Hi noticed a thread on the towing eye fitted to the new tenere.

It got me thinking on the legalities of towing a motorcyle on the road, ie broke down or no fuel.

I have searched but can t find a definitive answer. Its legal for cars so why should it be any different for bikes ?

Any ideas ?

well a few weeks ago I did a trip around Sweden and Norway together with my mate, me on a LC4 and my mate on his XR250.

now, the weather was very hot in Norway and we went up and down the mountains windy country lanes, lots of big BMW and all sorts of bikes came the other way passing us by as you expect on a lovely day as normal..........

Than just around a bent down hill on the other side of the lane a big old Norwegian wood worker Troll trying to push his old JAVA up the hill witch obviously was broke down!
My mate and I instantly stopped and turned around to ask what was happened..... imagine there where only trees and hot tarmac for miles, no villages or houses around....... this bloke was exhausted and sweating like hell......... so first we gave him a big pint size cup water to cool him down a bit and to give him the comfort of not being on his own with his misery any more...... (remember all the big bikes that where just passing him by NOT STOPPING TO ASK WHAT WAS HAPPENED)........?
Well well........ that's how much about the big biker community cares about other's!
any way this Norwegian Troll was more than happy and very thankfully for some water and attention.... after he came down a bit it turned out that the end of his throttle cable came off in the carb, so he wasn't able to pull the slider and needle up any more, just a very simple fault but a big disaster if you are around the "no where" ..........
There was absolute no way we would let him push one more inch in that heat....
we didn't had a cable repair kit with us, so we made the decision to pulled our 10m rope out and made this guy understand that we wanted to pull him back the way we where just coming from........... "the next village was some 10Km back and one more some 15km the other way we needed to go", but the only changes to get him some help was to tow him to the next populated aria........
So my mate is good in doing knots and he tighten a loop around the forks of this JAVA with a self releasing end, so in emergencies the one who get pulled would be able to pull the end and slipping the rope with out being helpless dragged if some thing happened.
The other end was tied to the base of my parcel carrier of my LC4. It's a bit wobbly for a start towing some 230Kg on the back (JAVA and the Troll) but by reaching a decent continues speed of 40 to 50Km an hour in 2nd gear the hole thing went quite stable, and we where able to tow the bloke back some far as 10Km to the next village up and down the mountains, where he could ask for further help on a farm, call his mate to repair the cable with some tools.

My conclusion ?
JUST DO IT, DON'T EVEN ASK FOR THE LAW, ASK YOUR GUTS......
you don't need a towing eye, just wrap the rope around the forks and ride with care!
and a cheap cable repair kit will be added to my spare parts box before I do my next trip, may I need it for my self, may I need it for some one else along the way.

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

Bike to Bike is legal for towing here in the UK.
the easiest way to tow is footpeg to footpeg left to right or right to left then if there is any difficulties the rider lifts his foot and the rope unravels and releases

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Cheers Brian I take it your are Mr Elland the TTR man.

Spooky Loved youre story about Norway. pitty the big bikers didnt want to help that gives the whole biking community a bad name.