Guidelines for motorcyclist-friendly guardrails/Motorcycle safety study launched

[Bob]

Given the huge interest in NZ around motorcycle-friendly guardrails, I thought the following would be of interest.

A dedicated website has been launched to promote motorcyclist-friendly road barriers in Europe.

FEMA(the Federation of European Motorcycle Associations) stated that most road restraint systems do not offer any protection to motorcyclists falling off, sliding or rolling onto the pavement.

The site (www.mc-roadsidebarriers.eu) features a comprehensive database of existing barriers, a listing of manufacturers and guidelines detailing current standards and best practices for the benefit of road authorities.

More information ("New Standards for Road Restraint Systems for Motorcyclists - Designing safer roadsides for motorcyclists": ) is available as a pdf document at: http://www.fema-online.eu/guidelines/Guidelines.pdf

In addition to the above, a project has been launched to gather information on motorcycle safety in Europe. 'Riderscan' (www.riderscan.eu) wants information submitted (www.riderscan.eu/contribute) to submit “relevant information”, success stories, data and other achievements in road safety for motorcycles.

[Brian d marge]

Nick Hayden has been asked to be an adviser

Stephen

[Ocean1]

Most road restraint systems do not offer any protection to motorcyclists falling off: sliding or rolling onto the pavement, victims are likely to hit one or more posts, which have no energy absorption properties. As a result, collision with guardrail posts is a major cause of fatal motorcyclist injury, along with serious limb and organ injury often leading to amputation. Lately the European Parliament has identified standard guardrails as “death trap” for motorcyclists.

Why this isn't physically obvious and worthy of immediate remedial action by NZTA is a complete mystery to me. As is the ongoing roll-out of kilometers of WRB with exposed steel posts.

Actually, it's no real mystery: the real world doesn't match their policy set.