From a teenage pizza-slinging street racer to a professional National Hot Rod Association-winning Pro Stock Motorcycle drag racer, Steve Johnson understands the value of humble beginnings. He also knows exactly how it feels to reach 200 mph in less than 7 seconds. “I always tell everybody it’s like hanging on to a bullet after it's been shot out of a gun.”

“First to 500” is Johnson’s career calling card. “If you go to all the races in the year that the sanctioning body puts on,” he explains to host Mark Long on this episode of the “Driven to Ride” podcast, “and if you do it for 38 years, you’ll have 500, too.” That is a competition milestone no other NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle racer has ever reached. In fact, no one has even come close.

Rather than focus on his many racing successes, however, Johnson would rather talk about his off-track efforts. A California native who now calls Alabama home, Johnson is big on helping students achieve their goals. To that end, he founded the BAT-man Scholarship Program (“BAT” is an acronym for “Be A Technician”), awarded at high schools and technical colleges across the U.S.

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Greek philosopher Plato is credited with the expression, “Our need will be the real creator,” which, loosely translated centuries later, became, “The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.” Peter Dering knows this feeling all too well, having come up with a device that, in the words of his company, Peak Design, “would make carrying and using a camera an absolute joy.”

As he explains to host Mark Long in this episode of “Driven to Ride,” Dering moved to San Francisco for a construction engineering job. With his first bonus, he bought a Honda Nighthawk 750 and an SLR camera. “I used to ride with my camera slung across my chest every day,” says Dering. “Whoever designed the camera strap basically said, “Here’s a business idea for you.”

Nowadays, Peak Design offers a medley of innovative products, from unique backpacks and duffels to vibration-damping mobile-phone mounts and sturdy camera accessories. “We try to solve problems that we ourselves, the users of the product, encounter,” says Dering. “That’s what we’re known for, giving a solid rethink to products that are out there in the world.”

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If you’re a motorcyclist living and riding in the U.S., Nick Haris works for you. Even more so if you’re one of the more than 200,000 members of the American Motorcyclist Association, whose tagline is “Rights, Riding, and Racing.” Haris leads a team of six who comprise the AMA’s government-relations department. Their job is to protect your rights as a motorcyclist in the halls of government.

In the second of two interviews with Haris, “Driven to Ride” host Mark Long digs into significant issues facing 21st-century motorcyclists, such as autonomous vehicles. “If this technology cannot recognize and respond correctly to other road users,” states Haris, “and I don’t care if it is a pedestrian, a bicyclist, a motorcycle, or another car, it shouldn’t be allowed on public roads.”

Haris sheds light on other hot-button subjects, like alternative energy, helmet laws, land management, and lane filtering. “I often say, ‘Ten percent of the world has an opinion about motorcycling. They're in favor of it—you and I. Ten percent have some reason they don’t like it. And then, 80% don’t care.’ So, let’s not move them into the, ‘I don’t like motorcycling category,’ by doing something stupid.’”

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