The ITF report "Monitoring Progress in Urban Road Safety" 2022 update - pdf 4.14mb or..... Flogging a Dead Horse! The ITF authors of this report can spin these fatalities with other factors, so not only billion kilometres travel or population or even how many riders have a licence and how many bikes are registered for use etc, but what is possibly more relevant than these trends or extrapolation of figures, is that they do not explain the reasons behind the collisions that lead to injuries – slight, serious or a fatality, because as we all know, each road traffic … [Read more...]
WHO Would Have Thought
WHO Would Have Thought - motorcyclists are not vulnerable road users. On October 6th 2020, the IfZ conference was held online. Normally this conference is held every two years in Cologne (Germany) together with the INTERMOT motorcycle show. After the prelude and introduction, the conference commenced with a "Round Table" moderated by Antonio Perlot, General Secretary of ACEM. The participants included industry and rider organisation representatives. However the real star of the show was Nhan Tran from the World Health Organisation (WHO). He was absolutely brilliant in … [Read more...]
The Stupid Factor
We Are Human - Over the last ten years I have been involved in road safety research. In the last 5 years I have had the fortune of working with professional road collision investigators who kindly gave me access to their case files of road traffic fatalities in Northern Ireland. Overall, I studied around 150 fatalities, broken down into three groups: Motorcyclists, Pedestrians and Vehicle Occupants (the latter referring mainly to car drivers and passengers). What interested me was the way that in each case it was not a specific issue that caused the death of the "victim" … [Read more...]
A Classic Case of Bike Crime
United Kingdom - The history of motorcycle (and other vehicle) crime. Crime has been with us forever. The motor vehicle however has only been with us in one form or another since the late 19th century. Like night follows day, vehicle crime followed up close behind & some offences are not quite as new as you might think! In 1891 for instance the police force, already 60 years in existence, were aware of the disquiet caused by these ‘new fangled’ horseless carriages, and over responding to local pressures from a frightened public (not to mention the horses), they … [Read more...]
The Art of Dialogue and Motorcycling
Norway - In June 2008, over 100 motorcycling specialists met in the mountain town of Lillehammer, Norway to thrash out solutions to improve the “safety” of motorcyclists. The workshop was organised by the International Transport Forum/OECD with the objective of “bringing together the different stakeholders involved in motorcycling safety in order to identify the real problems of motorcycling safety (vs. the perceived problems), discuss practical solutions to these problems and propose a set of measures to improve the safety of motorcyclists”. The extraordinary … [Read more...]
