A safety framework for discussing motorcycle safety

[R650R]

Bikers have shown themselves to be just as shit as any other group of road users at judging any of that

100% Agree.

Has anyone ever done accident stats on group riding vs solo as I feel that is always the most dangerous time of exposure. First there's the red mist defacto race vibe, then there's the lemming syndrome of trusting that the front rider has seen and responded to oncoming traffic.
Going around Lake Waikarmoana on the weekend I was cringing at the lines taken by some 'riders', lucky with the cold weather there was minimal camper vans, just few redneck locals in hiluxes going hard.

[Ocean1]

It is also my view that government agencies should...

Might I just say... Verkeersbordvrij. Signs. They're a fucking joke. If you took the time to read every one you pass on most city roads you wouldn't have any time to spend navigating your vehicle on the road.

That, and stop fucking with the rules for setting speed limits, if there's been an off on a particular corner then that's no reason to reduce the speed limit, not even if you add "temporary" to the sign. That way leads to insanity, and zero speed zones. If there's a problem with the corner then take the cash saved by not accumulating every official in the country on site for their opinion and use it to fix the fucking problem.

And yes, Hitch, surfaces are sub-optimal, and yes that's down to piss poor QA.

[caseye]

Might I just say... Verkeersbordvrij. Signs. They're a fucking joke. If you took the time to read every one you pass on most city roads you wouldn't have any time to spend navigating your vehicle on the road.

That, and stop fucking with the rules for setting speed limits, if there's been an off on a particular corner then that's no reason to reduce the speed limit, not even if you add "temporary" to the sign. That way leads to insanity, and zero speed zones. If there's a problem with the corner then take the cash saved by not accumulating every official in the country on site for their opinion and use it to fix the fucking problem.

And yes, Hitch, surfaces are sub-optimal, and yes that's down to piss poor QA.

Couldn't agree more!
Money on bad corners, road stretches, less signage and most definitely fewer slower speed signs, beginning to think we live in a country where people can NOT only read, write or do their arithma tic but can't actually drive a moto car in a responsible manner either.

[Urano]

[...]
· Public Policy Considerations – [...]
· Training for riders and awareness raising among other road users – [...]
· Infrastructure suited to Safer Motorcycling – [...]
· Technology Advances – [...]
OK, now for your views – good, bad and the ugly. What am I missing?

i've written a book, four years ago, covering exactly your points. i'd be happy to gift you a copy but unfortunately it's in italian and i've not had way to follow a translation for it yet, even despite a very nice offer from a cool guy here...

i put particular stress on the human factor part (which, driven by my former airline training, i consider the biggest component of the problem) both on the bikers side than on the others users' one. traffic psychology (motivation, self assessment, rage management, flock behavior, stress and fatigue management) should be treated for cagers and truckers too, and from my point of view all licenses should be incremental.

then there's a huge part, that should be transmitted to wide public, concerning the distance between "what will increase your safety" and "what will make industry sell more". no conspiracy or other, simply a clarification that "serving suggestions" are not exclusive on cookies packages... i suggest you to consider it.


and eventually we come to the second biggest part of the problem:

As one example, NZTA doesn't know how to lay tarseal.
[...]
A second example, NZTA doesn't know how to build safe corners.
[...]
A third example, NZTA doesn't know how to build roundabouts.
[...]
A fourth example, the pedestrian traffic lights
[...]

logistic politics and city traffic management it's a pandora's box.
safety of one category of users (and of all and every single users) is unbreakably bonded to the whole picture.
we need to consider the widest horizon of long term planning and then go down to the resulting economic production, people relocation, cost of people displacement and moving though the various activity centers, all through the single corner construction.
i'd give a kidney to meet an administration willing to plan long term logistic with citizens, but unfortunately for the most of the cases the word "planning" is a wide overesteem...
anyway, we can simplicistically sum up and say that for sure a way to increase bikers safety is to build more railway.

this is truly a war and peace topic, anyway. we'd need months to cover it...

Bikers have shown themselves to be just as shit as any other group of road users at judging any of that

prob is not the roads themselves, it's energy. people do not realize what kind of energy is stored in a 1 ton car traveling at 90kmh.
everybody simply forget that front crash tests are made to simulate two vehicles traveling at 32kmh each.

[Brian d marge]

I hope you mean that this may be their intention, as it certainly isn't a reality.

As one example, NZTA doesn't know how to lay tarseal. My mother, all 80 years of her, could do a better job than many of the kilometres that NZTA signs off on, and she doesn't know the first thing about laying course chip roads. Many km of new seal fail within the first day, with chip being ripped out or the tar boiling through, either outcome causing shiny patches that are potentially lethal to motorcyclists in wet weather. As well as being suboptimal, this is taxpayers' money wasted. These shiny patches loiter threateningly for years. Forget about stupid campaigns like dobbing in stock trucks dribbling shit (something that the Highway Patrol could fix in a week), shiny tar patches are a fundamental road integrity issue that should be put right immediately. NZTA could start by holding their contractors accountable for these failures.

A second example, NZTA doesn't know how to build safe corners. If they did they would have heard about something called "camber". The left-hand off-camber sweeper at the top of the Ngauranga Gorge is a death trap that has claimed motorists since soon after it was opened 25 years ago. Preceding that is the Wainuiomata Hill Road (OK, not a state highway, but the camber lesson should have been learned there) which is a symphony of off-camber corners. More recent are the "improvements" on the Kaitoke side of the Rimutaka Hill Road summit. Brand new corners, many badly off camber with deceptive exit vision lines, on a stretch of road that is also too steep for heavy vehicles. Magic.

A third example, NZTA doesn't know how to build roundabouts. Double-laning the Otaki roundabout 10 years ago created a choke point that, on a good weekend, can result in a tailback as far as Levin. Why? Because both lanes are able to direct traffic straight through the intersection -- it's a Clayton's passing lane choke point. On holiday weekends all other passing lanes heading north out of Wellington on SH1 are coned off, but the Otaki roundabout escapes. The left-hand lanes at roundabouts like these should be left-hand turn only. That would also give traffic entering off side roads a crack at gaining access to the main highway. This disaster has recently been repeated at the new roundabout at Otaihanga, which is also badly off camber, as several capsized articulated truck-and-trailer units can attest. Tough shit for any vehicle that happened to be on their offside when they went over.

A fourth example, the pedestrian traffic lights on the main street in Otaki. I mean, for fuck's sake, why weren't these placed 15m further back so that they could control the Arthur Street intersection as well?

I'll stop now before I write War and Peace, but I'm happy to do so, preferably on a paid-per-word basis.

Privatisation could have helped here

Stephen

[Urano]

Privatisation could have helped here

Stephen

not so sure about it.
it really depends.
in general i have to draw the conclusion that the best compromise could be to keep national property of all the infrastructural nets and sell only concession of management few decades long.

[Drew]

There's nothing wrong with the fucking roads, if you ride accordingly.

I ride like a cunt and I'd love a racetrack surface everywhere, but who is paying for it.

Teach the riders to ride and accept responsibility for their own safety, and the stats will do the rest for you.

[R650R]

There's nothing wrong with the fucking roads, if you ride accordingly.

I ride like a cunt and I'd love a racetrack surface everywhere, but who is paying for it.

Teach the riders to ride and accept responsibility for their own safety, and the stats will do the rest for you.

Kind of correct to a certain point. Here in Hawke's Bay we are home to the deadliest stretch of state highway in NZ, SH2 expressway. Its only roughly 15 years old, plenty wide and acres of runoff in most places.
But put Darwin and high traffic volume together and its crash bang your dead time. Stragely enough I don't think anyone has actually died yet at the two abortion intersections on it, just on the wide open perfect visibility stretches...
I think fatigue is under rated as a crash factor so road design could play a factor in keeping a wayward vehicle off the road if it strays and educate people not to do the big panic swerve and end up crossing into oncoming traffic.

[Drew]

Kind of correct to a certain point. Here in Hawke's Bay we are home to the deadliest stretch of state highway in NZ, SH2 expressway. Its only roughly 15 years old, plenty wide and acres of runoff in most places.
But put Darwin and high traffic volume together and its crash bang your dead time. Stragely enough I don't think anyone has actually died yet at the two abortion intersections on it, just on the wide open perfect visibility stretches...
I think fatigue is under rated as a crash factor so road design could play a factor in keeping a wayward vehicle off the road if it strays and educate people not to do the big panic swerve and end up crossing into oncoming traffic.

So drivers are being squids, and people are dying in near perfect conditions? Sort of proves my point rather than countering it. The roads are not the problem.

[MrKiwi]

Might I just say... Verkeersbordvrij. Signs. They're a fucking joke. If you took the time to read every one you pass on most city roads you wouldn't have any time to spend navigating your vehicle on the road.

That, and stop fucking with the rules for setting speed limits, if there's been an off on a particular corner then that's no reason to reduce the speed limit, not even if you add "temporary" to the sign. That way leads to insanity, and zero speed zones. If there's a problem with the corner then take the cash saved by not accumulating every official in the country on site for their opinion and use it to fix the fucking problem.

And yes, Hitch, surfaces are sub-optimal, and yes that's down to piss poor QA.

Yes, I tend to agree, good points, thanks.

[MrKiwi]

There's nothing wrong with the fucking roads, if you ride accordingly.

I ride like a cunt and I'd love a racetrack surface everywhere, but who is paying for it.

Teach the riders to ride and accept responsibility for their own safety, and the stats will do the rest for you.

True to a point, but some designs are not helpful to riders. Take for example roundabouts where the road slopes down from the centre of the roundabout so that when you lean into the corner your lean is artificially accentuated (negative camber), or changes of seal as you line up a corner. I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is when designing and building roads, factor in the needs of all road users, not just cars and trucks.

Having said that, I am a strong supporter of riding to the conditions.

[MrKiwi]

ban cars .

-edit-
oh yes, and ban "safety regulatory framework" bullshit, because that shit doesn't achieve any shit except getting some old white cunts paid, and if there's any people that don't need to be paid, it's old white cunts.
in fact, ban old white cunts.

Thanks for raising the standard of the debate, not!

[Blackbird]

True to a point, but some designs are not helpful to riders. Take for example roundabouts where the road slopes down from the centre of the roundabout so that when you lean into the corner your lean is artificially accentuated (negative camber), or changes of seal as you line up a corner. I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is when designing and building roads, factor in the needs of all road users, not just cars and trucks.

Having said that, I am a strong supporter of riding to the conditions.

Sure improving roads contribute to safety but I'm totally with Drew. Raising the standard of Roadcraft will almost certainly be more cost-effective than improving roads but both have their place. The only real stumbling block is that the average road user thinks they're crash hot already. At least making the learner tests more comprehensive is a step in the right direction.

[BlackSheepLogic]

· Training for riders and awareness raising among other road users – in road safety this is known as human factors, and it has been shown to be the most critical in accidents. Pre and post licence training for motorcycle riders is important. But it should not stop there, it is crucial that other road users have an appreciation of the dangers of misjudging the speed or behaviour of a rider, including the failure to see an oncoming rider. This should be incorporated into training for all road users and it should be a part of obtaining a drivers licence.

Drop the Post-training shit. Pre-Training, is needed as a stop-gap for experience. Save the post training for repeat offenders.

Failure to see a bike is just an excuse that used to justify I did not look, did not care, or I though that stop/give-way sign did not apply to me...

[Drew]

True to a point, but some designs are not helpful to riders. Take for example roundabouts where the road slopes down from the centre of the roundabout so that when you lean into the corner your lean is artificially accentuated (negative camber), or changes of seal as you line up a corner. I could go on, but the point I am trying to make is when designing and building roads, factor in the needs of all road users, not just cars and trucks.

Having said that, I am a strong supporter of riding to the conditions.

This is something you struggle with, the off camber round-a-bouts? Don't think about it, look where you want to go, and you'll barely notice it any more.

Simple solution, that proper training would have illustrated.