|
|
Road safety and legislationMRA ACT Rejoinder - Letter to the Editor (yet to be published 7 May 2005) To J Jefferis,(CT May 6, pg 12) I can only say that if you are a motorcyclist, I hope your luck lasts. A motorcyclist who wants to hand responsibility for their safety to other road users (ie externalizing rather than internalizing responsibility) is running on luck rather than good management. I think you would benefit from our proposed hazard perception training program, based on experiential learning, which will be developed soon. As for the MRA ACT – part of our charter is to promote the safety of motorcyclists – if we can’t put our own house in order first how can we challenge other road users to be better. In three of the six recent fatal crashes, no other motor vehicle was involved, in a fourth the motorcyclist made the mistake. Hmmm. The ACT MRA is not into adversarial relationships with government. Instead we are fostering partnerships with government, police, road safety specialists, and the rider training industry with the best interests of motorcyclists, first, and all road users at heart. The learner rider program in the ACT is good but is need of review. A learner allowed to ride uncorrected for up to two years is not a safe proposition. MRA ACT wrote to ACT government seeking a review of the learner program to bring it in line with current best practice in place in other states. Robyn Major, President MRA ACT. Further rejoinder to be published in Have your Say (7 May 2005) Unfortunately J Jefferis (CT 6 May) missed the point of the article and doesn’t understand the application of roadcraft and the internalization of the cause of crashes vs externalization ie blame the other bloke or get others to look out for you! Crashes don’t just happen, they are caused when a human being makes a mistake either through by inattention, ignorance, incompetence or a combination of all three. Unfortunately the outcome of a crash for a motorcyclist is a severe fright, pain and suffering, or death. As to fault - the police will attribute blame based on legal guidelines, called road rules, and then the insurance companies fight it out. But the outcome is the same for a motorcyclist, pain and suffering, or death. Wouldn’t it be a better outcome if a crash situation was avoided in the first place? This is where hazard perception training comes in. While we can all look at statistics and gloat how innocent we motorcyclists are (in 73% of all multi-vehicle crashes involving motorcycles, the other vehicle was at fault) motorcyclists are still injured or dead. Motorcyclists have a choice, either hand responsibility for your wellbeing to the other road user, a human being able to make a mistake at any moment, or take responsibility for your own safety and don’t put your safety in the hands of others. Only by taking such responsibility will motorcyclists reduce the potential for being placed in harmful situations. If you are ever involved in a crash, you need to ask the question, what did I contribute to that crash, and how could I have avoided it? The MRA ACT’s aim is to increase the hazard perception skills of the ACT’s motorcyclists to start with – we have little experiential training of this nature in the ACT hence our drive to change this. We need to put our own house in order first. Then we can work with government to raise the hazard perception skill levels of ALL road users by introducing whole of life training. We can do all this on a voluntary basis with incentive schemes – we don’t need legislation to do it. And we will work with government and other interested bodies to achieve this in time. The MRA ACT along with other motorcycling groups already run voluntary training programs for fellow motorcyclists. We do this because we know the need for it and the potential road safety benefits, not just as motorcyclists but as car drivers also. Unfortunately we can’t reach riders that aren’t members of organized clubs and we also need to enable clubs to make informed choices on the types of training they sponsor. Governments have less grounds for legislating for further training if we are already doing it ourselves so I do not share J Jefferis’ s view on this matter. If we are actively working towards improving our own road safety record, its harder for others to try and destroy our right to ride and enjoy the freedom motorcycling offers. I am not threatened by working with government, but I am, along with other MRA members, galvanized to save riders lives as best we can. The ACT learner training scheme has improved our road safety record for riders over the years. However we cannot be complacent when we know it could be better and in need of review. A motorcyclist can undertake initial learner training – two half days focused on skills with hazard perception theory part of the mix. At that level new riders are only able to absorb the skills training, they are not able to absorb, take away and implement the ‘mind’ skills. They are then able to ride for up to two years with no further rider training intervention – way too long and no opportunity to bring in the experiential hazard perception training so critical to their safety. In my experience based on 30 years of riding, 9 years of rider instructing and working in road safety, I know motorcyclists will benefit from such training. Ask Jeremy Bowdler, editor of Two Wheels, and ask other Canberrans who have benefited from such training. Ask me – I am still here and without the benefit of this form of training, there were many occasions where car drivers could have caused me grief had I not been risk aware. In the last six fatal crashes, excessive speed was not a factor. Other vehicles were involved in only two of them. In three, the motorcyclists lost control, in one the rider made a bad decision. In four of them, the motorcyclists hit curbing, with the fatal outcome caused by the non-frangible roadside furniture. There’s a lot more to rider safety than just training, and the MRA ACT is working on many fronts. Rider training is just one of our strategies and we make no apology for putting it forward. Robyn Major MRA ACT It's drivers, not motorcyclists, who need to watch out - Letters to the Editor Canberra Times
By David McLennan Police Reporter Tuesday, 3 May 2005 Canberra motorbike riders ought to be required to do more training before they could get their licence, Motorcycle Riders Association of Australia ACT president Robyn Major said yesterday. The call came after another motorbike accident last night, as well as two riders dying at the weekend. They were the third and fourth motorcyclists to die on Canberra roads this year and brought the ACT road toll to nine. A motorbike and a car collided at the corner of Lawrence Wackett and Tharwa Drive, Theodore, in last night's accident about 6 o'clock, with the male rider treated by intensive- care paramedics at the scene for a leg injury and taken to Canberra Hospital in a stable condition. Firefighters cleaned a small fuel spill and traffic was slowed for several hours. Mrs Major, a riding instructor, said ACT motorbike riders had to do a two-day course to get their learner's permit and only had to do another training course if they failed their provisional licence test. All riders had to do this second lot of training in NSW, giving them a chance to learn to be more self-aware on the road. She said motorbike riders needed to have three kinds of skills: physical, mental and self control. "Any fool can learn to ride a motorcycle. You can teach a monkey to ride, but the skill is to think about how you ride," she said. Riders needed to think about things such as how a big meal would affect them, how to make good decisions while riding, awareness of potential hazards and how to control the urge to push things too far. She said, for example, when cars came towards riders, they should move to the other side of their lane instead of staying too close to the other vehicle. Similarly, riders should not ride directly beside a car on multi-lane roads because the cars often did not see them and hit them when changing lanes. Her organisation was also seeking funding for another, voluntary, training course that would take motorcyclists who had learned how to ride on an eight-hour course on the road. ACT Policing Traffic Operations Superintendent David Berston said police would welcome any more rider or driver training. "Training is extremely important, but the road rules are there for a reason and a lot of these instances have occurred because the road rules haven't been adhered to. I advocate any increased training and education," he said. Motorcyclist, 17, eighth road death By David Jean Gone in a flash: your licence
More drivers than ever before will lose their licences this year as a result of higher demerit points penalties introduced this week for low-level speeding offences. And, experts say, the new laws will increase the number of unlicensed drivers on our roads and put added strain on people's livelihoods. If you've not seen the flashing noticeboards across the state advising motorists to check the updated penalties on the Roads and Traffic Authority website, here's the most important message: exceeding a speed limit by up to 15kmh now attracts three demerit points, instead of two. Less than a decade ago, the penalty was just one. That's a quarter of your licence gone in a flash. Plenty of motorists are going to feel the bite. Two-thirds of the 551,568 speed infringements issued in 2003 were for low-level speeding. The NSW Government says it increased demerit points for offences and decreased fines to counter the community perception that speeding tickets had more to do with revenue collection than road safety. Under the new laws, fines for exceeding the speed limit by up to 15kmh dropped from $130 to $75. Additionally, drivers fined for low-range speeding in a 40kmh school zone will see their demerit point penalty triple, jumping from one to three. Newspaper calls for motorcycles to be taxed off the roadDecember 1st, 2004 In NSW, the Carr government is bravely trying to cut the road toll, even at the risk of alienating young motorists. However, its discussion paper has overlooked one simple measure that could result in a significant reduction in the road toll, including among young road users. NSW and the other states should tax motorcycles and motor scooters off the road. At the moment, the NSW road authorities encourage the use of motorcycles and scooters by allowing riders to use express and transit lanes. The authorities may be acting under the impression that bikes and scooters are a socially desirable form of transport: they use little petrol, cause no congestion, take up hardly any parking space, and generally make few demands on the environment. But of course that kind of calculus grossly understates the true cost imposed by motorcycle riders on the community. Statistics from studies in NSW and Victoria show that motorcycle riders and their pillion passengers are many times more likely to be killed or injured than other motorists. The risk of being killed or injured (per distance travelled) is 16 to 18 times that of a car driver or passenger. If in an accident in Victoria, riders are 33 times more likely to be killed and 31 times more likely to suffer a serious injury. Motorcycle fatalities have declined dramatically in the past decade and a half as the use of motorcycles has declined. Motorcycles were aggressively marketed to young men and women in the 1970s and 1980s. But everyone, including governments, soon learned about their dangers. The number of people in NSW with motorcycle licences fell by about 40per cent in the 1990s, possibly because of more stringent training and licensing requirements introduced in the mid 1980s. As a result, the number of fatalities was halved. Unfortunately, people forget, and motorcycles and motor scooters have come back into fashion, including among middle-aged men, who should know better. Nationally, registrations increased by almost 20 per cent in the five years to 2004. This compares with a 10 per cent increase in the number of passenger cars. The number of fatalities has also started to rise again. The big increase has been in the number of older riders. The proportion of motorcycles registered to people aged 40 or over is up by about 60 per cent. Older owners tend to ride bigger American and European bikes. And while they are much less likely than younger riders to have an accident, the number of crashes involving older drivers has been rising faster than the number of licence holders. In general, the severity of injuries suffered in motorcycle accidents tends to rise with the engine capacity of the motorcycle. The average size of third-party insurance claims for motorcycle accidents injuries is higher for riders and pillion passengers aged over 25. In the United States, the average total cost (including medical costs, lost earnings, lost quality of life) of motorcycle accidents is about 11 times that for motor vehicles as a whole. A similar ratio is likely in Australia. It is possible that people attracted to the speed and excitement of motorcycle riding will be accident prone in any form of transport. But their risks of serious injury, permanent disability and death would be lower in a car, and so would the cost to the community. A registration tax high enough to deter people from riding motorcycles will be opposed on the grounds of equity. Young riders are disproportionately low-paid or unemployed. Motorcycles are a "cheap" form of transport. For those young riders who live in the outer suburbs of the major cities, where public transport is poor, a bike may be essential to get to work or to look for a job. A heavy tax on motorcycles would be regressive, in the sense that it would fall more heavily on those with low incomes. However, like the heavy taxation of tobacco products, the equity consequences have to judged against their health outcomes. History has shown that governments can save people's lives simply by deterring them from getting on motorcycles. A compromise solution may be to phase in the higher tax, to give existing bike and scooter owners time to buy a car in the normal course of replacing their bikes. At least with lower tariffs and the rise of the Korean car industry, the choices for those looking for an alternative means of cheap transport have widened. Korean cars may be less exciting, but they last longer and, more importantly, so do both their drivers and their passengers. Spinal injury risk still highest for menSydney Morning Herald Young men are most at risk of spinal cord injuries and transport-related accidents remain the most frequent cause of injury, a national report has found. Released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Spinal Cord Injury, Australia 2002-03 shows males account for four out of five spinal injury cases, with rates among 25- to 34-year-olds and 15- to 24-year-olds significantly higher than in all other age groups. The report also shows almost half of the 245 spinal injuries recorded over the year were transport-related. Cyclists or motorcyclists accounted for 56 of these cases; a further 53 were motor vehicle occupants. Raymond Cripps, a researcher at Flinders University's National Injury Surveillance Unit and the report's author, said: "I think it is very important to note that many of the individuals involved in these accidents are only very young. Spinal cord injury is not high in frequency but when it does occur, it does have pretty dramatic consequences." Spinal injury rates and method of injury have remained constant throughout the past decade. Dr Cripps said the high proportion of young men being injured and the large number of motorcycle accidents suggested risk-taking behaviour was to blame for many injuries. However, many cyclists and motorcyclists were injured through no fault of their own. "As motorists, we obviously need to become more aware that these cyclists are on the road and we need to avoid running them off the road or slamming into them," he said. Vehicle roll-overs were one of the most common causes of spinal injuries from motor vehicle crashes (24 cases out of 53), with two-thirds of these cases resulting in tetraplegia (the loss of function in the arms, legs, trunk and pelvic organs). Collisions with another vehicle or hitting roadside hazards, say, a tree or a pole, accounted for 21 cases of spinal injury. Six cases occurred when people were thrown from their vehicle. In 13 cases, spinal injury resulted from diving into swimming pools, rivers or surf, while surfing and water-skiing accidents were to blame for a further five cases. Injuries caused by falls among the elderly is the only category that has increased in recent years, but researchers say this could be attributed to the rising number of older Australians. See the full report (27 Pages) What is interesting here is the comments made by the author during the interview with the newspaper: Dr Cripps said the high proportion of young men being injured and the large number of motorcycle accidents suggested risk-taking behaviour was to blame for many injuries. However, many cyclists and motorcyclists were injured through no fault of their own. "As motorists, we obviously need to become more aware that these cyclists are on the road and we need to avoid running them off the road or slamming into them," he said.
Back to Road Safety and Legislation index
|
      
|
MRA ACT is a member of the Australian Motorcycle Council (AMC)
For problems/inquiries regarding this site, email the MRA ACT
Webmaster at webmaster@mraact.org.au
© 2007 Motorcycle Riders Association
of the Australian Capital Territory Incorporated