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When the European Commission unveiled its proposals for a Road Safety Action Plan last July, with its new target for halving road deaths over the next ten years, it included "a new focus on motorcyclists".
However, the proposals in the draft plan show only a cursory understanding of motorcycling, according to Aline Delhaye, General Secretary of the Federation of European Motorcyclists' Associations (FEMA), the Brussels-based grouping of national European organizations.
“It has been a struggle to explain motorcycle safety,” says Delhaye. “Motorcyclists are ignored in debates on safety. It’s not on purpose. It is just easy to forget about them. Everyone is a car driver.”
The Commission’s proposals for the Road Safety Action Plan were well-intentioned, Delhaye says, but they dwelt too much on vehicles rather than on what FEMA considers the real issue, human behaviour. “Human behavior is the main problem. It is about how road users drive. We need to address this through training, awareness, attitudes, and infrastructure,” she says.
Delhaye says Commission relies on “unproven and expensive measures” like mandatory Advanced Braking Systems (ABS). She opposes mandatory specific braking systems, saying they represent additional costs, and the technology still needs improving.
She says the Commission needs ensure motorcyclists are integrated into transport policies by default, in line with the recommendations of international expert groups like the OECD Workshop on Motorcycle Safety, which calls for motorcyclists to be included more thoroughly in overall transport policy and infrastructure policy and management. “Motorbikes have different dynamics, different reactions to road surfaces or to the weather. Policy measures need to take this into account,” Delhaye says.
That, Delhaye explains, says much about why motorbike accident rates are relatively high compared to other road vehicles. “Statistics show everybody has seen a major reduction in accidents on average across the EU, except with motorcyclists,” she says. “The statistics are simply not going down as fast as car vehicles.
Indeed, the OECD and the International Transport Forum have released statistics revealing that while all OECD members expect Malaysia have seen falls of between 17 and 55% in road fatalities between 2000 and 2009, half of OECD members have actually seen a rise in motorbike fatalities during that period.
But Delhaye says that some caution is needed in interpreting the statistics. “If you look at kilometres ridden, then motorcyclists tend to have a higher accident rate – but that misses a wide range of issues,” she says. “Finland is performing horribly, with fatalities up 170%, but it also had the highest degree of newly registered motorcycles, up 135% in eight years. It is a very complex issue, and it depends on a lot of factors, including the quality of the statistics. Improving data collection is definitely the first step the European Commission can take, then will we be able to find out if there is anything to be harmonized at EU level.”
And although the 2001-2010 EU Road Safety Action Plan helped reduce overall road deaths over the decade, Delhaye points out that the many measures implemented during that time seemed to ignore motorcyclists. “You can see that motorcyclists were not taken into account in many of the safety measures taken. But we are pleased to see motorcyclists have now a dedicated focus in the Commission’s 2011-2020 proposals,” she says.
Delhaye says, is that when it comes to safety infrastructure standardization in Europe, motorcyclists are also often ignored. “For example, motorway guardrails are not tested to take account of motorcyclists, who can slide and hit them, but they are tested on cars and trucks. And they don’t take account of how paint on road is slippery when wet, or how the field of vision on motorcycle is very different and much higher than for car or truck drivers,” she says. In some countries, though, Delhaye praises efforts to take motorcyclists into account: for example, she welcomes the fact that in London, motorcyclists can use bus lanes, a measure that she say has had a huge impact on accident statistics.
A linked issue for FEMA concerns EU efforts to make Periodical Technical Inspections (PTI) – or roadworthiness testing - mandatory for all bikes across Europe. “But when you compare accident statistics across countries, there is no statistical link between accidents and PTIs!” says Delhaye. “We are not against inspections if one can prove their usefulness. But merely harmonizing PTI will not improve motorcycle safety, just create an additional burden for the consumer, while again focusing on vehicle aspects instead of human behavior.”
When it comes to emissions, Delhaye accepts that motorbikes need to improve as much as any other vehicle category. “There is a lot of work being done,” she says. “There are zero emission motorcycles – like electric scooters and mopeds – like the Piaggio MP3 hybrid. We have an added value as cleaner and more efficient vehicles because we do not sit in traffic jams, and because we take less space. But we need the same kind incentives to encourage people to buy these alternatives.”
Delhaye says that as the transport sector has moved to cut emissions, the motorcycle industry has made its own efforts, but began much later than the car industry. “We want to get integrated in the mobility debate,” she says. When cities around Europe are dealing with congestion, motorcycles could be part of the solution, and should at the very least be included in urban transport plans, she says. Delhaye suggests that the zero-emission motorcycles should be allowed to run during car-free days. “When we talk about the ‘Mobility Week’, we talk about walking, biking and roller skates – but zero emissions in car-free days could be a great message. You can’t go everywhere by foot or public transport!”
A final point concerns noise, an issue that, Delhaye admits, can give the motorcycling community a bad name. “Noise is complex,” she says. “The problem is not what comes out of the factory. It is what people do to them, putting in illegal noise systems, which are too easy to find, but also a durability issue. Reducing noise limits at that point will not prevent people from changing their motorbikes. Instead, FEMA calls for manufacturers to introduce longer warranties on vehicle to limit tampering, improve controls and work on awareness as this is once more a behaviour issue.”
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