The National Road Safety Conference was held in Sydney this week.
THe Motor Cycle Council of NSW had a stand there, with our strategy doc
"Positioned for Safety" and the various pamphlets we've produced in
partnership with councils, plus various leaflets about bike safety
produced by different organisations.
I presume the proceedings will be available somewhere, your local Uni
library might be a good place to start if you want to see the papers.
I'll be putting up any info or links I can get on
www.mccofnsw.org.au
and announcing that here.
Herewith Guy's report on the conference:
(reformatted by ZJ)
============
Brian Wood presented the 4 minute talk series on "Positioned for Safety
- Before and After", using the new posters produced for the occasion.
The crowd was thick around the stand at each presentation and well
received.
I worked the room, pumping the flesh and discussing stuff with whoever
looked useful. Many bodies from the NRSS Panel were there and I even had a
civil chat with Eric Howard of Vicroads - that's "Mr. front numberplates"
to you.
<note from ZJ: NRSS is the National Road Safety Strategy panel,
basically the various TRansport Ministers. Guy was at the last meeting
they had.>
We may have prompted the formation of a "motorcycle users group" amongst
the road safety researchers and the NRMA wants to convene this. It seems
we have beaten all of them to the initial discussions on a wide range of
issues and we are in demand. By establishing the directions and setting
the posts correctly, we can let them kick some goals for us. We want a
strong presence on such a group.
<note from ZJ: if you have solid lobbying and committee experience and
want to help, let me know. This is a suit job, we need experienced
suits for it.>
Certainly, the mainstream motorcycle safety issues are following our
agenda. We need to stay on top of this, the "high moral ground" is giving
us good bargaining power and maintaining a high level of credibility.
I have a whisper on a small bit of government money we might be able
to grab and will pursue that. It won't be big, but all help will be
accepted, as long as it comes without strings. It means we can free up
some cash for the outreach projects, which still haven''t been able to
find funding in the competitive environment of grants.
Four papers on motorcycle issues were given:-
"How valid are motorycle safety data?" - Narelle Haworth, MUARC
---------------------------------------------------------------
Narelle Haworth picked up on the challenge laid out in Positioned
for Safety to actually test the validity of the data used in motorcycle
crash statistics and has found the basis of the data to be wanting
in many areas. This brings a focus onto the appropriateness of safety
strategies currently directed towards motorcyclists. An excellent piece
of work and of the high standard that we are coming to expect from her.
Of particular note is the focus she now demands upon
unregistered/unlicensed riders and the problems from trail bikes
included in the road crash stats because of the definitions of
"gazetted road". Clearly we are mixing two different types of crashes
and classifying them together resulting in confusion. Good stuff.
"Exposure study by motorycle make and type" - Ron Christie, RSRC Services
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Christie challenged the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for
distance travelled by riders in a year. You may recall a survey
circulated late last and early this year. Again, we find confusion
between trail and road riders. e.g. you may ride all day, on the road
you may cover several hundred km, in gnarly landscape, 60km is a big day
out. There is a large group of riders covering less than 5,000km per
year. Low usage appears to increase crash risk. High usage, whilst
increasing "exposure" to risk, may in fact be protective against risk.
ABS figures are definitely "low", but not by as much as we thought. Good
baseline data.
"Retiring from riding - or not?" - Christine Mulvihill, MUARC
---------------------------------------------------------------
Christine Mulvihill interviwed riders who had given up riding and asked
them questions about why and when. The direction was an attempt to be
able to predict how many riders would return to riding and how many
would definitiely not. Being a behavioural study it is less precise, but
gave some insights. This who gave it away saying it was "too dangerous"
never came back. This seems sensible to me. They comprise about one
third of respondents interviwed.
In NSW terms, we have 384,000 licenses on issue, this means that about
100,000 will never return. We have about 95,000 registered motorcycles
and approximately 75,000 unregistered motorcycles. Now the question is -
what about the other 100,000 ? The paper suggests a revolving
population, entering and leaving at different times.
"Motorcycle Protective Clothing" - Liz de Rome, LDeR Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Liz de Rome delivered protective clothing, a project sponsored by the
MCC of NSW and funded by the Motor Accidents Authority. The paper is a
short form of the final product which is to be a guide to selection of
protective gear. Hospital injury studies reveal the usefulness of
protective gear for minor injury and shortening stay in hospital and
less long term impact of injuries and reduction of common gruesome
injuries such as "degloving"- where skin and flesh is dragged off like a
glove. It also showed that it was of little value for the serious
injuries such as chest, pelvic or severings. Also illustrated is the
lack of information availability on synthetic or textile materials for
abrasion resistance, despite makers claims. Leather is the only material
with consistent results. Denim jeans offer the lowest abrasion
resistance at 0.6 seconds, while good 1.3mm leather is 5 seconds. Body
armour works.
Data on gear vesus injury is scarce and deficient. The most commonly
injured part is the legs. The lowest area of protection of NSW riders
is the legs. Motorcycle gloves and motorcycle boots work. The biggest
area of deficiency is consumer protection - no reliable standards with
huge variability in performance of various products. Any suggestion for
making protective clothing compulsory has been shelved, although there
are clear benefits from wearing it. Issues such as heat stress from too
much gear are pointed at and the lack of appropriate clothing for our
climatics was pointed out.
<note from ZJ: If there were to be labels on bike gear, what info would
you want on the label?>
Guy
But one
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