then you will noticed how we’re continually forced to make our lives safer.

Thanks to the HSE (Health and Safety Executive), we now live in a world where we’re protected from ourselves. While many of these new laws and regulations are there to rule out the chance of the lowest common denominator causing a problem for the rest of the intelligent world, the whole nanny state culture has without question made life harder for those of us with the common sense not to lift something that weighs more than we do, seek out petrol with a candle or try and operate a bandsaw after a skinful while smoking a spliff.

Risk assessment forms need to be filled out for anything that could be considered even mildly dangerous, to the point where I’ve absolutely no doubt that fairly soon there will be a section involving: ‘possible eye injury caused by pen entering retina induced by falling asleep during form-filling – medium risk.’

In this risk aversive society we’ve created, we’re breeding a nation of wimps. I used to climb trees and regularly fall out of them. I’d get my hands dirty and hard though it is to believe nowadays, I didn’t even have an antiseptic, germ-killing wipe to hand. My first pushbike had no brakes so I used my shoes. Crash helmet? On a pushbike? Has the world gone mad? Okay, so it’s not a bad idea to protect your child’s head, but the point is that twenty years ago, kids were allowed to graze their knees, expected to have numerous scabs and almost guaranteed to have some pretty impressive bruising.

Now the closest most kids get to being involved in the most minor of accidents is in their own fantasy world, deftly thumbing the buttons on a video game controller - a phenomenon further proved to me when I overheard a conversation between two of my friends’ kids who, on a warm spring evening were excitedly discussing a ‘head-to-head’ game of cricket - indoors on their PS2. Clearly the risk of being hit by a real cricket ball didn’t bear thinking about…

Society itself is as much to blame as the nanny state that’s created this ‘you can’t be too careful’ mindset amongst parents that’s filtered down to its increasingly careful kids, particularly when you hear the terrible stories about some of the monsters that prowl our streets, and we’re right to do what we can to protect our kids from these abominations.

But protecting them from themselves? Protecting them from finding out what moderate pain feels like having let them ‘risk’ riding a BMX without taking the precaution of wrapping the poor little buggers in bubble wrap first?

Now you might be wondering where I’m going with this rant, but bear with me because I’m getting there and there are more than a few factors that could affect us as motorcyclists. Do you enjoy riding on a racetrack? If you’re reading this, then the chances are that you do. Yet that pleasure could well be under threat. The American culture of suing everyone for your own stupidity has found its way across the Atlantic and it could be bad news for anyone that enjoys riding a motorbike quickly. If a woman in Atlanta can sue McDonalds for her own clumsiness when she spilt coffee in her lap, burnt her lady parts and then blamed the clown-loving junk food chain for failing to warn her of the fact that coffee is a hot liquid, then organisers of anything involving motorcycles ridden at speed have to be extremely careful.

Absurd though that is, rest assured that it’s no longer a case of ‘only in America’ and that the whole ‘where there’s blame there’s a claim’ culture is invading our green and pleasant land at a startling rate of knots.

Few track day organisers have suffered so far, but one that springs to mind is Speedfreaks, a well-run, organised company co-owned by Jamie Whitham and Paul Shoesmith. The company ran for a number of years, before the pair decided not to bother following a claim as the constant threat of legal action and tiresome form-filling outweighed the fun side of the business.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for these two was after a novice track day rider got a corner wrong, ran on to the grass and duly fell off. His claim was that he didn’t know that the grass would be slippery as no one had warned him during the briefing. He ended up being bought a brand new bike to replace his and to stop it going to court – quite possibly setting a precedent that could bring an end to track days as we know them. Incidentally, the guy’s name was put around all the other track day organisers and he will never be able to ride on a track in this country again.

So there’s a case of blaming someone else for your own stupidity and profiting from it, financially if not morally anyway.

So what of the nanny state that I’ve been ranting about? The decline in sales of new motorcycles in the UK bothers me. Bikes are better than they’ve ever been, don’t cost a fortune and their popularity should be at an all time high – so why aren’t they? While the low price of decent used cars isn’t exactly helping the bike business, neither is this super-safe mentality that we’re instilling in the latest generation of potential James Toselands and Valentino Rossis.

Immunity to risk through total avoidance of danger will eventually kill off motorcycling if we’re not careful. And it will be a very sad day when the only entertainment we have on a Sunday afternoon is two fat kids battling it out for the World Xbox Championship.