2008 Motorcycle and Scooter Safety Summit

On April 10-11 last year, a Motorcycle and Scooter Safety Summit was held in Canberra, convened by the Motorcycle Safety Consultative Committee (MSCC).

The MSCC is a national forum for consultation between the Australian government and other organisations actively involved in road safety.

Over 100 delegates attended the two-day summit, with the main objective to explore key motorcycle and scooter safety issues and identify scope for improving existing safety measures and developing new ones.

The summit heard the sobering message that while motorcycles make up 4.5 percent of all registered passenger vehicles on Australian roads, they account for 15 percent of road fatalities and a higher proportion of road-related serious injuries.

Speakers at the summit included Dr Nick Rogers, the secretary general of the International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association; Tony Sharp, chair of the UK National Motorcycle Council, as well as a number of other high-level positions; and Steve Kratzke from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A local keynote address was made by Dr Michael Kremmer from Griffith University, who argued that motorcycling, based on statistical analyses over a long period of time, is safer than it has ever been, and that mortality rates for riders have fallen faster than those for drivers.

He also argued that changes in motorcycle mortality rates are predominantly determined by the safety of the traffic system in which they operate, rather than the characteristics of motorcycles or their riders.

Meanwhile, Dr Rogers explained that crash statistics based on police reports cover the basics, but provide little information on why the crash occurred. For example, just writing down "speed" as the cause of a crash is chronically deficient as a causal factor.

Dr Rogers then spoke about the Motorcycle Accident In-depth Study (MAIDS), which was a study of motorcycle crashes in five European countries from 1999-2002. The main findings of MAIDS were that human factors accounted for nearly 88 percent of crashes, road environment factors were the cause of eight percent, with only a scant percentage (0.7) put down to issues such as engine size and motorcycle type.

So that's the preamble: what are the recommendations from the summit?

Recommendations were broken down into seven categories: data and analysis; rider protection; training and licensing; education; risk taking; enforcement; and road infrastructure and roadside hazards.

A number of the recommendadtions were routine, but some future directions included using MAIDS as a guiding principle for Australian crash investigations; ensuring that motorcycles and scooters are included in all transport planning; using new technology to improve crash investigation;  seeking GST exemption for clothing which can be considered safety gear; proving incentives to stay on LAMS motorcycles through lower registration and/or third party insurance; and ensuring that auditing schemes for roadside hazards take account of specific hazards for motorcycles and scooters.

The list of key actions and future directions is far more exhaustive than that snapshot, so I encourage you to read or download the 38-page report by clicking here.

So what's next? In his opening address, the federal member for Blaxland, Jason Clare, said that the objective of the summit was to develop recommended actions that could be considered by transport ministers for inclusion in a 10-year National Road Safety Strategy.

The current National Road Safety Strategy (here) expires in 2010.