Oahu’s more than 36,000 mopeds would need to undergo annual safety checks under a bill that will be heard by the City Council on Wednesday.
Bill 83, introduced by Councilwomen Ann Kobayashi and Carol Fukunaga, would require those who choose to operate official inspection stations that offer motor vehicle safety checks to make the same service available for mopeds.
The bill would cut down on noise and make the mopeds safer, Kobayashi said.
She said she was motivated to introduce the bill after the McCully-Moiliili Neighborhood Board convened a special meeting in October for the sole purpose of discussing excessive moped noise.
A state law already calls for the counties to require safety check inspections for mopeds through inspection stations in the same manner it’s done for motor vehicles. The law, which took effect in 1998, was implemented on the Big Island and Maui but not on Oahu or Kauai, Kobayashi said.
“That’s why we’re following up,” she said. Moped operators stopped by police who don’t have valid safety check stickers would be cited, just like car drivers, she said.
Ron Lockwood, chairman of the McCully-Moiliili board, said that requiring moped owners to get safety checks is one of several recommendations to cut down on moped noise that was made by a board subcommittee that delved into the issue. Other ideas included requiring mopeds to be insured and clearing up conflicting state transportation rules.
“The problem is people soup up their mopeds,” Lockwood said. “They take off the muffler, put on a different type or take them off completely and make the mopeds noisy.”
Requiring safety checks would provide police with another tool for dealing with the problem, he said.
Lockwood said November’s special meeting on mopeds was attended by representatives from at least five other neighborhood boards, a clear sign that moped noise is an issue across the island.
“If a neighborhood board meets 10 times a year, six to eight times that year we’ll be hearing complaints about mopeds from residents, and not just at our board, but across the island,” he said.
Joseph Shimkonis, owner of Mopeds Hawaii, said he supports requiring annual inspections but said that change should be accompanied by an increase in the maximum speed for mopeds.
In recent years the industry has moved to building mopeds with four-stroke engines rather than two-stroke engines, which are faster and noisier. So some moped owners, mostly young people, will illegally modify and transform their four-stroke mopeds to quicker and louder two-stroke machines, Shimkonis said.
“When they’re modifying these bikes and doing what they’re doing, it’s crazy,” he said. “At that age you’re not thinking you’re going to get brain damage, you’re going to be dismembered.”
Shimkonis said he hopes that forcing moped owners to go through the inspection process annually will discourage at least some owners from souping them up.
He said he also strongly believes that the state should raise the top speed for mopeds to 45 mph, the federal maximum. State law now says mopeds can have a maximum speed of 30 mph. Shimkonis said raising that to 45 mph would both allow mopeds to keep pace with motor vehicles, creating a safer environment, and tamp down the desire for modifications.
What Shimkonis doesn’t want to see is a law requiring mopeds to be insured. That would take away an affordable form of transportation and shut down the moped industry, he said.
