Road safety and legislation

AUSTROADS project

The following project is now being taken up by AUSTROADS

Title:

A reliable, low-cost travel exposure index plus classification of motorcycles as a distinct vehicle class (RS.SS.N.550)

Project Number:

SS1082

Purpose:

To develop indices for urban and rural travel volume and speed distribution which can routinely be calculated from existing data sources and examine the feasibility of including motorcycles as a vehicle class within this system.

Provider:

ARRB

Current Status:

July 2004: The Qld Main Roads Kistler traffic logging equipment failed and is not likely to be back in action before September - one part of the study is to determine how well motorcycles can be detected by the equipment based on their wheelbase and weight, and to identify what sort of vehicle trigger false positives. The other part of the study the low cost exposure measure - is not dependent on the outcome of this part of the study, but it is convenient to deal with both aspects as a package so not much work has been done to date. Variation being developed with new schedule.

Final report due May 2005.

What does this mean?

In transport and planning, motorcycles have been inhidden to public policy and hence have been left out of virtually ALL policies regarding road allocation and parking. Any way of fitting motorcycles into the existing policies has been through the constant efforts of riders in the past, to extract concessions. The authorities think they are doing us a favour by allowing us into their policy area and have never been terribly co-operative, because they didn't have to be. We just didn't exist on their paperwork.

This project should lead to structural change, as it will require separate management of motorcycles in transport, instead of the current "afterthought" process, we we get thrown a few crumbs from time to time.

This is a pleasing outcome and follows on very quickly from the Australian Roads Foundation workshop last week, where this shortcoming was pointed out.

The addition of motorcycles as a separate road user class has been added in to this project and we can applaud the authorities for the equity granted.

It will take some time yet to achieve implementation in policy, but we are on the right track and they can now see us coming.

Motorcycle Awareness programs have moved ahead one step.

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