And good morning at 7 10, local news time list hits a WRGN, the first Wednesday of the
month.
Today's Wednesday.
First Wednesday of the month.
We do the receiving traffic safety commission, poster of the month, and today it's on motorcycle
safety.
So we got somebody who actually has been riding a motorcycle most of his life, is a police
officer for Mount Pleasant, and it's Zachary Giovannani.
Did I get that right?
Move close to that.
I want to hear everything you have to say.
Giovannani, right?
That's close.
My name is Zachary Giovannani.
Giovannani.
What did I say?
Giovannani?
Yeah.
Giovannani.
Okay.
By the end, I hope to get that right.
I'll pronounce it a couple of times.
You've been riding a motorcycle all your life, right?
Yeah.
I think the first time I was on two wheels with a motor is around 12 years old.
12 years old.
Would you have a little mini bike or something?
Yeah.
Honda A-Tex.
It was a two-speed automatic, but no clutch.
Well, I told you before we went on the air here that growing up, all the kids had the,
I don't know what they were.
They were blue tiny little mini bikes.
I mean, very tiny to the ground, and it didn't go very fast with like a lawnmower engine
on there at best.
And all the kids had them.
My mother wouldn't let me have what you would let me ride on one yet have one.
So I had to ride my bicycle.
She said they're too dangerous.
How dangerous are motorcycles?
Them by themselves on a well-kipped, kept road and motorists that actually pay attention.
They're not that dangerous.
It's like riding a bicycle just faster.
Now you, your amount pleasant police officer, I don't want to say pleasant prairie.
I'm going to get confused here.
You got your whole family's been in there, right?
Your dad was a police officer as well, right?
Yes.
And Lake Geneva and Tonne Geneva before that.
Yeah.
So what made you go into police work?
Is it because your dad was there?
Probably.
Yeah.
And I like helping people as silly as, you know, as cliche as that sounds.
But I like getting out in public and people have bad days and working through it, helping
the public.
You know, obviously we do a bad, bad guys or people that are on the other side of the
law.
But I can never, ever, ever be in that job.
It's nine seconds in that job because the first person, I stopped it, tased him immediately
just to calm him down.
I said, I don't want to deal with it.
I've never had a job where I had to deal with people.
And especially because when you pull him over, you're pulling him over for a reason and
you don't know what's in that car.
It's true.
You don't know what they have, what their intentions are.
And that would scare me.
Yeah.
And they don't listen a lot of times either.
It's, it's like 50, 50 that you get, you get people sometimes that are very argumentative
or what we call no people right off the bat.
And then you get people that they're actually very pleasant.
I work third shift for just over six years and then coming into the daytime, it is like
a culture shock.
The first month that I was during the day light, it was like, oh, these people are nice.
They're waving at me.
The mean ones come out as dark.
Yeah.
My mother once said, nothing happens nice after midnight, nothing good after midnight.
I grew up with that too, nothing good happens after 11 Friday's and Saturday's worse than
any other day of the week.
Yeah.
Friday's Saturday nights.
Yeah.
People, people are off work and the party, party mindset and relax mode kind of open up now.
This is the monthly poster now.
You can actually see what we're talking about.
If you go to recenecounty.com slash staying safe, you'll see all the posters on there and
go down to motorcycle safety.
That's what we're talking about today.
We're going to go through it step by step here with the officer.
And other motorists may not immediately see you.
It's tough of the motorcycle because they're thin and then like big cars and back of you.
So a quick glance.
You may not see them.
That's true.
And if you don't see them, you can hit them.
Now what's with the, this is not on the list here, but what's with the law?
I don't know if it's in Wisconsin, but certainly it's where motorcycles can go between the
cars.
Travel, what is that?
So it's called lane splitting, yeah, lane splitting.
The thought of it is is one, it's less wear and tear on the road, like some states have
actually brought that up an argument to switch over to it, which I think is silly.
But they also show that that it's a little bit safer for the bike because one, they're
in the mirror section for where you can see.
And then, like as if you're driving a car, you can see the headlight behind you or whatever,
they're more visible.
And there's always an escape route for the bike if there is an accident in front of
that.
I always thought that with the side view mirrors is a better chance you're lacking one
of those things.
It can happen depending on where your lane of travel is with the car.
You see people where they're hovering the line or truck ones come out very far.
True.
And if you get whacked with one of those, you go down, yeah, you ever have a crash on
the bike?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anybody that rides motorcycle has either heard this or they've said it themselves, but there's
two types of riders.
There's ones that have been down and there's ones that are going down.
Okay.
Okay.
Right in the third left third of your lane when possible.
I'm trying to picture what that even means right in the third third.
So if you think of a single lane for a car, you're going to have your four wheels or
wheels on both sides of the vehicle.
And then you have the center where you're riding the hump.
Those are three lanes for a bike.
You go on your left where your left tires are hitting if you're in a car in the middle
of the lane.
And then to the right lane where the right side of the car tires would be hitting that
tire.
There's a three lane in there.
So left enough to remember already.
Yeah.
When riding next to another vehicle and multi lane roads, stay out of their blind spots
as traffic allows blind spots.
If you're a driver in a car on that right side, there's a blind spot.
And it's right.
I think it's right where your passenger rear window meets the back window of your car.
You get that blind spot.
You can't see what's coming.
So if you think of like an SUV, so your passenger side rear door to the quarter panel, if
you're within there, the driver's not going to see you unless they do like an actual
look in the right mirror.
Flash your brake lights when slowing down.
Now that it's after the motorcycle or it's a car flash your brake lights when slowing
down probably more so for the motorcycle.
Because it's a bike can stop faster than cars, just basically on weight.
An average car is anywhere is between 3,800 to 5,000 pounds where motorcycle, whether it's
a street bike, a superbike or a cruiser, you're all under 900 pounds with a rider.
There's a lot to remember.
We're also remember to cancel turn signals after the turn.
You know, on cars, it's automatic.
Correct.
It's not automatic on motorcycle.
Not all of them.
No.
It's like a pendulum system, usually when there's an articulation, there's a sensor
in there that'll kick the indicator off on the newer bikes.
It's timed to like where if you left it on forever, I don't know, longer.
I think it's longer than a minute.
It'll shut it off.
Avoid equipping modifications that may make it more difficult for other drivers to understand
your intentions.
What are they talking about there?
There's a thing called an integrated tail light.
So if you think of like a crotch racket style motorcycle, it's easier to explain it
on that.
They'll have small directionals from the factory that are on the back of the bike, but
they're very bright.
They stick out.
They look like little teardrops and a lot of kids all the way up into adulthood, they'll
get an integrated tail light where the directional is actually part of the single tail light in
the back.
The problem is during the daytime, it's very hard to see the indicator for both sides.
And then also a lot of people will smoke what it's called, smoking out their headlights
or turn signals or whatever, they'll do a black tint over it because it looks cool.
But the problem is it takes the brightness away from the light for other motorists to
see.
Do you ride a motorcycle for the police department?
I do not.
No, why not?
Because I have a canine.
Oh, you don't have a dog in the car now, do you?
Yeah, I do.
Oh, you said they could have brought him in.
Oh, well, we can do that maybe a drink or something.
Yeah, bringing the puppy and we have our general manager brings his dog in here, but he's
very protective of Chris and you go near him and he gives you the side eyes, put your
hand at.
For the first time in years, I got two licks, so I'm okay now.
Nice.
But they see a threat and you know, they protect.
Oh, yeah.
But dressing for safety, we're a DOT approved helmet and eye protection.
I remember growing up, nobody wore helmets.
No.
I mean, you watch these motorcycle movies, the hell's angels movies of the 1960s, no one's
wearing helmets.
And I remember my neighbor had a motorcycle, never wore a helmet.
He got it.
Now you see somebody who had a helmet, you say, what a fool.
Well, there's a lot of states that have converted over to helmet laws, whereas mandatory
to wear it, just like seat belts.
You know, the state and government has stepped in where a lot of people aren't taking the
initiative to be responsible and be safe for their own being, where they've made it mandatory
because of the accidents that have caused death or great bodily harm to themselves or
other people because of carelessness or whatnot.
Yeah, you think you'd wear a helmet because I see these crashes on YouTube, and they're
wearing helmets.
They get right up.
A lot of these people, they get up and they just, you know, whoa, a little dizzy, but they
get up.
Choose protective gear that will limit and reduce injuries in the event of a crash.
I see a lot of motorcycle people, especially during the summer, just in short sleeves and
everything.
And if you fall, you're going to get ripped apart on that street.
Oh, yeah.
So what do you recommend?
So a lot of people wear leather jackets and then a helmet and then gloves, whether it's
mechanical gloves or leather gloves.
Which is good.
And then you'll see people that will ride with blue jeans on.
And rule of thumb is that 25 miles an hour denim jeans are somewhat safe to not get dragged
through to skin.
But anything over 25 miles an hour, it'll burn right through.
It's like an eraser on paper, you know, you write down a piece, you don't scribble something
down with your, with your pencil, the more pressure that you have, the quicker the pencil
goes away, it's the same thing with the material that you're wearing.
So some people like guys, if you look at track days, people that race motorcycles, they
will wear either full others leather pants with up, obviously a jacket, they zip up into
the jacket on the backside or they'll wear a full leather suit.
Some of those full leather suits are a double walled cow hide.
So it's a real thick leather, think of like a welding glove.
It's almost similar to that, but then there's a coating on top that that helps you slide
versus gripping and then that's when the tumbling starts.
And then there's pad, like the newer leather is compared to like 80s or older, they were
just leather jackets.
The new ones now, they have impact pads in them that cross your back, elbows, shoulders,
chest pads, and it's all built in with the jacket.
And it's similar to like if you were to play with tapioca pudding, you could put your
finger in it.
It's pliable.
As soon as you smack it, it turns into like a hard surface.
That's basically what this, this stuff does.
As soon as it hits, hits the ground, it takes the shock out of it, so it kind of helps
the person when they go down.
And I'm so glad my mother didn't let me drive a motorcycle.
When I was a kid that we used to have, like soapbox, terribly with cars, but ours were
pretty rudimentary.
They were just basically a plank of wood with a set of wheels on the front and the back.
And there was a place to put the catch a stick so you can push the stick.
So I haven't erased, I must have been about seven or eight years old.
They put all the lightweight kids, small kids and these things.
We were going down a hill.
At the end of the hill, I had to make a quick right or go into someone's house.
My brother was pushing and I was going and we were going real fast and I turned it and
the thing flipped with me in it and it was wearing shorts.
And I felt the road just ripping the side of my leg off.
I felt it.
And I couldn't stop because the thing's going down a hill and I get to the bottom and
there's blood everywhere.
It's just dripping down my leg.
I'm running down the street, crying my eyes out.
My brother trying to get ahead of me to warn my mother or what she was going to say.
And he's running that they don't care.
He wants to get there first to tell the story right to this day on the side of my leg right
over here.
It's all ripped up scarred from that day.
Oh, yeah.
My mother said, don't you ever do that to your brother again.
He tried.
I asked him years later.
I said, I'm trying to get the story first before you get home and she sees what she's
going to see.
And this is the first Wednesday of the month.
So we're talking about the Racine Traffic Safety Commission poster of the month, Motor
Cycle Safety.
I actually have two guests in the studio now, Mount Pleasant Police Officer Zachary Jovenoni
and Aspen Jovenoni.
He's your K9.
Tell us a little bit about Aspen.
I can't see him.
So he's probably laying down there.
He is.
Come down.
For the first time all day.
He's calm down now.
So he's Belgian Malinois who's born in Slovakia, came from Slovakia, went over to another
lens and then shallow creek kennels out of Pennsylvania, Sharpsville, Pennsylvania,
hand selected him along with, I think it was 45 other dogs.
And then myself and Sergeant Geese went down in February two years ago and picked him out
of seven.
And then here we are.
Who trains him to be a K9 police dog?
So the Europe dogs, so he would be considered a Europe dog, they kind of get born into the
world and they start at a very like pretty much right after their eyes open up.
And then when they go to a kennel, that's when they start implementing orders, whether
it's explosive owner, orders or any narcotics.
He's a narcotic.
He's a dual-purpose dog.
He's a narcotic and he can locate and apprehend people.
But they love to working dogs and there's a whole breed of working dogs.
I see them during the dog shows, working, they love doing what they're doing.
Oh yeah, it's not work to them.
This is what they love doing.
Some dogs like to lay around on the couch all day.
He likes to work.
Yeah.
Malinois's the best, the best thing to say about Malinois is they are great at everything
except for nothing.
They cannot do nothing.
Yeah, right.
They got to be busy all the time.
Yeah, or they'll find something to do.
Like rip something apart.
Oh yeah.
They're really?
Oh yeah.
So now he is your dog.
He comes home with you and lives in your house.
Do you have to keep a constant training?
Yes.
You don't ruin them.
Yeah, so there's a difference between he is not a pet, although he has a nice work switch
and then what I call an off work switch.
But he still dances on that switch for work switch.
So I got to pay attention to him.
He doesn't have free room in the house unless the kids are asleep because we don't want
the kids feeding them crackers or anything like that.
That's more like him.
Right.
And then we still play and stuff like that.
But every day we do some form of obedience training, but then we do 16 hours a month of
patrol training.
So doing drug searches, tracking, article searches, building searches, et cetera.
But that's just to keep him true and honest and all that.
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
So we're talking about motorcycles safety today.
You got to cheer the road with motorcycles if you're not a motorcycle rider.
And you've been doing motorcycles since you 12 years old.
Yes, sir.
So you've been doing it a long time.
You know the rules of the road.
You've had a few spills.
Yeah, actually, I've had a couple in high school and then I've had two so far as an
adult.
So I'm 36 now.
Now, listen, we're talking about that.
By the way, if you want to see the poster, you can go to recenecounty.com slash staying
safe, recenecounty.com slash staying safe, go down to motorcycle safety.
So about the type of clothing you have to a bright clothing.
But I see most people wear black leather jackets and black pants.
So that's the most common color that you'll go out there.
If you see like here, what is it?
I know icon makes it revs, Revzilla sells a bunch of different companies clothing where
it is black leather, but they'll have like neon green or they'll have different color
writing or something that's completely obnoxious and obviously it's obnoxious, but it's also
designed to be obnoxious to get other people's attention.
Now, when you're riding a motorcycle, you have to do more, a little more searching than
car people do.
Search for factors that might lead to risky situations.
What are they talking about there?
So with that being said, anything on the road, people, cars, dogs, cats, animals, debris,
we're getting into obviously motorcycle season.
What else comes in with motorcycle season?
So when people are mowing and they spray all their grass clippings or whatever that's
on the street, that's like going across that and a curve or wet leaves or anything like
that.
It's literally like driving on ice.
I never even thought, never even occurred to me.
Yeah.
That was one of the times I've been down, was on, was on that.
I came into a blind 90 hairpin curve.
It was actually up in Wildcat mountain area.
So Portage Baribu, awesome area if anybody ever wants to ride, take 33, highway 33 all the
way through.
It's a beautiful country.
But it's a lot of slow, slow turns in their 90 hairpins and you're cutting the side of
a mountain.
But you'd get wash out from debris, so dirt, gravel, grass clippings, all that stuff, and
it turns the corners if they don't prep it into a kind of a sketchy situation if you're
not prepared for it.
You have bugs in your teeth when you're...
If you don't wear a helmet, you smile on the line.
Okay.
Let's talk about execute and action to maintain a margin of safety.
Do you have to stay further back from cars than most cars from each other?
Well, you got to think about reaction time.
So rule of thumb is every 25 to, I think it's 25 to 40 miles an hour and a car you're
supposed to have a car length between you and the next guy, right?
And that's for reaction time, for breaking or swarming or whatever.
Other cycles, anybody that rides a lot, they either subconsciously or are very hyper-vigilant
or aware that they're doing, they're paying attention to the driver's eyes in the mirrors
because what do we do when we're looking at something?
We start to move.
So as soon as we go to look, the guy that's on the bike is going to be more aware because
they have to be aware of what's going on.
It's terrible to drive drunk in a car.
You might make it home safely if you're drunk in a car, if you're lucky, you'll make it
home.
And that's luck on a motorcycle.
I can't imagine drinking and driving a motorcycle.
You lose all your balance.
Yeah.
Think of anything that you're, that you ingest as substance, even prescribed medication.
They say that you can't operate a heavy machinery or anything like that.
It's all done on reaction, it slows down your reaction time.
It slows down your ability to make decisions or obviously delays it to some degree.
But then also, you're right.
It's all about balance on a bike.
So if you can't walk straight, you know, how are you going to stay at balance on 400 pound
to 900 pound machine without any balance, your equilibrium is completely gone.
There were 233 alcohol-related motorcycle crashes in Wisconsin in 2012 of those, 191 or
82% occurred between 4 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Remember nothing good happens after midnight.
And you know, I know I don't drink, so I wouldn't know what it's like to drink and drive,
but it gets really bad out there at sometimes I'm Friday and Saturday nights.
I actually got some stats for you for 2024.
We had 64 motorcycle crashes in Racine County last year.
Five of them resulted in deaths, 59 of them had injury.
And you know, you leave the house saying I'll be back in a little while and sometimes
you never come back home.
And I know three of those deaths, other than the operator of the motorcycle being there,
they were hit by other vehicles and there was either drugs or alcohol on board with them.
You know, I see that little pad you took out.
Every time I watch these live PD shows, they always pull out a little tiny pad and like
the entire world they own is written on that pad.
Oh yeah.
They keep flipping little papers, everything in their world is in there.
Yeah, it would.
While we're human, we got a million things going through our mind, especially on the job,
so we can't remember everything.
I just take a little folded piece of paper and fold it in right on it.
Let's talk about in your car or truck when you're behind the wheel, you got to share
the road with motorcycles.
And here's the biggest thing when you make a left turn, you got to see if they're coming
up on your left because if they passed you'll do it on the left.
You got to be careful and watch it.
When did you when you had your crashes?
What was the reason for them?
Pre high, well, pre being an adult, so in high school, young and dumb, not thinking
it was all throttle and time in place.
One of one of one of was I was messing around with a buddy of mine, we're in a field
and I was on an 85 Honda and Duro.
And I thought it would be a good idea to raise my buddy out of dirt bike and we caught
some wet grass and I washed it out at probably about 65 and did the tumble.
And then after we got the bike, it took a week or so to get the bike going back again
and put better tires on it and was a little bit more aware of what I was doing with riding
off the street with traction and everything else.
And then there was another time.
It was raining, I left a stop sign pretty aggressively if you will, and the rear tire
spun and rather than pulling the clutch back in, letting it get back straight, I just
decided to try and ride it out and watch the play out in the middle of the intersection.
Maybe my mother was right.
But as an adult, I've been ran off the road twice.
So once was I was leaving a friend's funeral, kind of not like in Lala land, but I wasn't
like 100% focused on driving and a lady failed to stop at a stop sign and I was going down
the country road and she went, she was going right.
So it would have been within the direction that I was going with her.
And then when she had pulled out, I went left and I think there was a little bit of a panic
from her and she kind of just kept going into the left lane a little bit and I just kind
of followed it down into the ditch and ended up high side in the bike and flop.
You know, I did a lot of road trips with my wife going across all America every year
or you cross a lot of road trips, find it amazing how I get home safely because there
are a lot of nuts on the road and don't pay attention to what they're doing.
Of course, I try not to travel late at night too.
I've done a few times I had to travel all night long, but I try not to do it because nothing
good happens after midnight.
We're talking about the motorcycle safety part of the Racine County Traffic Safety Commission
poster this month.
Mount Pleasant Police Officers, Zachary Jovenoni is here and want to thank Aspen for coming
in for a cameo guest appearance, Aspen Jovenoni.
We want to thank Tom Knitter who put this together today from the Racine County Traffic
Safety Commission.
If you want to check out the motorcycle safety poster, go to Racine County dot com slash
staying safe.
Racine County dot com slash staying safe and it's all on there.
Have a good summer drive carefully and share the road.
Shining side up.
Hey, thanks for being here today.
Thank you.
The sun's rising.
The coffee's broken.
It wouldn't be morning without doing frozen.
WRJ.