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A number of posts have been written and some objections noted to a recent article titled "This bike isn't big enough to play on the street".

The objections note that their bike wasn't imported as a "pocketbike". This may very well be true. Transport Canada decided a while ago that bikes such as the "X" bikes are not pocketbikes because they come with lights. This has now disqualified them as being immediately labelled "competition vehicles".

That however, doesn't mean squat.

So here to set the record straight is part two of this article.

So how did your X bike get into Canada if it wasn't a competition vehicle? The answer is, it was imported as a competition vehicle.

What?

Due to the popularity of pocketbikes Transport Canada simply decided that all pocketbikes would be immediately labelled competition vehicles and as such are not regulated by them. This freed up a lot of resources for them as Pocketbike dealers were driving them crazy.

But questions came up for bikes such as X bikes, which had lights and a horn and all that other jazz. They don't appear to be made for racing. What race only bike do you know that has lights and a horn from the manufacturer (I'm not asking about street bikes turned into race bikes, I'm asking about made for racing only bikes).

Transport Canada decided these types of bikes fell into the category of Restricted Use Motorcycles. They are labelled Restricted Use since they are Restriced in some way or another.

So in order to import Restricted Use Motorcycles (RUM's) dealers now had to go through pre-clearance of their shipments which meant a lengthy process of verifying the manufacturer, ensuring the manufacturer had a valid World Manufacturer Inentifer (WMI) and ensuring the product met all safety requirements.

Without the WMI the pre-clearance would automatically fail. In addition to this WMI the manufacturer would have to comply with Transport Canada rules and regulations which are listed on this page. Those are some strict regulations and taking a look at an X bike you can see that they would fail miserably. Not that they aren't decent bikes, they just don't come close to the standards that Transport Canada places on street legal machines.

So how are they imported then? To get right to the point, since a RUM is not a competition vehicle they must still apply for pre-clearance. But the process of pre-clearance is somewhat different in this case because the vehicle is being imported as a Restriced Use Motorcycle for the purpose of being a competition vehicle.

It is possible to get clearance for a RUM without pre-clearance, but your product sits at a pretty wharehouse until Transport Canada feels that they have time to inspect all of your products and ensures that they pass. Of course it's a lot easier to simply get pre-clearance as it really is a simple process for competition vehicle RUM's.

So there you have it. This is why you can not go and register your RUM as a "scooter" and drive it on the street anywhere in Canada. Within the US it's a different story, and it can vary state to state.

This article was written by Bruce Peresky for pocketbikeforum.com. Copying is permitted provided you give credit to http://www.pocketbikeforum.com

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