“Hey, he’s a jerk. » Luc Baudoin said this with the tranquility of a biker who has seen it, fellow riders who “accelerate to show off in front of a terrace”. We are at the Col de la Schlucht, a tourist hotspot in the Vosges mountains, and a motorbike has just backfired under the noses of the inn’s customers, who have come to seek a Pentecost sun that will not come. Luc Baudoin, local representative of the French Federation of Angry Bikers (FFMC), no longer frequents this “ridge road”, 88 kilometers of heritage from the First World War, when this winding path ensured the defense of the Vosges front. Why would he go on top of the balloons, in single file, behind motorhomes, hikers’ cars, gasping cyclists and groups of motorcyclists, when he “knows roads where you have fun like crazy without rolling at breakneck speed” ?
He flees the world. Others flee the noise. Big business for years, on this tourist route popular with both hikers and bikers, who represent one in five motorized vehicles on sunny weekends. At times, the defender of two-wheelers speaks as if they were as threatened as the capercaillie or the high stubble, this grassy moor that covers the peaks of the Vosges. “There is a small minority of bikers who annoy the world, ayatollahs of noise, indefensible. We try to teach them a way of driving that respects people. Because we fear that, one day or another, it will close. »
“Sound levels are the same as before, but people have become aware of the importance of noise in their lives” –Pierre Aumond, Gustave-Eiffel University
For two years, the defenders of a tranquility of the ridges have become more noisy. On June 26, they again went up to the Schlucht, for a demonstration in the form of a picnic: they demanded the closure of two sections of the “ridge road” to motor vehicles, and the limitation to 40 kilometers per hour other portions. The German neighbor inspires them, as much as it bristles the hairs of angry Bikers: in the Black Forest, as in Switzerland or Austria, more and more roads are closed to motorcycles, between April and October. Some permanently, most only a few weekends. This movement has grown in 2022, across the Rhine, where two-wheel tourism is much more developed than in France: there are dozens of specialized guides and tour operators.
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