Florida Follows Suit
Two states already fixed the liability problem that's closing our riding. Ours is next — and the work happens between now and March 2027.
Every one of us knows a piece of ground like this. A couple hundred acres of sand and pine off a county road, natural elevation, drains well, close enough to town that you could run a Saturday hare scramble and have everybody home by dark. The owner rides. The owner's kids ride.
And the gate stays chained.
Ask why and you get the same answer every time. It's almost never "I don't want you out here." It's "My attorney told me no."
That sentence is the whole problem. It's why events get canceled, why insurance eats the margin on a race weekend, why families drive to Georgia or Alabama, and why the Let's Ride Project exists.
The gap in Florida law
Florida already has a statute meant to encourage landowners to open property for recreation. Section 375.251 limits a landowner's liability for making land available to the public for outdoor recreation.
The catch is in the fine print. That protection generally depends on not charging for entry and not deriving revenue from the property, with a narrow carve-out for concessions and special events where the money goes straight back into maintaining the area.
Read that as a landowner and here's what you hear: you're covered right up until the moment the thing becomes real. Gate fees, entry fees, a sanctioned series, a promoter — the exact ingredients of organized riding — are also the ingredients that make your coverage uncertain. And "uncertain" is a word insurance carriers price like a hazard.
So the acreage stays closed. That's not a failure of will on anybody's part. It's a gap in a statute, and gaps in statutes can be closed.
Two states already closed it
Arkansas went first. On March 18, 2025, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 312 — the first inherent risk law in the country written specifically for off-road motorcycling. AMA Central States Representative Nick Sands said it would create "a more sustainable liability landscape for event organizers."
Texas followed three months later. Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 5624 on June 20, 2025, effective Sept. 1, pushed through by track owners, dealers and riders working alongside the AMA. Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Kansas are all moving the same direction.
Neither state invented anything. Inherent risk statutes have protected ski areas and equestrian operations for decades. What Arkansas and Texas did was notice that dirt bikes had been left off the list, and add them.
And to be blunt about the objection you'll hear first: this does not cover negligence. Not gross negligence, not intentional misconduct, not a torn-up track, missing flaggers, ignored safety rules, or a hazard the operator knew about and left there. Landowners and promoters still have to build a safe facility, staff it and enforce the rules — and if they don't, they answer for it. What the law does is draw a line that's currently blurry: a rider who launches a triple has accepted a risk that comes with the sport, and no amount of care by the landowner makes that risk disappear.
That's the entire ask.
This isn't a wish list
The coalition behind this is not a mailing list. It's riders and clubs, but also Florida dealers, OEMs building both motorcycles and side-by-sides, track owners, race promoters and landowners — and two lobbying firms have been retained to work Tallahassee. The funding is coming from inside our own industry rather than from outside it, which is exactly the answer a committee chair wants when he asks who's behind a bill.
We already have a Florida legislator taking a serious look at carrying it.
The part nobody's talking about yet
Private land is the obvious target. It isn't the biggest one.
Florida holds an enormous amount of state-owned land, much of it conservation and water-management acreage the state struggles to fund maintenance on. A great deal of it is leased out — and those leases routinely carry a flat prohibition on motorized vehicles. Ask why and you land right back in the same place: liability.
If inherent risk protection removes that exposure, "no motorized vehicles" stops being a legal necessity and becomes a policy choice — one that can be negotiated, lease by lease. In South Florida alone we're talking about the potential to open thousands of acres of ground that's sitting underused and underfunded, ground that is ripe for organized off-road riding.
That's the long game. The bill is the key that unlocks the conversation.
Why the clock matters
Florida's 2027 Regular Session convenes March 2, 2027. The deadline to file bills is noon that same day. Sine die is April 30. Sixty days, start to finish.
Which means this doesn't get won in March of 2027. It gets won now — in interim committee weeks, in district offices, in conversations happening this fall and winter. Moving a legislator from "taking a look" to "filing it" comes down to one thing: how many riders that member hears from between now and then.
That's us. Not lobbyists — they're the tools.
What to do this week
Find out who represents you. Two minutes: flhouse.gov/FindYourRepresentative and flsenate.gov/Senators/Find. Put both names in your phone.
Call the district office, not Tallahassee. Ask for the aide who handles transportation or judiciary. You're a constituent, you ride, you want Florida to pass an inherent risk law for off-road recreation like Arkansas Act 312 and Texas HB 5624. Then say the part they need to hear: it does not protect negligence.
Make it local. Name the riding area that closed near you. Name the event that stopped running. Tell them what your family spends on a race weekend and which county you spend it in. Rural districts hear "tourism dollars" loud and clear.
Sign up at letsrideproject.com. That's how we tell you which hearing to show up to, and when.
If you own land, run a facility, sell bikes or promote events, get on the record. A landowner who tells a legislator "I'd open my gate if this passed" is worth a hundred emails.
Bring your club. One rider is a phone call. Forty riders is a district.
We're not asking for public money or a new agency. We're asking Florida to put in writing what every rider already knows.
Two states have said it out loud. Let's make Florida the third.