Better In The Wind: AMID the traffic - Motorcycles the ultimate urban solution

When buying a bike sometimes our significant other needs a bit of tender convincing. To justify my bike purchase to my wife I used a favourite line that I'm sure many bikers have used before me. I said something along the lines of; "I'd be home earlier cause I wouldn't have to sit in traffic." and "We'd save money on petrol....AND we can go on great breakfast rides on weekends."

Just as we convince our better halves, unbeknown to some of us is a group in South Africa called AMID (The Association of Motorcycle Importers and Distributors) who are a non-profit group that promote and protect the interests of bikers and biker related affairs. They have basically taken on the role of making riding awesome, for us and the Department of Roads and Transport.

All the big motorcycle brands back AMID, which I guess is incredibly important... they're working alongside you to convince the millions of "misses" out there that bikes are the solution to not only life, but also urban survival.

If you need some help convincing a mate or a date check out this video:

Its basically 4:30 minutes of guys doing stupid things....

So maybe this one instead

Yep... 64 year old granny owning this one!

I read somewhere, not sure where (so don't quote me on this), but apparently there's huge concern specifically in South African cities on the growing number of cars on the roads that are estimated to double in number over the next five years. More and more people are purchasing cars, carbon taxing will increase, the idea of urban tolling will look more and more favourable in legislature as our government attempts to curb the pressure on our ageing infrastructure. ALSO... traffic is kak, just in general.

So motorcycles are the ONLY solution when it comes to getting around this issue. Enthusiasts like me are wildly in favour of this, and honestly, you should be too.

What really puts the cherry on top of supporting AMID is that each year they run the "SA Bike Of the Year" award. This year's "bike of the year award" was sponsored by Pirelli as was last years, which is pretty great, a number of additional sponsors have come on board this year including LiquiMoly, TomTom and Total, as I can imagine having big sponsors makes it easier to convince large bike brands to let you really go to town on their machines (pun intended) for the sake of ultimately promoting excellence and having fun.

Here is some footage of the 2014 SA Bike of the Year