIC study. While I didn't originate the mistake, I should have seen it.

Hope that settles some of the problems that the AMA had with my story. Far from being "shameless," I take pride in my accuracy and skill and adherence to the facts, and likewise in having never retracted a single word I've written in over twenty years of writing for scores of magazines and newspapers for a living. But why not also post the original story in full, as well as this reply in full, and let the public and AMA members decide?

Sincerely,

Ray Tennenbaum